I lived in the “theocracy” of Saudi Arabia for ten years – here is a glimpse into the Magic Kingdom, and a lesson we can learn from it, if we’re willing to open our eyes. My husband was born in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, and as a stateless family, his parents decided to take advantage of the opportunity to move to Saudi Arabia in 1967, just to get out from under occupation. Much of his family is in... Read more
Many Christians are taking a beating on social media when they express a willingness to vote for pro-choice candidate Joe Biden. The reason invariably boils down to “Democrats are baby-killers.” Let’s put that trope to rest. First of all, voting for an (allegedly) anti-abortion president does not mean you honor life. As I’ve discussed before (here, here, and here), the issue of abortion is much more loaded and nuanced than most conservative Christians seem willing to admit. I’ve been a... Read more
Many Christians are taking a beating on social media when they express a willingness to vote for pro-choice candidate Joe Biden. The reason invariably boils down to “Democrats are baby-killers.” Let’s put that trope to rest. First of all, voting for an (allegedly) anti-abortion president does not mean you honor life. As I’ve discussed before (here, here, and here), the issue of abortion is much more loaded and nuanced than most conservative Christians seem willing to admit. I’ve been a... Read more
Here’s a fun topic for today: Marxism, Black Lives Matter, and white Christianity! Learn something new, or pass this along to someone who needs to hear it. (Subscribe to my newsletter here.) Conservatives have recently been labelling Black Lives Matter (BLM) as a “Marxist movement” – apparently as a put-down. Because I support BLM, I have been labeled a Marxist myself, a number of times. I didn’t know anything about Marxism. So I did something crazy: I looked it up!... Read more
Dear conservative Christians, You felt you needed to vote for Trump in 2016 because, Roe v. Wade. Ok. So now that you have your conservative Supreme Court, why not dump Trump? You pretended not to mind Trump’s many egregious sins (let’s recall that he doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong), his life of porn stars and body-part-grabbing and divorces, his tax evasion and foul mouth, his scorn for POWs and the disabled, his constant stream of lies. For the sake of... Read more
To many of us, being pro-life means abiding by an ethic that goes well beyond opposition to abortion. It’s an ethic committed to protecting the vulnerable, and grounded in the idea that every human deserves dignity, because every human is created in the image of God, including the unborn, Black people, immigrants, the incarcerated and the poor. The Trump administration showed few signs of recognizing that ethic. Instead, it often demonstrated disregard for human dignity — and an appalling willingness... Read more
Demonstrations are ongoing in the wake of the Breonna Taylor grand jury decision, and Christians, we need to get a grip on our “righteous” anger in these moments. (I’m interrupting my series on “Christians and Muslims: We Are Family” to bring you this public service announcement.) It seems to me that we Christians, in our scramble to condemn sin, can be in too much of a hurry sometimes. I’ve seen it so often in the past few months: a police... Read more
Today I submit to you that, no matter our spiritual path, we are all family, and that’s a beautiful thing. I have heard stories of the occasional convert from Islam to Christianity, and a roughly equal number of converts from Christianity to Islam. Why did they convert? Because they were seeking God, and the God of one faith “rang true” for them more than the God of the other faith. Why does this happen? People become disillusioned with their faith... Read more
Who are “the least of these”? My full-time gig is writing about Middle East policy and underreported news from Israel and Palestine. Every day I tell my Palestinian-slash-American-citizen husband what’s new back in his homeland. Every day I uncover story after story of profound discrimination, rampant human rights abuses. We marvel at the extremity and the duration of the human suffering there. Sometimes when he calls his family in Gaza, we weep over the deep injustice – and the callousness... Read more
I read yesterday about a poll conducted by Barna, taking the temperature of the Christian world on the issue of race. I couldn’t believe my eyes (but actually, yes I could). In spite of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, and the shooting of Jacob Blake, and a summer of protests – in spite of all of that, a large swath of American Christians don’t think the US has a race problem. Here are some of the stats. Read slowly and... Read more
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