The Seven Deadly Sins Of White Christian Nationalism

Hear the call to overcome today’s culture of hate and bring healing and hope into our life together. While right-wing conservatives dare to call themselves Christians as they tear down equality and justice, commit horrific acts of violence, and fan the flames of fascism in America, Carter Heyward issues a call to action for Christians to truly hear God’s message of peace and love. Heyward shows how American Christians have played a major role in building and securing structures of injustice in American life. Rising tides of white supremacy, threats to women’s reproductive freedoms and to basic human rights for gender and sexual minorities, the widening divide between rich and poor, and increasing natural disasters and the extinction of Earth’s species--all point to a world crying out for God’s wisdom. Followers of Jesus must first call out these ingrained and sinful attitudes for what they are, acknowledging what the culture of white Christian nationalism is doing to our country and our world, and commit ourselves ever more fully to generating justice-love, whoever and wherever we are.

Why do the Spiritual Exercises not change us as deeply as we hope? This is the haunting question that was raised at the recent general congregation of the Jesuits about Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises and the question the contributors to this book explore and attempt to answer in the context of ongoing racial injustice in the United States. All of us who love and are engaged in Ignatian spirituality must also ask ourselves this same question. Contributors explore this question by examining how “color-blindness racism” determines our interpretation of the Spiritual Exercises in the United States. Animated by the grace of Ignatius's conversion experience these spiritual directors, theologians, and leaders in Jesuit ministries offer insightful scholarly and creative pastoral engagement of The Spiritual Exercises for the ongoing journey of conversion from racism and white supremacy in the United States.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ordinations of “The Philadelphia Eleven,” this expanded and revised edition serves as the definitive account of the courageous women who shattered stained glass ceilings and sparked a global movement to revolutionize faith and society. Nearly fifty years after eleven audacious women made history as the first female priests ordained in the Episcopal Church, Darlene O'Dell revisits their inspiring journey in a revised and expanded edition of her acclaimed The Story of the Philadelphia Eleven. Through extensive interviews and tireless archival research, this definitive account was the first to vividly resurrect the pivotal moment that tore down barriers and changed the Episcopal Church forever. Both critics and scholars hailed the book, calling it “a needed history and a brilliantly told tale” (Mary E.Hunt) and “enthralling reading…O'Dell certainly has the novelist's gift of making her story come alive and in maintaining her readers' interest” (Bernard Palmer). Now fresh interviews unveil dozens of never-before-told perspectives, while updated chapters lend contemporary relevance to a history we can't afford to forget. Additionally, the author has included exclusive conversations with one of the “Washington Four,” a chapter on the impactful Barbara Harris, and insights into the wider Anglican church's role in what is now universally considered a landmark event. This edition doesn't just look back; it casts a critical eye on what's changed and what hasn't, questioning the patriarchy that persists in faith institutions and how these ordinations echo in today's political culture. Both an intimate character study and a sweeping examination, The Story of the Philadelphia Eleven is a renewed call to understand our past in order to better navigate our collective future.

There is growing consensus that life on the planet is in peril if climate change continues at its current pace. At stake is not only the future of many species but of humanity itself. As an increasing number of ecological economists have emphasized, these problems will only be adequately addressed by re-examining economic systems from an ecological perspective, fundamentally calling into question assumptions of unlimited growth and the maximization of shareholder profit foundational to neoliberal capitalism. Religion and ecology scholars have also increasingly emphasized the ways climate change challenges assumed divides between nature and culture, religion and labor, economy and ecology, and calls for critical and constructive engagement with the religion, economy, and ecology nexus. Often, though, religious engagements with economy and ecology have placed emphasis on individual morality, action, and agency at the level of consumption patterns or have suggested mere modifications within existing economic paradigms. Contributors to this volume call into question the adequacy of this approach in light of the urgency of climate change which is always ever entwined with ongoing patterns of exploitation, oppression, and colonialism in current economic systems. Rather than tweaking a system of exploitation, for instance by emphasizing individual consumption or care for human and non-human victims, these authors articulate important opportunities for religious engagement, activism, resistance, and solidarity around issues of production and labor. Recalling that Marx linked agencies and labor of people as well as the other-than-human world, these authors aim to articulate a sense in which liberation of people and the planet are intertwined and can be accomplished only through collaboration for their common good. The basic intuition driving this volume is that while Christianity has by and large become the handmaiden of exploitative capitalism and empire, it might also reclaim latent theologies and religious practices that call into question the fundamental valuation of labor without recognition or rest, of extractive exploitation, and a “winner take all” praxis. In the process, Christianity might reclaim and reinvest in tenuous historical materializations of transformed ecological and economic relationships while economics might be re-informed by a valuation of the shared oikos as well as a just accounting of and renumeration for labor. Together they might serve the aim of the flourishing of all people and the planet.

An empowering antidote to one of the leading challenges facing clergy and lay ministers today: burnout. Clergy and lay ministry professionals are exhausted. The past few years of collegial loneliness, ever-changing ministry practices, illness and death, and declining church attendance have led many to report finding less joy in their ministry. Suffering the effects of burnout and declining mental health, some clergy are contemplating a radical vocational change, or have already left traditional ministry altogether. From Weary to Wholehearted isn’t a quick fix, but a much-needed companion to remind faith leaders they are not alone, support them through sustainable tools for finding joy and rest, and re-ground them in spiritual nourishment. Swanlund calls readers to show up with their whole heart, vulnerably and courageously. Each section will address a source of weariness, including overwhelm, loneliness, comparison, lack of inspiration, and more. The book incorporates research in the fields of sociology and psychology, as well as Swanlund’s experience as a faith leader, spiritual companion, and Certified Daring Way facilitator. The chapters will contain scripture, personal meditation, reflection prompts, an invitation toward flourishing, and an original prayer. Drawing upon the rhythm of the liturgical calendar, From Weary to Wholehearted begins with the spiritual themes of justice and anticipation in Advent and moves through the sustainable practices invited by Ordinary Time. While not expressly a homiletic or liturgical resource, it will infuse new life into the ministry of emotionally impoverished preachers and lay leaders.

"The founder and CEO of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and columnist for the Atlantic describes how white Protestant Christians have declined in influence and power since the 1990s and explores the effect this has had on America, "--NoveList.

Short. Timely. Poignant. Pointed. Burying White Privilege is all of these and more. This is the book that everybody who cares about contemporary American Christianity will want to read. Many people wonder how white Christians could not only support Donald Trump for president but also rush to defend an accused child molester running for the US Senate. In a 2017 essay that went viral, Miguel A. De La Torre boldly proclaimed the death of Christianity at the hands of white evangelical nationalists. He continues sounding the death knell in this book. De La Torre argues that centuries of oppression and greed have effectively ruined evangelical Christianity in the United States. Believers and clerical leaders have killed it, choosing profits over prophets. The silence concerning—if not the doctrinal justification of—racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia has made white Christianity satanic. Prophetically calling Christian nationalists to repentance, De La Torre rescues the biblical Christ from the distorted Christ of white Christian imagination.