Category: Culture
spend time with poor people, be friends and neighbors
I love it when Eve Tushnet gets on her soapbox about poverty and virtue, and this great piece about the much-touted “success sequence” is no exception: The people I speak with believe they have a responsibility—there’s that word again—to achieve...
learning the tools that let you make your own tools
Alan Jacobs doesn’t want kids to learn to code. But he does think they should learn to build their own websites: To teach children how to own their own domains and make their own websites might seem a small thing....
what it costs our kids
Since yesterday’s post was about the struggles of raising children overseas, here’s Tara Ann Thieke on the problems at home: But when I go home to my newspapers and social media feeds I read about how we need more early...
why can’t white Christians take black Christians at their word?
I’ve seen this article on Christians of color slowly backing away from white churches shared over and over this past weekend (for good reason, though Amy Sullivan notes that very similar reporting was done a year ago at Religion Dispatches). The...
we can make up great things — like national identity!
Michael Brendan Dougherty has a bone to pick with people who want to sneer at “made-up” national identities: Nationalism as a political movement was also what made democracy possible; it helped to overthrow ancient monarchies that routinely bequeathed nations with...
can Black Lives Matter achieve its goals?
This is a fascinating essay from Cedric Johnson examining the history of the Black Panthers and comparing its political activism to the Black Lives Matter movement: The racial justice frame simply does not adequately explain the current crisis of police...
The Sacrifice of Africa — a book all missionaries to Africa should read
I’d been wanting to read The Sacrifice of Africa by Emmanuel Katongole (a Ugandan theologian and priest) for a while and finally found one in Nairobi. I would heartily commend this book to anyone who is interested in African politics...
there are reasons why poor people eat what they eat
Those of us interested in public health and nutrition have heard a lot in the past few years about “food deserts” — places where it’s hard to get fresh and healthy food. It turns out that while poor people may...
can evangelicalism’s corpse be revived?
Alan Jacobs has a grim prediction for the future of evangelicalism: There will of course continue to be vibrant congregations that define themselves as evangelical, but fewer and fewer as the years go by, I think. Most churches that would...
farewell to facebook
For years, Zuckerberg and Facebook have tromped through the technology landscape and demolished everything that stood in the way. This was done without any reprisal, without any consequence. In fact, each time the company destroyed a competitor, or found a...