While doing some research for a course in political theologies and mindful of racial tensions in recent days, I came across an article by Bishop Desmond Tutu, “Without Forgiveness There Really Is No Future.” He was reflecting on his visit to Rwanda a year after the 1994 massacre of thousands of members of the Tutsi…

A harmonious choir, at least at the level of the national media, continues to sing that all kinds of discriminatory behaviors still plague us and separate us. Separation and disharmony among people hinders image-flourishing for all because flourishing can occur only in and with individuals as they, in turn, are contributing in numerous ways to…

In my previous reflection,  Jubilee, Temptation, and Growth in Awareness (1), I entertained the thought that a part of the rationale for the Jubilee year was to provide a test in order to enhance the awareness of God’s people of what God already knew about them. The desire to maintain power through maintenance of material…

People simply do not divest themselves of power and perceived security. There is power and seeming security in having an abundance materially. In my recent explorations, I have written of the Jubilee of forgiveness. I am making a small shift here. Whether it is a restoration of land and forgiveness of debt, or forgiveness extended…

In my last attempt at some needed soul searching, I reflected on Dr. King’s challenge for oppressed people to learn to forgive. I shared how uneasy this thought made me feel because of my problematic tendency to never forget a slight, much less a clear demonstrations of disrespect. It is hard to let go of…

Recently I participated in a panel discussion that was entitled “Race and the Church.” I was asked to contribute a historical perspective on the matter by sharing some information from the life and thought of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This I attempted to do though knowing that I was anything but a Dr. King…

The grace of God facilitated the provision of the Jubilee year (described in Lev 25). The pull of sin toward greed and the accumulation of wealth and power made Jubilee a necessity for such grace. The law itself could afford some degree of accountability, but sin could even infest the administration of law resulting in…

Jubilee shows God’s awareness of sin’s devastation both at the individual and the community’s structural levels. Forgiveness and restoration are required because of the potential to harmfully accumulate wealth and property leading to an even greater insidious danger, forgetting that everything is ultimately under the ownership of God. I have begun exploring the theological and economic…

Through the generous support of the Kern Family Foundation’s “Faith, Work, and Economics” program, I have been working on a project called “The Jubilee Summit.” The name originates from the same categories that provide the framework and topical treatments of my present Sapientia series, namely, “God, Image-Flourishing, and Jubilee.” This past weekend, January 23–24, a group gathered at…