Author name: Brian Allain

Curiosity

From “I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times” by Mónica Guzmán Curiosity is a serious thing, and it’s past time we get serious about it. What we learn relies first and foremost on how open we are to learning, what room we make in our …

Curiosity Read More »

Greed and exploitation always result in mutually assured destruction

From “Filled to Be Emptied: The Path to Liberation for Privileged People” by Brandan Robertson – Westminster John Knox Press Destruction is the result of any long-term exploitation of one’s privilege – greed and selfishness always backfire in the end. White privilege has created systems and structures that are unable to stand as justice and …

Greed and exploitation always result in mutually assured destruction Read More »

National Parks

From “Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future” by Patty Krawec – Broadleaf Books The US National Park system has been displacing Indigenous people for more than one hundred years. Just like governments use the language of safety, conservationists use the language of environmentalism to push aside the original …

National Parks Read More »

Kauai became a clean energy leader. Its secret? A publicly owned grid

“Hawaii constitutes an unusually crisp comparison between for-profit and nonprofit utilities: all the islands besides Kauai get power from investor-owned, for-profit Hawaiian Electric and its subsidiaries. Hawaiian Electric serves 95% of Hawaii’s population to KIUC’s 5%, but they operate in similar climates, across similar terrain and within the same state policy regime. Average retail electricity …

Kauai became a clean energy leader. Its secret? A publicly owned grid Read More »

We don’t keep the social and economic background of Jesus’ ministry in our minds

From “Scapegoats: The Gospel Through the Eyes of Victims” by Jennifer Garcia Bashaw – Fortress Press Roman-occupied Judea was a place of suffering for most of its inhabitants. The Roman imperial world operated as a coercive hierarchy, a militarized agrarian system in which the government owned and controlled all the land they conquered. The conquered …

We don’t keep the social and economic background of Jesus’ ministry in our minds Read More »

Persistent Pizza

By Patricia Raybon Ibrahim Songne, at age 12, immigrated to Italy from West Africa, not knowing Italian, fighting a stutter, and facing anti-immigrant putdowns. Determined to overcome, he later opened a pizza shop, winning over naysayers with a pizza cafe that, in 2022, was listed among the Top 50 pizzerias in the world! https://odb.org/2023/11/06/persistent-pizza

Democratic decline in the United States: Strategic manipulation of elections

Distinct from “voter fraud,” which is almost non-existent in the United States, election manipulation includes election procedures that make it harder to vote or that reduce the opposing party’s representation. These maneuvers have become more common and extreme in recent years—but only in some states. Vanessa Williamson outlines which states have experienced democratic erosion and …

Democratic decline in the United States: Strategic manipulation of elections Read More »

The Allotment Act

From “The Land is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery” by Sarah Augustine From invasion to occupation The final chapter in the repossession of Yakama lands occurred in 1887, when the Allotment Act was established as federal law. Popularly known as the Dawes Act, this federal policy remanded ownership of tribal …

The Allotment Act Read More »