Getting Wright Wrong: Preaching is Not Policy
Anyone who thinks that full agreement with your pastor is necessary has never been to church…
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Awake from Dreaming: Forecasts and Fears of the Next Four Years
King’s reputation and influence suffered in the four years after his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Even Obama, who rides high on a tide of popularity, is not immune to the vagaries of history.
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King and Obama—Don’t Get it Twisted
There is a temptation to regard Obama’s inauguration as the end of a forty year “wilderness” experience, but symbolism and symmetry can only take us so far. We, as citizens, are going to need to hold Obama accountable.
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The Most Popular Stories of 2008
The numbers are in and you, the reader, have chosen your favorite RD stories of the year; from Rick Warren to AIPAC, Sarah Palin, Creationism 2.0 and the fabled “death” of the religious right.
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History in Real Time: Teaching Obama
A professor of African-American religious history talks about teaching with a heavy heart, year after year, about the truths of racism. With the election of Barack Obama, this year will be different, but the journey of healing has only just begun.
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Doubting Obama: A Response to Harper’s and Simon Critchley
Is authentic religious commitment incompatible with critical thinking, reason, or compromise, as philosopher Simon Critchley seems to imply in a recent essay on Obama? Or is our challenge to refuse the false oppositions between total transformation and conflict, or politics and piety?
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Don’t Blame Black Voters: The Obama Non-Effect
It has become common to blame the black community for the passage of California’s same-sex marriage ban. A look at the statistics and logic put the lie to this seductive and simplistic narrative.
Read MoreResponse: What Black Prophetic Politics?
A colleague suggests, in response to Andre Wills’ recent RD article, that being evangelical is no more antithetical to the prophetic strand of the black church than R&B is to gospel music…
Read MoreSaddleback:The End of Black Prophetic Politics
Does Obama’s coded evangelical language signal a shift from black prophetic politics to the evangelical politics of personal salvation?
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Double Helix: Do You Fear What I Fear?
Was Obama’s speech just an exercise in kumbaya idealism?
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