I try to say this prayer immediately after midnight on New Year’s to set my intention for the coming year. It’s from the Book of Common Prayer (1979).

makes it all the more clear that ICE will need to be abolished

Posted on the Feast of the Holy Innocents

It must be mind boggling to tech bros that there are people in the world who want to do something creative and beautiful with their own minds and hands even if it takes work because that is the point of human existence 🤷🏻‍♀️

Research shows “Christian nation” language signals: 1. 👑 Desire for traditional social hierarchies 2. 🚧 Commitment to strong ethno-racial boundaries 3. 💰 Idealizing free-market capitalism 4. 🔒 Preference for authoritarian social control 5. 🌀 Embrace of populism, victimhood & conspiracies

“Duluth is a place that welcomes immigrants,” member Sara Cedars said. “Duluth is a place where we all belong, where we are all community.” www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/local/t...

Not that it will but the willingness of Americans to obey is a very funny contrast with our self-image and should probably prompt some reflection bsky.app/profile/jonf...

What it's like to see community activists in Louisiana stand up to a Border Patrol raid, from @noturtlesoup17.bsky.social

Naturally @leahstokes.bsky.social is on it:

After multiple ICE raids in the Northland this year, the group seeks to document enforcement activities and advocate for the rights of immigrants.

🚨ICE SIGHTING IN DULUTH!🚨 West Duluth/Denfeld neighborhood around 20 minutes ago (1:30 pm). Agents are in a black Chevy Tahoe with Minnesota plates (example image below). They were putting on masks when they were observed by someone, so they took off - however they may return to the area.

In the event that tomorrow’s speech is a declaration of further aggression against Venezuela, you should respond in a way that will let you hold your head high years from now, even if it is difficult in the present.

Things are pretty bad right now. One way to make them better: run for office! A group called @leadlocally.bsky.social has put together a 6-part training for folks who want to run for office with a climate focus. Walks through all the steps. Super helpful. Don't boo, run!

People will ask how/why I left the Religious Right, and UD has described it well right here: There is no relief. From deep within the space, it was apparent almost no one was happy, and even the successes tasted like sawdust. You know in your guts the goals suck, but you know others won’t work too.

For the second year in a row, the wealth gains for the 100 richest Americans exceeded what ALL American households spent on groceries combined. ~$995B for billionaires vs ~$775B in total grocery spending. We have an oligarchy and inequality problem masquerading as an affordability crisis.

The number of places I love that are being destroyed by climate change starches my spine to fight the fossil-fuel-world-destroyers. It's an emergency and in a just world we'd seize fossil fuel assets now to fund electrification, repair, and reparations.

In lectures on natural burial, I often contrast the gritty reality of natural burial w/ what I describe as a curated "Martha Stewart approach"... but now that's apparently going to be a thing www.the-express.com/entertainmen...

AI Is Not Inevitable join AAUP for a conversation with educators, educator unions, and the Collaborative Research Center for Resilience zoom.us/webinar/regi...

The question of whether one act of murder broke rules of war - when there is no war, when dozens of ppl have already been executed w/o trial, when there is attempt to overthrow a sovereign govt by force - is starting to feel less like an investigation than an act of imperial legitimation

Things seem bleak, and that's been the way of things for a few years now. Which is exactly the feeling that led me to write this book - that now has its very own webpage where you can preorder it! (guaranteed to help with feelings of impending doom) press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

You ever just sit down and realize that the rise of 21st century fascism is capital's answer to climate change?

On this day in 1883: Standard Time is adopted across the United States, to simplify travel and communications, while keeping clocks within a half hour of solar time. #OTD

From this minister's op-ed: "People wanting to experience God are more likely to meet the Divine trying to shut down the Broadview, Illinois, ICE facility than we ever were in church...God does not live in our houses of worship, but...with those who are bearing the brunt of cruelty in this moment."

I’m out here at Broadview ICE detention center where a group of inter-faith leaders just got arrested trying to deliver pastoral care to those locked up inside. Peg Haar from Grace Lutheran Church in Evanston says both her son and her pastor were arrested just now.

