In September 2017, I discovered a major discrepancy in social justice spaces as a white pastor. I came back from a human rights delegation with Community Peacemaker Teams in Iraqi Kurdistan. This was during a referendum that would’ve given the Kurds their own nation-state. It was voted on and passed [...]Read More
Locked in Solidarity 2024: Restorative Justice
Locked in Solidarity, CCDA’s awareness & action week on mass incarceration, was February 4-11, 2024. We were able to gather with a contingent of our members who helpfully informed us of what's happening on the ground and what we should highlight. The theme this year [...]Read More
The Realities of Restorative Justice
For the last several years, Healing Communities PA partnered with the Metropolitan Christian Council of Philadelphia on the Restorative Cities Initiative™️, a grassroots “porch front to city hall” model of bringing restorative practices to every part of community life, particularly in BIPOC [...]Read More
Restoring Community Belonging
Those Leaving Prison and Those In Churches Need Each Other To HealPrison reentry efforts can too often—unintentionally—keep men and women returning from prison isolated from the rest of their communities. With specialized reentry nonprofits, paid staff, transitional housing, and other important [...]Read More
Justice Through Healing
Equal Justice USA today is a much different organization than it was more than 20 years ago at our founding. Then we were focused sharply on ending the death penalty through state campaigns, and we’ve succeeded on that front. As important as those wins are, what we learned from those campaigns [...]Read More
Look! I am Doing a New Thing, Don’t You Perceive It?
Wellington Heights Community Church was birthed out of our family's living room as a group gathered to consider what it looks like to love God, neighbor, and neighborhood. We structured our time with prayer and discussion on CCDA Immerse, discerning what it may look like to embody the CCD [...]Read More
Faith and Economic Cooperation
I think my life may have been built around cooperative economic activity on just about every level. This way of life led to flourishing based on everyone having a voice and ownership. I don’t believe my mom would have been able to raise us alone without our community and a place where we [...]Read More
Listening to the Community: Affirming Dignity with a Posture of Humility
“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him. The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.” Mark 10:51 (NIV)Some people may have considered it obvious that the blind man wanted to see, but Jesus didn’t assume what the man wanted. He asked the man what he wanted. Even though Jesus, as [...]Read More