Many of us define Breast Cancer Awareness Month, also known as National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM), as an annual health campaign organized by major breast cancer charities every October to (1) increase awareness of the disease and to (2) raise funding for research into its cause, prevention, diagnosis, treatment and cure.
Critics define Breast Cancer Awareness Month by conflicts of interest, mostly between corporations sponsoring breast cancer awareness while profiting from diagnosis and treatment. For example, Breast Cancer Action, a breast cancer advocacy organization, sites that October is now more of a public relations campaign that avoids discussion of the causes and prevention of breast cancer and instead focuses on “awareness” as a way to encourage [.....]
1. Ja Rule Exposes My Sinful Heart
This week Marc Lamont Hill of HuffPost Live interviewed rapper Ja Rule about life after a two-year prison sentence, his new movie, “I’m in Love with a Church Girl” and his newfound faith. Much of the hip hop community has been abuzz with the news of Ja’s faith. For those who haven’t seen it, here’s the full 19-minute segment...watch here 2. “I have disabilities…I am broken but not because [.....]
On the opening night of the Yeezus Tour, multi-platinum, Grammy award-winning rapper Kanye West brought out an actor to portray Jesus during his concert in Seattle. Most of the time when I see "White Jesus" depicted, I don't get offended because I don't find it to be historically accurate. But between this and the title and theme of Kanye's last album, Yeezus, I was initially fed up. His antics were disrespectful, offensive, and just plain unnecessary.
Before I began to write this post I searched for concert [.....]
Life is hard. No matter who you are at some point in time you have felt this overwhelming feeling. For many of us it centers on money or family or life decisions or all of those and more. Interestingly enough no one seems to be able to escape this feeling. Not even the rich and famous are immune; in fact in some ways maybe it takes an even greater toll on them. How often do we see troubled celebrities, people that we just wish we had half of what they have or could be half as famous as they are? How often are we baffled when we hear that our favorite celebrity, that we love and envy, has been admitted to rehab [.....]
1. WATCH: God's Justice Never Shuts Down — Jim Wallis on #FaithfulFilibuster
Jim Wallis talks about the #FaithfulFilibuster outside the Capitol Building and offers a reading of his conversion text, Matthew 25...watch here 2. Where There Is No Guidance
Proverbs 11:14 speaks volumes in the context of the black community. It is no secret that African American communities tend to be plagued with poor school systems, poor medical access, high incarceration rates, broken families, and of course [.....]
At the end of the summer many of us watched the verdict in the Zimmerman case with great concern, even worry. We sat with knotted stomachs, aching hearts, and frazzled nerves waiting for a just verdict but anticipating one that would once again bring us to a very unsettling place around the issues of race and violence in America. We’ve been here too many times before – stuck in a vortex of sorts, where we struggle mightily for a moral anchor for our feelings, our fears, and our outrage but knowing all the while that as a society we lack the moral courage to confront ourselves and our history.
As a Black clergy person, who is working [.....]
1. Dispensationalists Are Wrong – Things Aren’t Getting Worse [Questions That Haunt]
Dispensationalism is a recent and minority opinion. Invented in the 19th century, it is premised on a particularly literalistic reading of particular Bible passages in Revelation, Daniel, and certain sayings of Jesus. In order to be a Dispensationalist, for example, one must completely ignore the realities surrounding the apocalyptic genre of literature in the Ancient Near East — realities that make sense of the “revelations” [.....]
