Divine Dialogue returns for its third summer season June 16! Designed to inform and engage audiences regarding the socio-religious issues affecting the African-American community, Divine Dialogue provides the latest commentary on the significant matters affecting those of Black faith traditions.In the season premiere host Candice Benbow is joined by R3 Editor Rev. Dr. Andre E. Johnson  to discuss theological education and the academic training available for today’s pastors and leaders. Divine Dialogue is available on iTunes. Click here to subscribe. Read more

Sarah and I were in St. Louis recently for a Spring Break vacation. While we were there, we met up with a friend of mine from my days at the University of Missouri for breakfast. After some discussion about the comings and goings of our individual lives, we eventually turned to politics. He got on me for being so hardline about the need for Southern progressives to talk like they are Southern progressives, instead of relying on the sort of... Read more

by Celucien JospehR3 Contributor I would like to inform you about my new book, From Toussaint to Price-Mars: Rhetoric, Race, and Religion in Haitian Thought (2013). It is now available on Amazon or Create Space for purchase. In From Toussaint to Price-Mars: Rhetoric, Race, and Religion in Haitian Thought, I engage Haiti’s intellectual history by focusing on the ideas and writings of Haiti’s four most important thinkers and writers: Toussaint Louverture, Joseph Antenor Firmin, Jacques Roumain, and Jean Price-Mars—ranging from the eighteenth to the twentieth-century.... Read more

I was arrested this week. This was the first time in my life that I found myself on the wrong side of the law—and it was necessary. In North Carolina right now the Republican controlled legislature has unleashed the most comprehensive set of right wing draconian bills and laws that anyone in this state has ever seen. Most long time North Carolinians will tell you that these particular politicians (including Governor McCrory) look nothing like the sensible Republicans of the past that... Read more

Emergent Christianity is a broad term, and progressive an even broader one, so I don’t speak about all people from all movements that use these words to define themselves. I want to make that clear before I move on, because I appreciate and benefit from much progressive Christian thought, and emergent Christianity helped me escape fundamentalism. But in many progressive Christian circles, I feel silenced, as a woman. Several people of color and queer people have told me that they... Read more

The Puritans sailed to these shores 400 years ago seeking freedom of religion, but freedom of their religion only. Earlier this year, a group of North Carolina lawmakers, apparently channeling the Puritans, tried to establish Christianity as the state religion. Their action was prompted by a complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU noted that some county commissions and other governmental boards around the state opened meetings with prayer. While these various boards had policies that allowed for a... Read more

Over the last two months, hundreds of protesters have walked out of North Carolina’s capitol in handcuffs to show their opposition to policies by the GOP-controlled Legislature. While a broader coalition of supporters is building around the “Moral Mondays” started by the state chapter of the NAACP, the inspiration behind the protests is a throwback to the biblical message of civil rights leaders fighting segregation in the Jim Crow era. They argue that cutting benefit programs and cutting tax breaks... Read more

Depending on which pundits you follow, America is either a nation that’s drenched in religion and hostile to nonbelievers, or a severely secular place that hates people of faith. On either side you’ll find plenty of examples to support your claim. You may be convinced that we’re becoming a theocracy, pointing to religion’s steady intrusion into public policies in the fields of science, public health, and foreign aid, just to name a few. Add to that the stigma many atheists claim to face, and it’s... Read more

One memory that stands out from my time serving underneath Curtis May, who runs the Office of Reconciliation and Mediation associated with Grace Communion International, was when he had his two jobs of heading up that ministry and also working as a district superintendent of his denomination converge. One such day involved a group of mainly middle aged men, largely white but including some Hispanic, Asian American, and African American men, watch a movie together. Curtis liked regularly to have... Read more

Slaveholder Christianity is the approach to the Scriptures which my ancestors used to justify the enslavement of people of color in the southeast of the United States. The approach they used to justify treating other human beings not as humans but as property and as beasts of burden is still the basic approach to Scripture that was used to justify the racist doctrines, practices, attitudes, and policies which we explored at these racial reconciliation events. I have become convinced that... Read more