The arsonist who burned Beth Israel in Jackson stated he burned it because it was a Jewish site of worship and called it a "synagogue of Satan." That phrase first appears in Revelation 2:9. This is why Christians have to talk about and deal with Christian antisemitism. apnews.com/article/miss...

I was pleased to do a podcast with the Marginalia Review of Books on the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate and its continuing relevance for today. Give it a listen if you like: www.youtube.com/watch?v=asGy...

Who in academic circles is working on the intersection of ethics, politics, and the current crisis of democracy? #academicsky

The entire liberal political order is collapsing. By this I mean norms around rule of law, religious toleration, movements for racial and ethnic equality, and the notion that international exchange and collaboration is a good. 1/3

New video drop for All Things Necessary, with @danjoslynsiem.bsky.social! ⚓ youtu.be/UC2Z8kzH7Vk

The Episcopal Church refuses to participate in the racist agenda of this administration. I am proud of our leaders and grateful for the witness of Episcopal Migration Ministries. religionnews.com/2025/05/12/e...

While the headline is that Leo XIV is the first American pope, pay attention to the fact that his ministry is informed by his long service in Peru, including being Bishop of Chiclayo. He is a pope of the Americas. (And note he addressed the crowd in Italian and Spanish, but not English!)

I am very curious about the next papal name. A Paul VII, for instance, would send a very interesting signal.

The preservation of the memory of the Holocaust is being politicized. Every president makes appointments to the board of the US Holocaust Museum. This creates over time bipartisan representation on the board. This political purge is an abuse of power. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/u...

One final piece as the Triduum approaches. "The emergency is here" -- Ezra Klein. youtu.be/JN1oBfg0fwI?...

Do you have stories of Christian and Jewish congregations working in solidarity? Stories of how Christian communities have examined thei practices based on collaboration with local Jewish communities? I am looking for case studies for a chapter in my book. DM me if you have something to share.

I have launched a YouTube channel: All Things Necessary (follow @allthingsnecessary.bsky.social ). Please give it a look, a subscribe, a share, and a prayer. It is my effort to make TEC more visible is the place young people are looking for Jesus www.youtube.com/@AllThingsNe... ⚓

You cannot hope for authoritarians to ignore you or treat you well. You can only resist them.

Francis rejects Vance's distortions & exhorts US Catholics: "The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan”, that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception." 1/2

Those who teach and lead better learn about Catholic integralism quickly. Those are the circles Vance moves in. It is a nuanced and complex theory of Christian political supremacy. I highly recommend “All the Kingdoms of the World” by Kevin Vallier. Link in comments.

Amen, @davidkurtz.bsky.social. talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo...

Like many of you, I have been wondering what I do next. Here are some things I have committed to: 1. Use my role as a teacher to expand the moral imagination of those I teach. Focus on truth and love (caritas) as fundamental virtues. 1/3

1. The articles of impeachment won't win a majority, but some Democrat should make a big show of bringing them RIGHT NOW. 2. Lawsuits won't be enough, but they should be filed RIGHT NOW. 3. Some Dem Senator should stand up with the Complete Works of Charles Dickens and filibuster, RIGHT NOW.

The hostile takeover of several federal agencies means we are looking at thousands of federal workers and contractors quickly becoming unemployed. To say nothing of the people who depended on the services they provided. How does this not lead to a recession?

If you are inclined to do something tangible, on Monday morning call your congressional representatives and ask them to look into DOGE's hostile takeover of federal offices and databases. Ask them to stop the interference of unelected entities into our governance.

Remember, none of this is normal. Those who teach young adults and children need to actively remind them of a time when things were done differently. Help them imagine a different future now.

If you have not yet read Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny," you need to read it right now. Like, this week.

A student for my "Resisting Anti-Judaism" class titles the weekly responses "Resistance Paper" with the week number. That feels like a vibe right now.

"Remember what I told you, if you were of the world they would love you." (John 15:19)

The call to be merciful isn’t just for Presidents. It’s for all of us.

"A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinion." (Proverbs 18:2)

Emending Joe Hill's words: "Mourn, then organize."

The kids say the TikTok ban is their burning of the library of Alexandria.

