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The Non-Violent Conscience

The Rev. Dr. Kenneth Carter (UMC)

I blogged recently on this website about "Abortion and Torture". These two issues seem to engage differing political constituencies, and yet I have sensed a consistent fundamental value at the heart of each: a preference for life in the midst of death. The murder of a physician who performed abortions within a Lutheran sanctuary last week, allegedly by an advocate for the "pro-life" position, has only reinforced my own need to ask the question again: can we see the abortion issue not as the condemnation of those who perform or experience them, but as a context for the inclusion of the unborn? And certainly, in the aftermath of the murder, an additional question comes to the surface: "Can we not see both the pro-life and anti-torture positions as being fundamentally non-violent in theory and in practice?"

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Safe in the Sanctuary

The Rev. Stephen McKinney-Whitaker (PCUSA)

The church I currently serve is in the process of developing a long-range plan for the church. One of the initial steps in this process is a survey to members of the congregation. My very first day on the job I sat in on a meeting of the committee that was discussing the survey and noticed a set of questions at the very beginning of the survey that focused on whether people felt ‘safe’ in the church.

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