Tackling the Scourge of Christian Nationalism

The notion of Christian Nationalism reflects a "willful disregard" for the First Amendment, said one area educator.(Lee Edwin Coursey | The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs)

In recent decades, Christian Nationalism’s warped ideas have begun to attract the attention of scholars and teachers at universities and seminaries here in the Heartland. They’re trying to understand both its appeal and its dangers and to give students the tools necessary to make their own judgments about whether it’s good old basic Americanism or,…

Read More

‘Bountiful’ Jackson County Community Exemplifies Religious Freedom

he stained glass in the church sanctuary at Bountiful came from a closed Presbyterian church in Iowa. (Bill Tammeus | Flatland)

The practice of changing one’s religious affiliation goes back more than a century in the family of W. Kevin Romer. He’s now presiding bishop of the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a resident of what the church calls “Bountiful: A New Jerusalem Community” in eastern Jackson County. Romer’s father was one…

Read More

Downtown KC Renaissance Seeds Congregations

The Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Downtown Kansas City doesn’t run a school but instead operates Morning Glory Ministries, which provides food and other help for needy people in the city’s center.

As civic, commercial and residential life has blossomed in Kansas City’s Downtown in recent years, religious life has grown there, too. But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy for newly planted Downtown faith communities to flourish. “It’s been tougher in one sense than we thought it would be,” says the Rev. Troy Campbell, pastor of…

Read More

Taking ‘Bold Political Stances’ To Fight Injustices

Although the Greater Kansas City Pastors Association is still being formed, its leaders decided it was important to call a recent press conference and denounce efforts by Missouri state legislators to gerrymander the congressional district that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II now represents. (Reprinted with permission from The Kansas City Star)

It didn’t take long for the new Greater Kansas City Pastors Association to spring into action. As The Kansas City Star reported in early September, just one “day after thousands of people descended on the Missouri Capitol to demonstrate their outrage over congressional maps aimed at minimizing Kansas City’s voting power,” the new pastors’ group…

Read More

9/11 Pain Continues as Justice System Plods Along

The only remains of Karleton Fyfe found after the 9/11 terrorist attacks — part of a thigh bone — are buried in North Carolina, near where he grew up. (Contributed)

Every email I get from Danielle Reddan, director of the Victim Witness Assistance Program in the Office of the Chief Prosecutor of Military Commissions, starts the same way: “Dear Survivors & Families.” More than two decades after the murder of my nephew, a passenger on the first plane that Osama bin Laden’s misguided theological thugs…

Read More