By Joseph Dyer

When I was asked to contribute to The Interfaith Observer, I felt tasked with making a resounding declaration about what was required to foster belonging. Originally, I wanted to write about insecurity and how we must work to overcome it to find belonging in our communities, homes, and selves…

By James Falzone

The Duke William pub in the village of Stourbridge, England, a 35-minute train ride west of Birmingham, is an Edwardian-era structure located on the high street next to a chip shop. It is a quintessential “local,” where you might meet a friend for a pint or bring your kids for meat pies when you don’t feel like cooking…

By Sheena Foster

When I first began to think about the prompt, The Courage to Belong, I must admit I was perplexed because my first thought was, don’t we already belong? We are human, a “custodial species” (Yunkaporta, 2020, p. 51), and as the late great Nikki Giovanni importantly observed, “we’re Earthlings”

By Dr. Ellen Kimbrough Alexandrakis

Texas has been a battleground over religion in public schools for decades. In 2009, the State Board of Education (SBOE) rewrote its science standards and fought over how, or if, to teach evolution. When scientists urged the board to provide more definitive evidence of evolution in the teaching standards…

by Sheena Foster

In Washington, D.C., the snow comes down quietly at first. It hushes the city. It blankets the sharp edges: the curb cuts, the cracked sidewalks, the marble steps of institutions that were never designed for all of us…

by Phyllis Curott J.D. Rev. H.Ps.

“First they came for the Communists… then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” These words, written by Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller after the Second World War, are not just an act of contrition…

by Amelio Collins 

 The world held its breath in 2018 marked by intensifying climate reports, rising global temperatures, and a growing sense that time was running out...