Christianity for good or evil?

As I sit writing this email, I am listening in the background to a hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 US Capitol attack. In last week’s opening hearing, the committee released a new video montage of the insurrection, and the final frame of that video is haunting. A person holds high a red Trump 2020 flag, and just a few feet away, someone else waves the Christian flag—the flag I pledged allegiance to as a child in Vacation Bible School.

Faith and religion can be beautiful, on both a personal spiritual level and in the shared struggles for justice and liberation. But they can also be used for evil. They can link arms with a racist insurrection.

This double-edged sword is captured well in our recent Century content. A conversation with theologian Wendy Farley explores medieval mysticism and God’s desire for us, while a review of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s book shows the way the Bible has been used to keep women out of US politics. Isaac Villegas shares a moving story of his church providing sanctuary to a refugee, while Mark Glanville shows how some Christians today use slaveholding logic to argue against advocacy for sex abuse survivors.

Email me: Are you following the House committee’s hearings? What are your thoughts and feelings about them?

Jon Mathieu
[email protected]

Thinking about God’s desire with the medieval mystics

“The medieval contemplatives were not afraid to think of God as desiring our well-being and desiring us.”

Amy Frykholm interviews Wendy Farley

The Bible’s imprints on US politics are noticeably masculine

“The problem is that an imprint has a particular shape, and the current imprints that most define American political leadership are masculine. This is part of why Fiorenza thinks no woman has yet been elected president in this country.”

Zen Hess reviews Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

On the holiness of casseroles and spreadsheets

“We organized our polis according to the hospitality of the gospel, not according to the government’s categories of citizen and alien, a division that renders some people as deportable in order to protect the rights and privileges of others.”

by Isaac S. Villegas

Living by the Word for June 19 (Ordinary 12C)

God never intended for Elijah to carry the full weight of challenging the halls of power.

by Elizabeth Evans
 

The old “distraction” slur against advocates for justice

“Why do evangelical leaders so often condemn advocacy for justice as a distraction from the gospel?”

by Mark Glanville

Was my father right to embrace predestination?

“When Dad first told me about his new book project, I was sure I hadn’t heard him right. Predestination? Dusted off and polished up for the 21st century?”

by Matthew Myer Boulton