Category: church
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Where Was the White Church?
A lightly edited version of a talk I gave at a conference at Progressive Baptist Church here in Chicago. On a November Sunday in 1898, the Rev. Francis J. Grimke stood before his congregation at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington D. C. Rev. Grimke had been born into slavery in South Carolina, the…
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Wait for It
A reflection for our church’s brief, online Watchnight Service. Imagine a gathering of enslaved women and men, collecting in secret on any given December 31st. New Year’s Day was often when enslavers settled their accounts; should they find themselves in debt, it was likely they would sell some of those they had bought and abused…
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Insurrection, Idolatry, and an Invitation to Risky Discipleship
In the days following the January 6 insurrection, a lot of us tried to make sense of the violence and chaos we watched unfold on live TV from the US Capitol. For as unpredictable as were the days following the election, the scenes of an enraged mob attacking police officers, chanting for the Vice President’s…
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“…a reproach before God and the world.”
There is a strange warning being passed around these days and I expect, with Independence Day coming up, its urgency will be heightened. It comes in different shades, but essentially we are being alerted to a frightening new development which seeks to retell this country’s origin story. If you have even a passing awareness of…
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There is Freedom: A Juneteenth Sermon
This is a lightly edited version of my sermon from the Sunday before Juneteenth. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Corinthians 3:17) Imagine being an enslaved person in Texas at the beginning of another hot summer in 1865. Given the state’s relative distance…