Forgiveness Is Possible

Pumla Gobodo- Madikizela, a coordinator for South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996 and a researcher on trauma and healing, reminds us that forgiveness is possible no matter the attrocity on Duke Divinity School’s blog Faith & Leadership.  She shares with us the lessons that she has learned from forgiveness and challenges the belief that the only […]

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Color of the Cross

“For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and […]

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To Preach or Not to Preach?

This week, my husband John and I are at Princeton Theological Seminary as fellows of the Joe R. Engle Institute of Preaching.  In an effort to strengthen my vocational identity and to further understand this known and yet unknown calling to Christ’s ministry, I have come with other pastors, clergy and ministry leaders from across […]

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According to Screwtape: How Race Became Our Religion

In C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, I find a truth within the seventh letter from Screwtape, a senior tempter/ devil to his nephew, Wormwood.  Taking heed to the warning and reminder that Lewis places in the preface: “Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar,” if I err it is for the sake of undermining the […]

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Are you a neighbor?

“Solidarity challenges any tendency to establish a relational identity by identifying exclusively with a finite community.  If we overidentify with one community, even a particular church, we tend to become defensive about rival communities.  This misplaced devotion leads to inner division and social defensiveness.  When a finite community becomes the exclusive source of value and […]

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