By the time I decided to see James Cameron’s Avatar, I had already heard enough about the film to be unsure whether it would be worth the time, effort and petroleum to see it. People’s comments about the film ranged from praise for its groundbreaking 3D animation; to criticism of its racist portrayal of the [...]

Glen Beck refuses to answer what the “white culture” is that Obama apparently hates. In reaction to Obama’s comments that the white police officer who had arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. had acted “stupidly,” Glenn Beck stated that Obama has a “deep-seated hatred for white culture“–an accusation that (unsurprisingly) went unchallenged and unexamined [...]

Recently, I reflected on the connection between race, racism and the nation state and the ways in which it has deepened my understanding of anarchism and anti-racism for an essay in Religious Anarchisms: New Perspectives. There I argue that critiquing and challenging state power demands that we confront and dismantle racism and the false racial [...]

This fall will mark the release of a book project that brings together twelve people who hold both anarchism and religious faith as significant parts of their identities. Religious Anarchism: New Perspectives features anarchists from Christian, Buddhist, Muslim and Daoist traditions whose essays “provide an outline history of some of the leading currents of religious [...]

A new book has just been released that engages the work of John Howard Yoder: Power and Practices: Engaging the Work of John Howard Yoder, edited by Jeremy Bergen and Anthony Siegrist. Scottdale, PA.: Herald Press, 2009. Herald Press describes the book this way: A new generation engages the theology of John Howard Yoder. These [...]

If anyone has doubted the power of the police in American society, today their power was front and center. President Obama was asked a question about the unjust arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. during a prime-time news conference earlier this week and commented that he thought the police had acted stupidly in arresting a [...]

The latest high profile case demonstrating institutional racism among police just broke today with the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard Professor of African and African American Research, was arrested by Boston officers. The police received a call that somebody was breaking into a home in an upscale Cambridge, Mass. neighborhood. Since it is [...]