“Those who demonize the Ferguson movement and [those who] romanticize the civil rights movement have one thing in common: Neither has studied either subject deeply,” said the Rev. Osagyefo Sekou in the opening of his lecture at the University of Louisville on Jan. 21. Two days after people across the nation observed Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Sekou told the crowd gathered for the sixth annualCenter on Race and Inequality’s King Justice Lecture that “a new generation has reclaimed [King’s]... Read more

Statement of Purpose: This Group’s purpose is to provide a space for interdisciplinary, sustained, scholarly reflection and intellectual advancements at the intersections of religion and hip-hop culture. We believe the Group will assist religious and theological studies to take more seriously hip-hop culture — while expanding the conversation of hip-hop culture beyond a thin analysis of rap music. To these ends, this Group is marked by an effort to offer critical reflection on the multiplicity of the cultural practices of... Read more

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the watershed Voting Rights Act of 1965, R3 Editor Dr. Andre E. Johnson will teach a course titled “Towards the Beloved Community: The Rhetorical Trajectory of Martin Luther King, Jr.” at the Meeman Center on the campus of Rhodes College. In this class, students will engage in a careful reading of major sermons, speeches, and writings from King to discover a rhetorical trajectory that moved him towards the construction of the Beloved Community.   ... Read more

The Reverend Paul Turner trudged up Broad Street. He shoved his ungloved hands in his overcoat pockets and pulled his dark fedora low against the misty mountain morning. Leo Burnett, a supervisor at the local hosiery mill, walked beside him. An African-American woman passed them on her way to work. A photographer for Life followed. The two white men were heading into the black neighborhood of Clinton, Tennessee, to meet white attorney Sidney Davis and a handful of black teenagers.... Read more

Over the last year, I have been completely devoted to working for the cause of LGBTQ equality, acceptance, and inclusion in the society and in the Church. When I first jumped in to full time activism, I didn’t expect to see much movement on this issue among my fellow evangelicals. From where I sat, as a student in one of Americas leading Bible Institutes at the time, evangelicalism seemed to have planted its flag deep into the ground on this... Read more

Evangelicals make an appearance in a good deal of the writing about religion and prisons, and they usually don’t look too good. To reference just two examples, evangelicals are often linked to the rise of the prison industrial complex either in their seemingunwillingness to challenge its growth or, as Winnifred Fallers Sullivan writes about one evangelical prison ministry, in their inherently complementary nature: Whether one can conclude that dominant contemporary Christian theologies of punishment actually contributed directly to the increased... Read more

Last year, Frank Ancona, the Ku Klux Klan’s Imperial Wizard, told NBC 12 in Virginia, “We don’t hate people because of their race, I mean, we’re a Christian organization.”   While that may appear to many as absurdity run amok, Ancona’s statement begs the question: What constitutes “a Christian organization”? Does one simply need to declare oneself a Christian organization and it is made so? Are there certain precepts to which one must adhere? The Klan experienced its largest membership... Read more

Listen, I don’t have a wildly inspiring story about the time I met Marcus Borg, or how one of his books saved me, precisely, from abandoning the church altogether. I did hear him speak once. From the FRONT ROW. And he was gracious, and engaging, and challenging, and yes, inspiring. But I never met him in person. The internet will be full of those stories today—testimony from those who knew him well, or met him briefly at a critical time... Read more

As a religious layperson and a computer novice, I decided to take a university course called Computer Mediated Communications in order to learn how religion has been impacted by the communication revolution incited by the invention of the computer. The breadth of our readings in the course reveals that computer mediated communications (CMCs) now permeate virtually every aspect of modern human culture. From politics to economics to education to social movements to capitalism to the philosophy of technology the tentacles... Read more

This month marks 51 years since Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” speech. On January 8, 1964, during his State of the Union address, he urged the joint session of Congress to join him in a battle that the “richest Nation on earth can afford to win.” Over the past year, current elected officials have been reflecting on the legacy of Johnson’s war on poverty as a way of assessing contemporary anti-poverty policies and programs. Some Republicans have taken the opportunity... Read more