Can Progressive Churches Avoid a Double Standard in the Public Sphere?
Earlier this May, the Minnesota state legislature legalized gay marriage, making Minnesota the twelfth state (in addition to Washington, DC) to recognize same sex marriages. A couple of days after the vote, I stumbled across a photo gallery of activists from both sides rallying at the state capitol. As I scrolled through the gallery looking [...]
Why Monty Python Makes for Good Religion: Reflections on Religion and Film, Part 1/3
Humor; humor is difficult. Religion; religion is difficult. They can both be reassuring, and discomfiting. They can affix labels, or they can liberate. They can be subversive, or they can uplift the dominant paradigm. Both can be thrilling and boring. They can be unifying, or alienating. Religion and humor both aspire to help us live [...]
Parashat Emor: Embodied Leadership and Its Discontents
In Parashat Emor (Leviticus 21-24), read this past week in synagogues around the world, we are introduced to the relatives for whom Kohanim (priests) are permitted to mourn, as well as a list of various classes of priests who, owing to a mum (blemish), are barred from performing the sacrificial service in the Mishkan (Leviticus [...]
Five Lessons in Ecumenical, Interfaith, and Extrafaith Organizing
The Princeton New Jim Crow Project is a coalition of local organizations working for awareness and reform of injustices in the criminal justice system. The group takes its name from Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010). The book has sparked a conversation across the country on racial [...]
Project Conversion: Rebuilding the Shattered Mirror
A few months ago when the request came on the State of Formation email group for reviewers for a book called ‘Project Conversion’, my literary greed took the better of me as I rushed to get hold of yet another book to add to my collection. I have to say that right from the word [...]
Pacem in Terris and Mercy Mild
With almost daily reminders that War is Coming, it gets hard to imagine an alternative. Over the last month our media has been banging the drums of war suggesting that Kim Jong-un is borderline psychotic and is ready, at any moment, to drop a bomb. With images of their prison camps, videos of their propaganda, [...]
Why This Devotee of God Doesn’t Think To Be Atheist Is To Be A Demon
There are two kinds of people in this world. Devotees and demons. I think this is absolutely true. But let’s parse this out a bit. First of all, what is the source of my seemingly eccentric and dogmatic statement? In the sixteenth chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna speaks of two kinds of natures that exist in this [...]
Pope Francis: How to Make New Artifacts from Old Power
“We have many experts on the terrain of conflict, but not many leaders. Good Christian leadership radiates a very different presence in a broken world.” I came across these words by Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice—from their 2008 book entitled Reconciling All Things—the day after Pope Francis raised the Christian practice of foot-washing to new [...]
Mining our Political Past for Spiritual Sustenance
A few weeks ago, I completed my final assignment from my third semester of rabbinical school (which ended in January). I’m not one to put things off like that, but this was a special assignment. It involved sitting in a Brooklyn apartment with close to twenty young Jews (and maybe a couple non-Jews?) studying the [...]
Palingenesia: You Might be a Lord… But Here Comes the King
Have you heard about Snoop Dogg becoming Snoop Lion? Last year, Snoop Dogg announced his new persona starting with his own Reincarnation. He was no longer going to be the rabble-rousing gangster rapper, but a Rastafarian with a new message. Snoop Lion is here to spread the message of Love over Hate. Yeah, it seems [...]
Contributing Scholars
Karri WhippleKarri Whipple, 26, is a Master of Sacred Theology candidate at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Karri’s interests centers around the role faith communities in addressing violence against women, restorative justice, and creating transformative, peaceful communities.
Ryan BellRyan Bell is the Senior Pastor of the Hollywood Adventist Church in Los Angeles, CA. A recent doctoral graduate from Fuller Theological Seminary, he teaches part-time at Azusa Pacific University and is active in congregation-based community organizing and interfaith peacemaking work around the city.
Gavrielle BlankGavrielle Blank is a Ph.D. student in Hebrew Bible at Claremont Graduate University, focusing on Judaism’s interaction with non-Jewish religious traditions, specifically in order to understand the development of Gnostic elements within Jewish mysticism. In her non-academic life, she is an involved mother, a devoted partner, an aspiring artist, an avid music fan, and a lover of all things sci/fi and fantasy.