On principle I simply don’t endorse wishing violence on people, especially as a public joke. For a host of reasons including how wishing violence on people changes the *wisher*. On this point I think people should be careful for *spiritual* reasons, whether or not it’s simply expedient.

Happy 3,177th anniversary of the first recorded workers’ strike ✊

Why clergy should risk assault to protest ICE religionnews.com/2025/11/13/w...

“Federal authorities told demonstrators Friday that there would be ‘no more prayer’ in front of or inside the Broadview ICE facility, in a move that mystified local leaders and raised legal questions.” blockclubchicago.org/2025/11/07/f...

What advice would you give to younger people to help them prepare for getting older? Here’s what adults ages 65 and older had to say. 🧓🧵👇 Full analysis: www.pewresearch.org/...

To put this in scale, Elon Musk's salary from Tesla alone could fund the SNAP program for the entire country into 2034.

Ellis rules that the Trump administration impermissibly prevented the free exercise of religion, in violation of the First Amendment. Those engaged in prayer have been shot, without warning, with pepper balls and tear gas, Ellis says.

Whoops

This article has a stubborn individualist frame but the references to religious community seem relevant for faith-based community organizers. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/n...

“I’m not in any way an effective, good, or faithful Anglican.... But I’m interested in the idea that [my local church] provides something which, at least in contemporary capitalism, seems very hard to find elsewhere.” —Zadie Smith

ICE detained a Virginia mom while she was driving her 16yo daughter to school bc she couldn’t recall her SS#. “The agent got flustered and lunged at her,” said her daughter. ICE arrested her even after she showed proof of legal status. “I want this video out there because I want my mother home.”

Zohran Mamdani's first paying gig in politics was for an ELCA pastor? (swoon) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khader_...

Great list for church book discussion. I’d add @angeladenker.bsky.social’s books, and the interfaith perspective of Valarie Kaur’s “See No Stranger” which we’re currently reading

“Green burials have been around since the dawn of man. Putting a moratorium on green burials is like putting a moratorium on the wheel or stone tools,” said Connell. www.northernnewsnow.com/2025/10/24/g...

Muslim British Journalist Sami Hamdi has been abducted by ICE. He was already in the U.S. legally on a visa, but was abducted while attempting to fly from San Francisco to Florida on a domestic flight. Laura Loomer is taking credit for getting him abducted due to his criticism of Israel and the US.

Update: The Chicago clergy letter decrying ICE's actions and voicing a willingness on the part of clergy to put their "bodies on the line" to protest ICE has reached 250 signatures — and now includes multiple evangelical pastors/leaders of evangelical institutions in the area.

Churches showing an AI Charlie Kirk telling congregants, through an artificial voice, not to let evil win is a new level of instrumentalizing the dead. When Trump goes, I think we’re going to see the same thing. Visions and AI slop will abound. Prophecies and messages from beyond the grave.

Okay so a I have a true little story about how the episcopal church funded the local BPP chapter’s ambulance program and all I’m saying is, Episcopalians: they may surprise you!

This is FANTASTIC. Thank you, @lutzfernandez.bsky.social, for doing this work and so generously sharing it

I’ve taken seminarians on tours of this cemetery. My wife worked in the hospital where they took the ICE victims. #AbolishICE

ICYMI (I did) here’s a really sobering recounting of former Strib community columnist @angeladenker.bsky.social who got her last piece (on Charlie Kirk & right-wing violence) 86’d by editors before they cut her loose: angeladenker.substack.com/p/the-column...

Chanting, "we are the body of Christ! The body of Christ will be free!" This crowd has swelled considerably. Few hundred here now.

~40% of the ENTIRE corn crop of the US is used to make ethanol. This gets blended with gasoline to power well under 10% of our vehicle miles. If we converted 100% of our vehicles to EVs installing solar on a small fraction of the land this corn is grown on would power them all.