Why the Church Cares

Just after a bombshell hit the immigrant community – the pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona – I had the chance to sit down with Rev. Ricardo Tavarez for a cup of coffee. We talked about immigration, hospitality, racism, ministry, and Arpaio. Check out our conversation to see why, a month later, this decision still has deep implications for the immigrant community and our country. Here are some highlights of our conversation.

“You, Lord, see the trouble of the afflicted; you consider their grief and take it in hand.” (Psalm 10:14)   

Comedians, TV shows, and movies refer to online pornography casually as a normal part of everyday life. As porn educator and researcher Gail Dines says, “Porn is accessible, anonymous, and affordable.” And so most men in North American churches, as well as an increasing number of women and youth, are regular or occasional porn users.  

One of the dismaying trends within evangelical Protestantism in America is the growing divide between those evangelicals who emphasize the church’s responsibility to proclaim a gospel of individual conversion and those who emphasize the church’s responsibility to advocate for social justice. It is a trend that featured prominently at this summer’s synod of the Christian Reformed Church.

I want to tell you about friends of mine, Harouna and Marie Issaka. He is from the Hausa people, and she is both Hausa and Mori, ethnicities of their native Niger. They have followed Jesus through situations that I can only imagine, and I learn more about what it means to follow Jesus through them.

John Calvin does not always receive the best press outside of Reformed circles. He is often portrayed as an archconservative and an ideological father of capitalism. Most recently, the topic of Calvinism returned to mainstream debate when Betsy DeVos was nominated Secretary of Education by Donald Trump.

It just so happens that as Congress considers dismantling Medicaid as we know it – as well as an end to the law that requires health insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions – I am preparing to explore the theme of “Good News for the Poor” with my seminary ethics class. One of the things I do with my students is to walk through the New Testament to show them just how continuously and emphatically Christ and the apostles call Christians to take responsibility for the poor.

When ISIS kidnapped and murdered 21 men in early 2015, all but one of them were Coptic Christians from Egypt. The 21st man was Mathew Ayairga, a citizen of Chad, who, upon seeing the faith of the Christian men as they faced death declared, “Their God is my God.” His choice to lay down his life in the name of Christ continues to inspire Middle Eastern Christians more than two years later as they suffer the effects of violence, opp

I began wrestling with this question last week Sunday when I read about two Christian families from Syria who, after fourteen years of working to attain permission to come to America, were told upon arriving at the airport that they either needed to leave the country or lose their visas. As CNN reported that morning:

When we meet someone for the first time, we often identify ourselves by our name and where we come from. Over the years I have reflected on this simple yet profound question: “Where is home?” This is a challenging question for me since I have experienced a very transitional childhood and adult life where I have moved to many different places and lived in communities with many different people.