Black Church

Nearly a year has passed since Freddie Gray’s murder by Baltimore police officers ignited outcries that roiled my city for weeks. Though the camera crews have moved on and the curfew has been lifted…

What does it mean that a quarter of all Americans “describe their religion as ’ nothing in particular’ ”? In her newest book, The Nones Are Alright: A New Generation of Seekers, Believers and Those in…

Once again, RD’s editors have asked me to think about stories at the intersection of religion and culture that mainstream journalism passes over or treats inadequately. It takes a sour disposition to…

Advent is upon us as we await the coming of the world’s most famous Palestinian—Jesus of Nazareth. In this time that’s dedicated to a poor child born to an unwed mother, my conscience has forced my…

Just a day after the massacre in the historic Emanuel AME Church of Charleston, the son of one of the victims, Sharonda Coleman Singleton, offered forgiveness to Dylann Roof. As more of the victims’…

Black churches burning. Anonymous threats to black female pastors. All this in the few weeks since the shooting of nine members of Emanuel AME in Charleston. Forgive me for thinking that the summer of…

Mere hours after Dylann Roof’s murderous assault on Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church, Fox News pundits reframed the story as a secularist attack on Christianity. They were met with a tsunami of outrage…

“God wept; but that mattered little to an unbelieving age; what mattered most was that the world wept and still is weeping and is blind with tears and blood” –W.E.B. Dubois, from Black Reconstruction…

In a powerful NPR segment (listen below) on whether the Black Church still matters, Michel Martin spoke with Reverend Raphael Warnock senior pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (Martin…

Last week there was a flurry of controversy over the public disinviting of gospel star Donnie Mclurkin to a DC celebration of in advance of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. The mayor’s…