Red Letter Christians

This summer on our family vacation to Jamaica, I saw a fig tree for the first time. They are large trees with a broad canopy and leaves over a foot in diameter, perfect for a little shade on a hot day. I learned that some species of fig trees actually live up to 300 years! That’s a lot of years of figs. I thought about that fig tree this past Sunday in church when we read an ...

I am a big fan of Mary— as in the mother of God. I’m not unique. After all, much of this world is devoted to Mary, whether their devotion is an admiration or a full-fledged rosary habit. For this Protestant ex-evangelical from Texas, my attachment to the mother of Jesus began the first time I dressed as her and held a baby doll for the church photographer in my preschool Sund...

In many ways I’m grateful I’m an American. There are many opportunities, freedoms, and comforts that are afforded to me because I am. Though I have a sense of gratitude for the coun­try of which I am a citizen, I must also speak to the fact that it is not all good. Many American Christians believe that America is God’s nation. As scholar Lanta Davis puts it, this belief trans...

Editor’s Note: Previously published on Religion News Service on October 9, 2026. Soldiers hold a candlelight vigil at Fort Hood, Texas, Friday, Nov. 6, 2009, after a mass shooting event that killed 13 people at Fort Hood. (AP Photo/LM Otero) (RNS) — Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is joining evangelical faith leaders and…

To live “Black to the Future” is to honor those who saw from a distance and still moved. Hebrews 11 opens with a declaration, not a suggestion: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” We often hear that and think of faith as blind belief. As trust without proof. My womanist Afrofuturist and African-centered interpretive lenses see so...