Folks, say a prayer for everyone in LA tonight. Terrible fires.

My son has become spiritually curious. And so he goes to YouTube. It is filled with Christian reactionaries. We desperately need new media platforms that represent mainstream views of the major Christian traditions. Reactionaries have completely gamed the algorithms.

Folks in the Boston area: Come next Tuesday to hear my friend and colleague David Freidenreich talk about his excellent book "Jewish Muslims." It will be at Lehrhaus Tavern, which if you have never been is a fun place. Just around the corner from Harvard Divinity School!

Daily William Stringfellow for Advent: "In the timely coincidence of the apocalyptic and the eschatological, biblical people live in vigilance and consolation. Biblical living means watching for and hoping for the next advent of Jesus Christ . . . (1/2)

Daily William Stringfellow for Advent: "Each and every charismatic gift is concerned with the restoration or renewal of human life in society. All have to do with how human beings are enabled to cope wit the multiple and variegated claims of death. . . (1/3)

I talked to the @BostonGlobe about blended celebrations of Christmas and Hanukkah: www.bostonglobe.com/2024/12/21/m...

Daily Willliam Stringfellow for Advent: "In the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst babel, I repeat, speak the truth. Confront the noise and verbiage and falsehood of death with truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of God. . . (1/3)

Daily William Stringfellow for Advent: "The common implication of all beings in all violence -- which is a way of expressing the doctrine of the Fall -- refutes the intricate sophistry still much much practice in the name of the Church, concerning 'just wars' for assertedly good ends . . . (1/3)

Daily William Stringfellow for Advent: "Christians realize an inherent inefficacy in classical revolution because of its reliance upon the very same moral authority as the regime or system which it threatens to overthrow and succeed -- death. . . (1/3)

Daily William Stringfellow for Advent: "In this dimension of the Resistance, the Bible became alive as a means of nurture and communication; recourse to the Bible was in itself a primary, practical, and essential tactic of resistance. . . (1/3)

Daily William Stringfellow for Advent: "The Antichrist, remember, means antihuman as much as the name means anti-God. The Antichrist is the incarnation of death in a nation, institution, or office, or other principality, an/or an image or person associated therewith. . . (1/2)

Daily William Stringfellow for Advent: "The relentlessness of multifarious babel in America has wrought a fatigue both visceral and intellectual in millions upon millions of Americans. By now truly demoralized, they suffer no conscience and they risk no action. . . (1/4)

Daily William Stringfellow for Advent: "A rudimentary claim with which the principalities confront and subvert persons is that truth in the sense of eventful and factual matter does not exist. . . The truth is usurped and displaced by a self-serving of events or fact . . . (1/2)

Daily William Stringfellow for Advent: "[Parents and college students] are often so assailed with the immediate problems of managing their mortgages and other debts, so much at the mercy of fragile, inflated system, so desperate to retain employment in their status . . . (1/3)

Daily William Stringfellow for Advent: "Whatever intrinsic moral power is embodied in a principality -- for a great corporation, profit, for example; or, for a nation, hegemony; or, for an ideology, conformity -- that is sooner or later superseded by the greater moral power of death. . . 1/3

Daily William Stringfellow for Advent: "Ethics concerns human actions in relation to the principalities and powers in the Fall, where both human beings and principalities, as well as the rest of Creation, exist under the claim that death is morally sovereign in history. 1/2

Daily William Stringfellow for Advent “The Babylon parable in the Book of Revelation ascribes death as the moral reality which rules nations and all other principalities and powers of this world . . . 1/4

Luigi Mangione is the bookend of Kyle Rittenhouse. Progressives have begun to hypothesize justifiable homicide. We will look back at this as another turn of the screw in our collective descent towards illiberalism.

Daily William Stringfellow for Advent: "In ethical decisions and in political action, in this world, a Christian is always, as it were, saying no and yes simultaneously. A Christian says no to the power of death but in the same breath he bespeaks the authority of life freed from death . . . (1/2)

Daily William Stringfellow for Advent: "In the Bible, the ethical issue becomes simply: how can a person act humanly now? . . . 1/2

The Assad regime has fallen. Prayers that what comes next is true peace and justice.