How Freedom Has Been Redefined to Deny Human Rights

July 26, 2023 by Miguel De La Torre

“Freee-domm!!!” At the top of his lungs, the so-called “QAnon Shaman” – also known as Jacob Chansley – walked the hall of Congress and breached the Senate chamber with his fellow “patriots” during the January 6 insurrection crying for freedom. In the name of this…

Are We Living in the “Neo-Dark Ages”?

July 6, 2023 by Miguel De La Torre

Historians are adept at naming spans of time. We have the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the Atomic Age, for example. I wonder how future generations will make sense of these times in which we live, in which many barely subsist. No doubt…

Why It’s Time to Shake the Dust From Our Feet and Move On

June 23, 2023 by Miguel De La Torre

The Southern Baptist Convention met in New Orleans last week and declared women lacked the necessary chromosome to pastor a church. Bless their hearts. Some male allies rushed to post pithy memes expressing allyship to demonstrate their wokeness. Others sought to raise the consciousness of…

A Troubling Past and An Equally Troubling Present

June 1, 2023 by Miguel De La Torre

A meme started to appear on my social media toward the end of April. It simply read, “May she rot in Hell.” It took me a few minutes to realize it was referring to Carolyn Bryant, the grocery store proprietor who falsely accused a 14-year-old…

Is Jesus Ambiguous on Violence?

May 3, 2023 by Miguel De La Torre

Apologists seeking to save God from God are quick to remind us that the God of the Hebrew Bible was a God of justice in order to explain the violence found there. They contrast these texts with the God of the Christian Testament – seen…

Why I Refuse to Save God from God

May 2, 2023 by Miguel De La Torre

The Hebrew Bible introduces a tribal deity fighting Canaanite deities for land supremacy, instructing God’s people to do likewise. God’s chosen, liberated from Egypt’s bondage, are led to a Promised Land, which inconveniently, is already occupied. The solution? Portray them as evildoers existing outside God’s…

Will Humanity Heed the Warnings and Rise to the Occasion?

April 24, 2023 by Miguel De La Torre

Eurocentric thought is rooted in this religious context: that man (specifically cis-gendered males) is the pinnacle of creation. Psalm 8:4-9 informs this kind of thought and belief: “What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for…

What if Crucifixion Is Not Salvific?

April 5, 2023 by Miguel De La Torre

What do you do when the hymns we sing reinforce a theology which is, and continues to be, detrimental to the marginalized, those who liberationist theologian Jon Sobrino called “the Crucified People”? “Would you be free from the burden of sin? There’s power in the…

What Are the Correct Pronouns for God?

March 8, 2023 by Miguel De La Torre

A theological debate is taking place within the Church of England as theologians discuss if they should refer to God in gender-neutral terms. If God is not a “he,” should our language reflect this complexity? Should the proper theologically based pronouns for God therefore be “they, them,…

Chickens Coming Home to Roost

March 2, 2023 by Miguel De La Torre

There have been seventy-seven mass shootings in the U.S. in the first 45 days of 2023. Collectively, 109 were killed and 273 were wounded while sitting in a university classroom, going to high school, eating at fast-food restaurants, attending a concert, dancing at a club, relaxing at…