Over the last few months, I have participated in protests with my pastoral colleagues at the Broadview ICE facility in Illinois. I have joined them because I believe strongly that the actions of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) have crossed a line between enforcing laws and committing sanctioned civil rights violations. The sacrifice of civil liberties constitutes a critical yield point in our democracy.

Ancient Slavery and its New Testament Contexts edited by Dr. Christy Cobb and Dr. Katherine Shaner is a compilation of different scholars who are experts in the field of slavery in the ancient world. I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Cobb and Dr. Shaner about this new work and its implications, not just for understanding slavery in the New Testament, but also slavery in the modern world.

With the refugee crisis in Gaza escalating, I wanted to share a short fiction story I wrote in 2016 called City of Thorns.