A week ago, as I write this, we visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. It’s also known as the "Lynching Memorial," which gives a clearer idea of the emotional impact of time spent there. The main part of the memorial is a covered square area surrounding an open courtyard. Walking through the space, you are surrounded by hundreds of six-foot-long steel   [Read More …]

Faith and Money Network Trips of Perspective have taken members to countries and communities with vibrant cultures, including Haiti, India, and Bosnia. In recent years, the network has focused on domestic trips, visiting Wise County, Virginia originally in 2011 and since taking groups to experience Southern Appalachia nearly a dozen times.  Ahead of our fall 2023 trip to visit our friends   [Read More …]

I had factored in human greed and destruction, but I had not factored in the human goodness and systemic creativity that we met throughout the trip. I had not anticipated hope.  “Mountaintop removal coal mining? My heart can’t take it.” That thought kept me from going to Wise County, VA, with Faith and Money Network’s Trip of Perspective for several years.  In part, I was right.   [Read More …]

Founded in 2005, Geez magazine is a publication about social justice, art, and activism. It proudly claims that it’s "for the over-churched, out-churched, un-churched and maybe even the un-churchable." Started by Aiden Enns in Winnipeg, the magazine has been run since 2018 by a staff based in Detroit, who embrace the fierce independence of the magazine’s mission and are deeply devoted to living   [Read More …]

The members of SAMS we met were welcoming and dynamic — and also very patient in disabusing us of some ideas we may have had about the challenges of living and working in coal country. Our merry band of explorers arrived in Big Stone Gap, Virginia on October 20, 2022. Some of us had been to this far southwestern region of Virginia before and had looked forward to meeting friends from prior   [Read More …]

I chose to be a tither because I remembered that it worked for my parents, who struggled to make ends meet but first gave to God, who in fact did meet their needs on time, every time. As the last of six sons in my childhood home (though my second eldest brother died years before I was born), I wore a lot of hand-me-down clothes while growing up. This made perfect sense, since my parents   [Read More …]

I never really knew my maternal grandmother Clara. She was deep in the fog of early onset Alzheimer’s by the time I came along, although I was given Claire as a middle name in honor of her. My mother, who would have been 95 this month, told certain stories about her mom, and one lit my imagination as a child and has remained with me. My mother’s family lived in a very small town in eastern   [Read More …]

Bob Francis, a sociology professor at Whitworth University, and Yvette Schock, a Lutheran pastor and chaplain at Riverview Retirement Community, have a wide-ranging experience of shared simple living. They each lived in intentional communities as single people, and they have been thoughtful about how they think about consumerism and share experiences with other people in their lives. In 2019, the   [Read More …]

The Portland-based Jubilee Fund raised $100,000 to eliminate credit card debt for eight neighbors. The individuals who had their debts paid off then became donors, making payments to reparations efforts for five years with 0% interest. What would it look like to build equity and trust by freeing our neighbors from debt? How could we organize a community so that everyone could live with a   [Read More …]