Red Letter Christians

When Women Change the Story: Centering women’s voices isn’t optional, it’s essential

RLC Editor — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 10:00:11 +0000

I didn’t decide to study women’s history until I was already in graduate school. My initial plan was to study religious and intellectual history—the history that really mattered, or so I thought. But my very first semester, one of my professors, Gail Bederman, introduced me to the study of women and gender, and I was hooked. This was the history that really mattered, I decided. I had grown up in…

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Grace After Institutional Betrayal

RLC Editor — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 10:00:38 +0000

Several years ago, I sat with a volunteer after a difficult disaster response who said something I have never forgotten. “They kept telling us to care for people,” she said quietly. “But when we started breaking down ourselves, the organization mostly wanted us to stay functional.” She did not sound angry when she said it. Just tired. Deeply tired. The kind of exhaustion that comes not…

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The Odyssey and Caring for the Stranger

RLC Editor — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 10:00:44 +0000

Christopher Nolan’s long-anticipated adaptation of the Greek epic The Odyssey has finally released to the public, quickly becoming one of his most successful films to date and driving cinemas to add middle-of-the-night showings. There’s been no shortage of things for media to talk about, whether it was Nolan’s technical achievement in producing the first feature-length film shot entirely on IMAX…

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2025 Peacemaker Summit Clip: Lisa Sharon Harper – Genesis and Shalom

RLC Editor — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 10:00:21 +0000

Please enjoy this clip from last year’s Peacemaker Summit and be sure to register for the upcoming Peacemaker Summit. Transcript: Shane: And now you’re going to hear from Lisa Sharon Harper who’s written a bunch of books. We’ve got some of them here available. Her latest book, Fortune, and The Very Good Gospels, another book of hers, great theologian, activist. We’ve gotten in a…

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The Hidden Loneliness of Reliable People

RLC Editor — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:00:17 +0000

There are people in almost every community who quietly hold everything together. They organize meals after funerals. They answer late-night phone calls. They stay calm in hospital rooms. They volunteer for difficult assignments nobody else wants. They show up after tornadoes, fires, floods, and deaths. They keep churches functioning, families stable, organizations moving…

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When Courage and Cowardice Caught a Train

RLC Editor — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 10:00:37 +0000

Parables often arrive disguised as ordinary moments. A seed. A child. A widow’s coin. A stranger on the side of the road. This weekend, another parable emerged in a photo taken on a Washington, D.C. Metro train. The image revealed a cluster of men clothed alike, their faces hidden beneath white masks. And among them, one Black woman, sitting quietly, unmasked. I saw the picture in the…

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Releasing the Mystery of Christ

RLC Editor — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 10:00:17 +0000

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.” — Carl Jung The topic of Deconstruction first came across my feeds a couple of decades ago. At the time, I had already been exploring the various Christian denominations in which I had worked. The label of “deconstructed” never felt right to me: It didn’t…

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Do Not Be Afraid of Him: The Courage to Speak to Power

RLC Editor — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:00:37 +0000

There is a sentence buried in one of the odder stories in the Old Testament that, once seen, refuses to leave you alone. The story is in 2 Kings 1, and it is a passage we tend to hurry past, partly because it embarrasses our modern sensibilities and partly because we do not know what to do with it. Fire falls from heaven. Soldiers are consumed. A prophet sits on a hilltop and will not come down.

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“Befriending as the Antidote to Othering”, excerpted from “The Way of Befriending”

RLC Editor — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 10:00:13 +0000

OTHERING IN THE NAME OF ALLYSHIP In the pursuit of justice, inclusion, and belonging, allyship often emerges as a go-to framework for supporting marginalized communities. While the intention is noble—standing in solidarity with those on the margins in their journey toward liberation—it often carries with it a subtle undercurrent of paternalism or white saviorism. This can manifest as a lack of…

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The Blessing of the Weeds

RLC Editor — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 10:00:27 +0000

A subversive approach to a subversive parable [From Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43] On the surface, the story reads quite clearly—maybe a little too clearly. If you’re a regular church attendee or peruser of Scripture, you’ve likely encountered this parable many times. What we typically see is a seemingly evident emphasis on the righteous-wicked divide that forms the tension of many of Jesus’…

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