The (Next) Fire Next Time
As I watched nationwide protests flare after the grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson of Ferguson, MO, I couldn’t help thinking that despite the progress Americans think we’ve made …
Author: dheller
The Visual History of Christian Civic Activism in China
Accounts of the Hong Kong campaign for political choice and universal suffrage that began in late September have emphasized the prominence of Christian activists in planning and leading that movement. Community organizer …
Chinese Christians Reshaping Their Nation
In 1989, just after college, I moved to Beijing to teach English to Chinese graduate students. I was in Tiananmen Square when the tanks rolled in and fled on my bike in …
How Muslim Civic Activism Helped Pass California’s Prop 47
This post originally appeared on Religion Dispatches. California mostly defied the rightward national trend in this week’s midterm elections. The victory of Proposition 47, for example, makes California the first state in the …
Richard Flory Addresses the Los Angeles City Council
This post was a speech delivered to the Los Angeles City Council and a gathering of religious leaders whose communities are working with the City on disaster preparedness. Good morning, it is …
A Family Occupation: Samuel Chu on the Occupy Central Movement in Hong Kong
Samuel Chu has been a community organizer in Southern California for the past decade. On September 26, 2014 he left Los Angeles to join his father–a Southern Baptist minister, community activist and …
LA Voice: Congregations and Communities Building Electoral Power
For many years in the United States, churches have been at the center of progressive political and social movements. From abolitionism to child welfare and of course the Civil Rights Movement, religious …
Evangelicalism: Same as it Ever Was–Or Is It?
Nobody ever said religious innovation was easy—either as an undertaking in the context of a religious community or as the subject of a scholarly investigation. For one thing, creative and innovative activity …
Lift Up, Wake Up, Grow Up: Religion and Civil Rights in Ferguson
Prompted by recent social unrest in Ferguson, MO, New York City and Southern California, the Rev. Dr. Cecil Murray, Tansey Chair of Christian Ethics at USC and Chairman of the Cecil Murray …
Good Vibrations: Sonic Rituals and Sacred Time
“Please come on Saturday morning, by 6:50am to get settled in for the 7-8:30am gathering.” So read the email from Kathryn, one of my research interlocutors, who helps coordinate a small group …