In Numbers 11 the power of leadership that had formerly been concentrated in Moses was spread more widely among the people. This vision of the diffusion of leadership throughout the body politic is one with many challenging lessons for our current situation.
There is a good case to be made that the American criminal justice system is itself criminal. Up until around 1980, all statistics we have suggest that the incarceration rate varied at around 100 inmates per 100,000 people. After about 1977, and especially after about 1982, the rate began to rise; in 2008 it was over 700 prisoners per 100,000, and while it seems to have begun a modest decline in the past few years, it remains over 700. In this context, “American exceptionalism” is not an overstatement; the United States is effectively the largest incarcerator in the world; the only states near us are Cuba and North Korea.
Last week, we mourned the news that Peter Losonczi, a contributing editor to Political Theology Today and a member of the editorial board for the journal, Political Theology, had suddenly passed away. Contributions in his memory for Peter’s wife and children may be made at GoFundMe. Peter’s longtime friend and colleague, Aakash Singh Rathore, remembers Peter below.