Gender

I don’t often have enough time to watch a full-length movie or comedy special. By the time evening rolls around and the kids are in bed, the house is relatively (emphasis on relatively) tidy, garden tasks are completed, and my partner and I are sitting together on the couch, I usually have just enough energy to read a few pages of a novel before my eyelids droop. As many friends remind us, my partner and I are in that season when ‘the days are long and the years are short’. These days, the days feel particularly long.

The letter to the attorney begins, “I am Wesley Heersink's brother, Stan... It is with frustration and disappointment that I am writing this letter to you now. The letters we have written to the church leadership go unanswered...”

As soon as I read that sentence, I thought: “Leadership has to respond to an overture. Write an overture.”

A simple Google search for “main causes of food insecurity” pulls up a list of some things that one might expect. Drought. Pests. Poverty. Climate change. Conflict. Corruption. And so on.

Most people are aware that many people around the world are hungry. We see non-profits raising awareness about hunger issues, hashtags about ending hunger, and celebrities fighting for causes.

If many of us took a minute to ask ourselves why people are hungry, I’m sure we could come up with some of the answers that Google gave us. All these answers are very true.

When I signed up to attend Calvin College's Festival of Faith & Writing, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was hoping for some inspiration, some words of encouragement, some insightful tips to perhaps get me through my ongoing battles with writer’s block.

Instead I left convicted and with rearranged priorities. And I’m thankful for it.

It’s been quite the year! Thanks for reading and learning along with us, as we wrestled with faith with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other (Karl Barth).

Here are the top Do Justice articles (ranked by top pageviews) that got you thinking and acting in 2017: 

A reckoning. A cleansing. A settling of accounts.

Journalists and commentators have been at pains over the last several months to find new words to describe the ongoing revelations of sexual assaults, harassments, and misconducts by powerful men in a variety of industries and sectors. Politicians, news anchors, film executives, actors, comedians and more have seen their careers come to an abrupt halt as victims courageously stand up and come forward with unsettling stories of severe abuse of power.

Dear Tanya, 
In 2009, you became a number that I wasn't counting. 
Your sister, Vanessa, was counting.
The hours, days and the years of this silence.
I heard during the hearing. 
I heard your story. 
I heard your human-ness. 
You are not dead to her.
You are not a number.
I'm counting. We're counting.
With Love, 
Priya

On Do Justice, we’re all about creating space.

Space to ask hard questions. Space to wrestle with the implications of the Church’s call to do justice in the places where we live, today. Space to struggle with what it means to be the Body of Christ, where the eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you” and where the foot cannot say to the head, “I don’t need you.”

For the past few weeks, two alarming and powerful words have filled my social media feed. Using the hashtag #MeToo, women have been breaking the silence, bravely sharing their stories and experiences of sexual harassment and assault. Since news of the countless abuse allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein surfaced, this hashtag has spread around the world. The story moved beyond one man and became a platform for conversation around abuse of power, acts of aggression, and violence against women.

Pornography is a giant in our land. How do we bring it down?