Embracing the Spiritual Lessons of UnbelongingToo often, cultural belonging becomes a battle, and its winners gain the world: access, comfort, safety, community. Yet for those on the margins—set apart from their culture by differences such as ethnicity, class, ability, and faith—God offers something even greater.The Gift of the Outsider celebrates the blessings found in unbelonging—and calls Christians of all backgrounds to love and listen to their...

An awakening has been happening across our society. People increasingly recognize how long-standing, systemic issues have prevented many from flourishing. But often Christians are not sure how best to engage. Does it help to march and hold signs? What can we do to contribute and not further complicate things?Faith-rooted justice advocate and activist Michelle Ferrigno Warren equips Christians to join Christ's restorative work in the world. In nearly three decades o...

"In Advent we prepare for the coming of all Love." —Madeleine L'Engle"At the birth of Jesus, an event of cosmic significance by which we humans still mark our calendars, the invisible and visible worlds come together." —Philip Yancey"Help us to realize, as those who love and believe in you that we, too, are pregnant with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that day by day we are being enlarged." —Luci ShawTh...

It's uncertain that Howard Thurman made the remark often attributed to him, "I have been writing this book all my life," but there is little doubt that he was deeply immersed in reflection on the times that bear an uncanny resemblance to the present day, which give voice to the Black Lives Matter movement.Our "life's book" is filled with sentence upon sentence of marginalization, pages of apartheid, chapters of separate and unequal. Now this season reveals volumes of violence again...

A look at the inspirational lives of ten Black women of faithDo the names Elizabeth Freeman, Nannie Helen Burroughs, or Charlotte Forten Grimké ring any bells? Have you ever heard of Sarah Mapps Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, or Maria Fearing? What about Sara Griffith Stanley, Amanda Berry Smith, Lucy Craft Laney, and Maria Stewart?While these names may not be familiar to you, these women lived faithful and influential lives in a world that was fil...

In this, his premiere work, Cornel West challenges African Americans to consider the incorporation of Marxism into their theological perspectives, thereby adopting the mindset that it is class more so than race that renders one powerless in America. His work reflects political and cultural perspectives borne out of his own formative life experiences. Decades later, his arguments continue to capture the theological imagination of many and influence the critical engagement of generations of ...

What if we truly belong to each other? What if we are all walking around shining like the sun?Mystic, monk, and activist Thomas Merton asked those questions in the twentieth century. Writer Sophfronia Scott is asking them today.In The Seeker and the Monk, Scott mines the extensive private journals of one of the most influential contemplative thinkers of the past for guidance on how to live in these fraught times.As a Black woman who is not ...

A transnational feminist novel about human trafficking and motherhood from an award-winning author.Saddled with student loans, medical debt, and the sudden news of her infertility after a major car accident, Shannon, an African American woman, follows her boyfriend to Morocco in search of relief. There, in the cobblestoned medina of Marrakech, she finds a toddler in a pink jacket whose face mirrors her own. With the help of her boyfriend and a bribed official, Shan...

Tina Webb had given up her dreams of becoming a primo ballerina that pirouetted in front of an audience of hundreds of people long ago. Having a beau to share her life with was a lost cause too. So, she poured her heart and soul into her dance studio. Instructing young girls who still held onto their dreams, in hopes they could see them realized the way she hadn't. When she receives notification that she has to move her studio, and potentially lose all she worked hard for, she doesn't know...