Amy Frykholm

In a recent interview with the Century, Michelle Alexander, the civil rights lawyer and author of The New Jim Crow, wonders about the stigma in many churches attached to people who have been recently released from prisons. “The deep irony,” she says,” is that the very folks who ought to be the most sensitive to the demonization of the ‘despised,’ the prisoners, have been complicit and silent.” But the kinds of conversations that Alexander’s book seems to demand are very difficult to have--in churches and outside them.

Is there an anti-birth control shift taking place among evangelicals? If so, do their arguments mirror Catholic thought?

It is difficult to know what to say in response to Mona Eltahawy’s explosive article on the experience of women in Middle Eastern countries. She writes about a level of institutionalized brutality that demands that readers pay attention. At the same time, she doesn’t say anything new, nothing that wasn’t already made too vividly clear during the Arab Spring.

"The U.S has created a vast legal system for racial and social control, unprecedented in world history. Yet we claim to be colorblind."

Last week, a friend handed me a novel off his shelf and said simply, “Read it.” I did, almost immediately, and I was captivated.

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In a recent interview for the Century, African Methodist Episcopal bishop Vashti McKenzie spoke to Joan Harrell about her use of social media in ministry as well as her vision for a church focused on social justice. You can hear Harrell’s complete interview with McKenzie on her podcast, Empowering Voices.

This spring, the most interesting question for me about the Occupy movement isn't whether it will find focus or whether it will revive or whether it will make a difference in the election. What I want to pay attention to is the ongoing and generative outpouring of creative politics. The Occupy movement is rich in unedited signs. In my mind, creative placarding will forever be its legacy.

“There is the danger of protecting ourselves from God by striving to be passive. The ‘I’ is very active in its attempt to surrender.”

Chicago-based artist Michael Rakowitz is opening a food-truck this week, a date set to coincide with the ninth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War. Through his project Enemy Kitchen, Rakowitz has been using Iraqi food and culture to break down cultural barriers for several years. He is launching the food truck as part of the Smart Museum of Art's new exhibit called "Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art."

"I met an activist who said, 'You should go back to Virginia and start to organize.' It took me about three months to send out the first e-mail."

A comment on my recent rush-hour-communion post mentioned the Episcopal Church's recent practice of Ashes to Go, a form of "liturgical evangelism" that has brought congregations out into streets, bus stations, train stations and subway stations to dispense ashes on Ash Wednesday. When I started to read about Ashes to Go, I had many of the same questions that I brought to early-morning communion. At first I thought, ashes to go? Whatever happened to liturgy and community? Aren't we just feeding into our culture's unwillingness to stop for anything at anytime? Can ashes really be offered like a fast food item at a take out window? But once again, in the midst of these restless and protesting thoughts, another reality has stepped in.

Until I read Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon, I would not have said that I was a connoisseur of the world of O.

In January, the Century published my interview with Kerry Cronin, who teaches at Boston College and gives students an unusual assignment: go out on a date. Since then we've asked some college students to respond to Cronin. Do they find her dating advice off-putting? Valuable? Impractical? Strange?

When John Wesley sent missionaries to America, he said simply, "Offer them Christ." That's what the Chicago Temple sees itself doing, no questions asked.

"I once asked a panel of students about relationships—were they seeing anyone? Did they feel like they had to break up before graduation? They looked at me as if I had been speaking Greek."

A friend sent me an e-mail before yesterday's Steelers-Broncos playoff game. He titled it, "The Steelers vs. God. Want to have brunch?"

Every year, people gather in my hometown for an almost unthinkable challenge. During the Leadville Trail 100, athletes run 100 miles. The race is metaphorically fascinating.

"If the bishop admits to knowing that I was gay, then she gets in trouble. The system is set up so that truth will not be told."

In philosophy and practice, spiritual direction suggests that the individual self is insufficient as a locus of meaning. No one can "do" spiritual direction alone.