Debt forgiveness was not an act of discretionary charity but a matter of divine justice — a God-ordered liberation of persons and families crushed by debt and indentured to creditors.
Psalm 2 presents the ways in which the powerful paint themselves as simultaneous victor and victim–and, more hopefully, it depicts a God who interrupts these fictions.
This essay is part of a book forum on Immaculate Misconceptions by Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones.
True hospitality is not simply about offering occasional charity or gestures of kindness but about dismantling the structures that prevent full participation in community life. It requires courage to challenge entrenched systems of exclusion and to imagine social bonds not as transactional exchanges but as expressions of shared humanity.
Lydia does not need a man or any other figure of authority to speak for her or to dictate her life. She is her own agent and even Luke-Acts’ Paul has to respect that. She cares for her own, commits to seeking justice, and makes her own choices.
You might be forced to accept your place in a fundamentally unfair world, but you should never take the next step to allow the values of that world to become the values that shape and give meaning and purpose to your life
Imagine a world in which we stop at every news of death. Imagine a world in which we do not trivialize or rationalize death. … Have we over-theologized life after death?
Fifty years after the publication of Gustavo Gutiérrez’s A Theology of Liberation, what, if any, relevance does Christian liberation theology and Gutiérrez’s work have for our present moment? Do we still have a memory of a liberating God? And if not, is there a liberative power in grappling with the absence of this memory?
Max Strassfeld’s groundbreaking Trans Talmud: Androgynes and Eunuchs in Rabbinic Literature is a masterclass in denaturalizing oppressive structures. As political backlash against trans folk continues its deadly escalation, Trans Talmud is a crucial intervention in both scholarly and explicitly political domains.
In a world of increasing anti-Jewish sentiments, we do well to note at whom Jesus points a finger. It’s not at Judaism, it’s at Rome.
Our reception of Genesis 1:3 emphasizes the inherent power of God’s word, not only to improve lives but also to change (and create!) new structures. Just as God once brought order from chaos, God can do so again.
Psalm 149 is not a blank check for our passionate pursuit of personal vengeance. Quite the contrary! It places a sword in the hand of only those who have recognized YHWH’s ultimate kingship.