Despite a rich history of black Americans involved in the Catholic Church, invisibility is a big problem for black Catholics in America.
Charles Finney, the great 19th-century revivalist and evangelical, would have had a hard time preaching a revival in America today. Finney's brand of evangelical fervour, called the 'new measures,' emphasised saving souls and reviving worship by incorporating elements of personal testimony and music into church services.
The prosperity gospel and its purveyors are worldwide and account for the rapid growth of Pentecostalism, the global religious movement prosperity preachers come from.
The Chicago Declaration on Women in the Catholic Church, drafted in July of 2015 by Catholics for Choice, stated that it imagined a church where 'women are respected for their choices about their health, welfare, and lives.'
American Presbyterians, as a whole, have already lost a large percentage of their population since 2008, in part because of the creation of the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians (ECO) - which formed in 2012 as a response to the ordination of out gay men and lesbians within the PCUSA.
Graham functioned as a megaphone for conservative biblical ideas that dovetailed with conservative politics, including family, sexual morality, and adherence to laws. He was not only an evangelist, he was also an enforcer: enforcing conservative white Christian social beliefs and evangelical ethical claims as 'America's Pastor.'
Forgiveness is enshrined in the Lord's prayer - forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. These scriptures point to the power of forgiveness not only as a way to absolve transgressions but to ensure that the person extending forgiveness will be forgiven of theirs.
If you're a black woman at an Ivy League school, there is no free speech for me because they're already pissed that I'm there.
Trump, despite his divorces and 'worldly lifestyle', appeals to evangelicals because he is wealthy, powerful, and pays them lip service. They support him because they are tired of losing the culture wars and are addicted to the perks of power.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Osteen are mirrors of each other. Both enjoy enormous support among evangelicals, yet they lack a command of biblical scripture. Both are among the 1 percent.
If there is anything that has broken the church's relationship with families, it is the global sexual abuse scandal.
The usual Republican suspects lined up to side with Trump, chastizing Pope Francis for insinuating that the candidate isn't Christian.
Trump's blatant racism and demonization of Muslims, Mexicans, and immigrants also serves as a foil for white evangelicals. By othering these groups, Trump allows evangelicals to persist in their belief that white Anglo-saxon Protestantism is the default for true American Christianity and is best suited to lead America as a 'Christian Nation.'
Many Catholic parishes were segregated prior to the Civil Rights movement, and the first large contingent of African-American Catholic priests would enter into the seminary in the 1920s.
The text, 'Is God a White Racist', By Rev. Dr. William Jones, is still studied by theologians and academics and taught in institutes of higher learning. The book called into question the chief construction of black liberation theology: that God is on the side of the oppressed.
The pope's instruction for priests to forgive may mean, in some cases, the difference between a woman staying in the Catholic Church or leaving for a more understanding and empowering church nearby.
While the 1963 Birmingham church bombing is the most historic, there also was a series of church burnings in the 1990s. Recognition of the terror those and similar acts impose on communities seems to have been forgotten post-Sept. 11, 2001.
The decision to allow clergy to perform same-sex marriages at the discretion of the congregation poses challenges for seminaries training new pastors who come from denominations fundamentally opposed on biblical grounds to same-sex marriage.
The University of Pennsylvania and my wonderful colleagues in the Department of Religious Studies have been routinely sent hate emails about me. Calls to fire me are numerous. Some have even come from within the university. The Penn Switchboard is flooded with calls, and the more conservative alums threaten to stop contributing.
In the past, candidates' performances of 'Christianity' have been strong points for voters, but Trump's ascendancy with evangelicals has eviscerated that expectation. Evangelicals, like other voters, can be very pragmatic about the issues they want addressed by the leadership they support.
Judges can bring their own biases about sexuality in the courtroom, causing victims untold pain in the telling and retailing of their stories.
'Amoris Latetia' reiterates that Pope Francis is interested in changing both the tone and reception of people and families in the church to a more hospitable, less judgmental environment.
Bernice King, daughter of MLK, is an assistant pastor at New Birth.
Forgiveness became a big part of the civil rights movement, juxtaposed against the violence of protesters and law enforcement. King described forgiveness in one of his early sermons as a pardon, a process of life, and the Christian weapon of social redemption.
Graham's legacy is not as a maverick or a trailblazer. It is the legacy of a man who used Jesus as a tool to placate the masses so that the status quo of conservative white America could remain firmly in place.
