“The Weekend Wanderer” is a weekly curated selection of news, stories, resources, and media on the intersection of faith and culture for you to explore through your weekend. Wander through these links however you like and in any order you like.
“Another Run at Freedom” – From Vince Bacote: “Many minorities would rather talk about anything else. We would much prefer to converse over the joy of sports, music, cinema, the beauty of nature, and many other topics. But many feel like we have to keep bringing up the topic of race, often in an exhausting effort to get other Christians to see that our concerns are not imaginary. From the personal to the public domain, we keep talking to pursue a life of flourishing in the church and society. There remains not only a need to say, ‘Racism is part of reality’ but also, ‘We need to construct paths toward fruitful life together in this world.'”
“How Jesus became white — and why it’s time to cancel that” – One of the greatest challenges in our faith is not to merely see Jesus and Christianity through the eyes of our own culture or personal perspective. The current moment has brought that challenge into heated focus around depictions of Jesus as white. As A. W. Tozer wrote in Knowledge of the Holy, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” In some ways, this is true with the literal pictures we have in our minds of what God looks like or what Jesus looks like. While I don’t necessarily with the framing of this current situation or cancel culture, this article by Emily McFarlan Miller at RNS highlights some of the current discussion points and challenge areas.
“Portals of Belonging” – Jon Tyson, Pastor of Church of the City in New York, writes about hospitality: “I couldn’t help but think how different New York would be if these portals of welcome became normal. If they broke out in taxis and on trains and in office buildings and in parks and everywhere in between. And of course, it’s not just New York that’s in need of hospitality. Alan Hirsch, a missiologist and fellow Aussie, and Lance Ford, a missional church leader, wrote, ‘If every Christian family in the world simply offered good conversational hospitality around a table once a week to neighbors, we would eat our way into the kingdom of God.’ Encounter by encounter, hospitality would deconstruct fear and reconstruct a shared humanity.”
“American Bible Society Names Robert L. Briggs as President and CEO” – “American Bible Society, one of the nation’s most enduring nonprofit organizations, announced today that Robert L. Briggs has been appointed as president and CEO of the 204-year-old Bible ministry. Briggs, who served most recently as interim president and CEO following the retirement of Roy L. Peterson, has served at and led American Bible Society through various leadership roles for nearly 20 years.”
“Priest Balances Christian Conviction and Legal Strategy in DACA Case” – Here’s one from last week that didn’t make it into last weekend’s edition: “Among the thousands of immigrant Christians, church leaders, and advocates praying for a victory in this week’s US Supreme Court decision on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy (DACA), one was an Episcopal priest on the team who worked on the case. Armando Ghinaglia is himself a DACA recipient, a native of Venezuela who was raised in Texas. A curate at Christ Church New Haven and a law student at Yale, Ghinaglia worked for the Connecticut legal clinic that argued against the Trump administration’s rationale for rescinding DACA in 2017. The Supreme Court ruled in its favor on Thursday.”
“Massive Saharan dust cloud shrouds the Caribbean” – In the midst of other challenging moments in our world, I heard from a friend about this unique weather pattern moving from the Sahara toward the Caribbean. From the BBC: “A huge cloud of Saharan dust has darkened the skies over parts of the Caribbean. The dust has been moving from Africa over the Atlantic Ocean. On Sunday it reached Puerto Rico and has since covered Cuba and parts of Mexico. The Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are suffering their worst haze for at least a decade, and health officials in Cuba are warning it could increase respiratory problems. The dust cloud is also affecting parts of southern Florida, including the city of Miami.”
“Dozens of Christian College Faculty Eliminated in Spring Budget Cuts” – From Christianity Today:”Five evangelical Christian colleges and universities have eliminated more than 150 faculty and staff positions this spring. While some officials cite COVID-19 as the reason for the cuts, most say the financial reckoning comes in response to the ongoing crisis of higher education and their efforts to prepare for the future.”
Music: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, “Summertime,” from Porgy and Bess
[I do not necessarily agree with all the views expressed within the articles linked from this page, but I have read them myself in order to make me think more deeply.]
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