Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

“It's just amazing to see how it doesn't matter what race you are, anything like that; it's just everybody has the same needs, so we all pitched in and just started helping out,” says Jared Stockstill, administrator at Bethany Church in Baton Rouge. “So I just feel like it's really gone a long ways toward bringing us together, the community back together, and everybody's pitching in and helping.”

“If I can just be a small part of a revolution in business where it ceases to be just about making money but it’s about solving problems and service, that would be enough to keep myself going,” says Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments.

“In life there is so much temptation,” says boxing coach Mike Mosley. “There’s so much bad out there that it’s hard to know that you’re doing the right thing. I know 100 percent of the time when I’m in the gym is the right thing, and there’s a freedom in that.”

"I always want to tell people that Ferguson erupted at a time when it had the eyes of the world on it, much like Birmingham, Alabama, which is where I’m from—when people saw from all over the country, all over the world what racial oppression looks like,” says UCC Pastor Traci Blackmon, a Black Lives Matter leader. “That happened in Ferguson, too. But sometimes we get so caught up in that particular place that we don’t recognize that Ferguson is everywhere."

"As a Shia, I see myself as a Muslim first. Yes, I am Shia, I’m very proud to be Shia, but when I consider myself and someone asks me what religion I am, I don’t say I’m Shia, I say I’m Muslim. And I think that’s how I identify, and I’ve always identified as that," says Nazeen Zaidi.

"I’ll be praying for them, I’ll be chanting for them," says nine-year-old Jalue Dorje when asked what he will do for people as the reincarnation of a 16th-century lama.

To raise awareness of the global refugee crisis, the Olympic Committee is allowing displaced people to compete together under a single flag. The team includes refugees from Syria and Africa.

“This most traditional of women is a very modern saint,” says Rev. James Martin, SJ, author of "My Life with the Saints." “She is a saint for doubters and seekers and people who wonder where God is in their lives.”

“We see increasingly the secularization of our culture, and the church is not really impacting the culture as it once did,” says Ken Ham, CEO of the Ark Encounter. “So what can we do to make an impact in the world? Well, why not build a Christian-themed attraction that the world is going to take notice of for the purpose of getting people talking about the Bible?”

“The income and wealth disparity in our nation that's tearing us apart, the anger, the fear, the judgmentalness, the racism that we've seen in our country—it’s tearing holes in the fabric of our society,” says Sister Simone Campbell, leader of Network Lobby’s Nuns on the Bus project. “Can we step together into a future, as opposed to pulling apart for partisan gain?”

“By all rights we shouldn’t really even be here, you know. We should back out, tear out the roads, and leave it,” says Jim Smith, a Yellowstone visitor. “But at the same time humanity needs this. I think the most important thing I’ve learned from other people is that they feel at peace here.”

“I’m very interested in seeing some basic values return to the country. I care very deeply about life, I care deeply about marriage, I care deeply about religious liberty, I care deeply about issues of fiscal solvency,” says Reverend Jim Garlow, pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego. “The national debt is a biblical-moral issue to me, thou shalt not steal from future generations.”

“We are looking at the popularity of Facebook Live, Snapchat and Periscope, so churches want to be there where they can reach people,” says DJ Chuang, consultant and leading expert on social media, the Internet and the church.

“We need to deal with the unconscious beliefs that we have about each other,” says Lisa Sharon Harper, author of The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can be Made Right. “We can’t restructure our society and actually begin to heal what race broke until we understand how our society structures have created biases in our own minds.”

“We had the exact same training – two nights a week, one weekend a month, summer internships. I wrote every paper he wrote,” says Maureen Garvey, who along with her husband took classes to prepare for the diaconate. “The only thing that was different was the day of ordination, I had tears in my eyes when all the guys were called up and they left their wives there sitting in the pews.”