In an act that echoed the backroom negotiations of Temple court lawyers 2,000 years ago, Senator Thom Goolsby (R-New Hannover) pushed a bill through Senate committee on Tuesday of Holy Week that would resume executions in North Carolina. Ironically, his supporters argued that the cross justifies their desire for retributive justice. Noting that no one has been executed in our state since 2006, Goolsby argued that the 156 people who have been sentenced to death are a living offense to... Read more

I’m glad to live in Durham, NC. Yes, we have our problems, like all places. But this is a place where folks are willing to take responsibility for our community–to come together and do the hard work of becoming the city we all want to be. Last night, we had our first public meeting on Durham’s new anti-panhandling ordinance. Mel Williams of End Poverty Durham greeted the 200 people who crowded into Duke Memorial UMC’s fellowship hall by saying that... Read more

In 2003, my wife Leah and I came to Durham to start the Rutba House, a Christian community of hospitality where the formerly homeless and the formerly housed share life together. Over cups of coffee and around our dinner table, we have learned the difficult stories behind the label “homeless” while also knowing the people who bear that label as friends. We have not ended homelessness in Durham, but we have seen that community is possible despite our fears and... Read more

Ten years ago this week, Leah and I joined a group of peacemakers in Baghdad during our government’s “Shock and Awe” campaign. The experience has shaped the rest of our life. As I remember the millions of people, both Iraqi and American, whose lives have been affected, a reflection on what I learned there: I am sitting in the lobby of a small hotel in Baghdad, listening to an American grandmother who has spent her last six months in Iraq.... Read more

I’m grateful to Tyler Wigg-Stevenson and the conversation he’s invited with his new book, The World Is Not Ours to Save. It is a challenge for high-strung activists who come from privilege to acknowledge our limits and learn to lean on the Lord. For folks who consider themselves “progressive,” it is a call to more conservative religion. The confession at the heart of Tyler’s book is one that exposes how much the early 20th century Social Gospel and the late... Read more

On Ash Wednesday, I wrote about how Rutba House, along with friends from around Durham, has chosen to focus our Lenten fast on a recent ordinance that makes it illegal to beg on our streets. Our commitment has been 1) to raise awareness through personal conversation and correspondence about the difficulties this creates for our most vulnerable neighbors and 2) to stand with those neighbors in any way we can. Last Monday, this second commitment took us to court. Cherokee... Read more

One of the gifts of my work with School for Conversion is that I get to meet and hear from folks who are getting caught up in the “everyday awakening” that’s happening all around us. For so many of those folks, this entails a journey into community. Marcus Rempel, our guest columnist today, writes about his experience at Plowshares Community Farm outside of Winnipeg, MN. I’m looking forward to visiting them in a few weeks. If you’d like to learn... Read more

Today Christians in Durham join sisters and brothers around the world to begin the season of penance that we call Lent. Pastors and priests call us to “remember you are dust and to the dust you shall return.” Recognizing that our sinful inclination is toward hubris, we dedicate forty days to the imitation of Christ’s humility through the practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. But this year, Christians in Durham face a challenge: we cannot give to the beggar on... Read more