While Chris Martin has a deep interest in yoga spirituality, it does not make him an expert on how best to portray Desi heritage.
Black women care deeply about civic engagement, democracy, education, children, and justice.
What's sometimes called the 'browning' of the American Catholic church is very much on the minds of many U.S. bishops - and the pope. Unlike evangelicals who have stayed strong in their support of President Trump, the USCCB knows that it cannot afford to lose their Hispanic and African American population because of a weak stance on racism.
'Hymn for the Weekend' mixes cultural and religious practices, commodifying them into a banal but beautiful message of imagined solidarity.
There are many photos of Catholic priests and nuns marching in the Civil Rights movement, most notably at the March on Selma, Ala. in 1965. However, the history of Catholicism in this country tells a different story.
The survivors of Hurricane Harvey do not need empty tweets and platitudes from people like Donald Trump and Joel Osteen. They have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that, as we say in Texas, they are all hat and no cattle.
Evangelical women are also large consumers of evangelical media and ministries, and their support of these organizations is crucial. Should they shun both Trump and the predominately male evangelical leadership, it may have a ripple effect in these organizations' fundraising abilities and their ministerial efforts.
Gentrification is stripping people not only of their homes but also of their dignity and their lives, and it is effectively whitening public spaces.
The moment of true capitulation came when the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association quietly took Mormonism off the list of apostate religious groups.
There is not one particular moment that can account for the shift from the social issue concerns of 19th-century evangelicals into the state of American evangelicalism today. Some historical moments are telling. The rise of biblical criticism in the 19th century forced evangelicals to make choices about what they believed about the gospel.
The conversation of cultural appropriation versus appreciation is especially important for the NFL as it seeks to expand its fan base to London and all over the world.
Evangelicalism's moral values are now articulated by reality stars like the Duggar family, who Mike Huckabee embraced, and 'Duck Dynasty,' whose patriarch, Phil Robertson, endorsed Cruz. Palin herself, an evangelical darling in 2008, has had two reality TV shows: 'Sarah Palin's Alaska' and 'Sarah Palin's Amazing America.'
Pope Francis is calling for a better way to hold together complicated family lives in the midst of official church teaching without alienating people who have marital issues and family problems.
The shooter's choice of Emanuel AME was most likely deliberate, given the church's storied history. It was the first African Methodist Episcopal church in the South, founded in 1818 by a group of men including Morris Brown, a prominent pastor, and Denmark Vesey, who would go on to lead a large, yet failed, slave revolt in Charleston.
Historically, narratives of forgiveness were part of both the anti-slavery movement and the civil rights movement in America. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' for instance, was based loosely on the life of the Rev. Josiah Henson, who forgave his master that wanted to sell him and beat him after Henson begged him not to.
Voting for Trump will either hasten the return of Jesus, according to evangelical belief, or to allow evangelicals to regain political power in the White House. Either way, it is a win-win situation.
Trump, despite his shallow depth of biblical knowledge, plays into both the apocalyptic end-time fears of evangelicals and their nostalgia for a 'small town' America.
God ain't good all of the time. In fact, sometimes, God is not for us.
Gun rights advocates - many whom also believe that the US constitution is divinely inspired and that the rights it enumerates are God-given - face a conundrum. Their very insistence that the government not restrict guns in public spaces or limit their sales in any way also obviously inhibit other Americans' rights as covered by the US constitution.
Incidents of racial bias and implicit bias happen to African-Americans of every social class daily in America. White people seldom notice or dwell on these as they encounter the quotidian events of their day.
In many cases, in order to protect organizations, administrators often move abusers around, discount victim statements, stonewall victims in administrative processes, and/or offer legal settlements with non-disclosure agreements to victims with the express intent of protecting the institution and ridding themselves of the victim.
Black churches have long been targets of white supremacists who burned and bombed them in an effort to terrorize the black communities those churches anchored. One of the most egregious terrorist acts in U.S. history was committed against a black church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963.
President Barack Obama cried during his announcement of new executive actions designed to curb gun violence in the United States by restricting the access to firearms of those who present a clear danger to themselves or others and improving access to mental health services for those in need.
Issues over same-sex marriage and LGBT people in the PCUSA are not new: there is a 40-plus year history of arguments and tacit agreements over the issue of sexuality in the denomination, and the first openly gay minister in the PCUSA was ordained in 2011.
