This weekend, my wife and I went to see the movie The Help. Based on a popular 2009 novel written by Kathryn Stockett, The Help tells the story of a Skeeter Phelan, an ambitious white woman fresh out of college in Jim Crow-era Mississippi, as she seeks to chronicle the lives of African-American maids. […]Continue Reading →
As I sat there—hour after hour—I was flabbergasted by the way that the receptionist treated the various people who arrived at the front of the line. Her standard greeting was a stern “why are you here?” (not, “good morning, how can I help you?”) and she would berate people for not knowing what and where their “A Number” was. She also did not speak Spanish; I ended up spending part of the day translating for Spanish-speaking immigrants whom she began to yell at after they did not understand her instructions.
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Last Thursday and Friday, along with tens of thousands of Christian leaders at satellite sites across the country (the rest of the world gets to participate in the coming months), I attended the Willow Creek Association Global Leadership Summit. This was the second time that I’ve had the opportunity to attend the event, […]Continue Reading →
In my experience talking to churches and Christian groups around the U.S., I’ve found that one of the best indicators of how a person will approach the issue of immigration is his or her age. While there are some wonderful exceptions, a lot of older people have had fewer interactions with immigrants and, in […]Continue Reading →
This week, I’m in Central America, on an eleven-day tour through Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. And, naturally, that has me thinking about the places from which immigrants come—and why. No matter how you feel about undocumented immigrants or how the U.S. government should respond to those who have migrated unlawfully, I would […]Continue Reading →
Most Americans—polls consistently show—recognize that the mass deportation of the approximately 10.8 million immigrants living in the United States unlawfully is not the best solution to our country’s immigration problems. Mass deportation, any way that you look at it, would be incredibly costly: the Department of Homeland Security estimates the cost at […]Continue Reading →
Having coauthored a book entitled Welcoming the Stranger, my interest was piqued by the similar title of a book I spotted on a bookstore shelf recently: Learning from the Stranger: Christian Faith and Cultural Diversity (Eerdmans, 2009) by Calvin College professor David I. Smith focuses on the intersection between biblical faith […]Continue Reading →
Editor’s Note: Matthew provided an update on this story about six weeks after this blog was first posted that he calls “Frustration, Anger, Hope & Gratitude.” Yesterday afternoon, after church, I went to jail. Last Thursday, on the way to the pediatrician with his four-week-old son, one of my […]Continue Reading →
Today is the 4th of July. For most Americans, that means fireworks, parades, picnics, and a long weekend. For many, though, the day brings about a certain sentiment tied to something deeper: reflection and celebration of the privilege that it is to be American. I must confess that, in recent years, this holiday […]Continue Reading →
The central thesis of pastor David Platt’s bestselling Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream (Multnomah, 2010) is that, for many American Christians, our faith has become a comfortable, culturally-co-opted shadow of the costly, seemingly crazy commitment to which Scripture calls us. Platt, a well-known mega-church pastor in Birmingham, […]Continue Reading →
