Representatives of two black Baptist denominations, the Progressive National Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention USA, declared on Tuesday (Oct. 9) that they would stand apart from white liberals and conservatives alike while seeking to address a politically divided nation.
Rejecting the “politics of fear” they say has taken hold in this election season, the pastors assembled at the National Press Club said that race and spirituality should not be ignored as the two sides work to get out the vote.
“As the body of Christ, we do not serve as mere mascots of the liberal left, sent by patronizing paternalists to serve as the point on the head of their ideological spear,” reads a declaration released by PNBC President Timothy Stewart and the Rev. Calvin Butts, the denomination’s social justice chair.

“Nor do we set horses with those of the religious right who hide their rampant racism and hysterical hypocrisy amidst the existential ruins of a morally and theologically bankrupt spirituality.”

Clinton said on CNN, “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. That’s why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the house and/or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength. And you heard how the Republican members led by Mitch Mcconnell, the president really demeaned the confirmation process.”

As the United States Postal Service (USPS) closed on Monday for a national holiday celebrated by many municipalities as Indigenous Peoples Day, workers across the country held a day of action to protest President Donald Trump's proposal to privatize the postal service.
Under the proposal—unveiled in June as part of a 32-point plan (pdf) to significantly reorganize the federal government—USPS would "transition to a model of private management and private or shared ownership." The White House argued that "freeing USPS to more fully negotiate pay and benefits rather than prescribing participation in costly federal personnel benefit programs, and allowing it to follow private sector practices in compensation and labor relations, could further reduce costs."
Critics warn that such a transition would not only negatively impact service but also bring awful consequences for postal workers, who demonstrated on their day off in cities across the United States on Monday to tell the president that USPS is #NotForSale.

I was struck by Jim Garrison and Banafsheh Sayyad’s article last year for the Huffington Post: “Muhammad was a Feminist”....

Muhammad’s first wife, Khadijah,...... already a mother of three, and a successful merchant. With more caravans than all the other Quraysh traders put together, she led a wealthy, independent lifestyle, refusing many offers of marriage from wealthy men, and chose the penniless Muhammad for her new husband.
This was remarkable at a time when most women were treated like property and barely had any rights at all until the advent of Islam. The very fact that the Prophet of Islam was chosen by such a unique woman, and felt honoured to take her hand, is of extreme importance – the Quran was given to a man who honoured and respected the feminine more than any other man of his time. How fitting, since the Quran granted women unheard of rights, like the right to divorce and inherit property, and could have set in motion an evolving women’s emancipation if Muslims had been awake to its message. Sadly, in the centuries after Muhammad and Khadijah, the possibility of women’s emancipation was inevitably sidelined by the patriarchal establishment that hijacked Islam. In our time however, we can reconnect with this great heroine and appreciate her and the feminine strength she manifested in the way that she and Muhammad would have wished.

A progressive Catholic group is kicking off a new nun-led bus tour ahead of the midterm elections that organizers say is designed to “hold congressional Republicans accountable for their votes” on taxes and health care.
Sister Simone Campbell, a nun and lawyer who heads the Catholic social justice lobbying group Network, launched the “Nuns on the Bus Tax Justice Truth Tour” at a press conference Monday morning (Oct. 8) in Santa Monica, Calif. Organizers said the new campaign will involve 30 Catholic nuns attending 54 events in 21 states, concluding Nov. 2 outside Mar-a-Lago — President Trump’s Florida golf resort — with a “Fiesta for the Common Good.”

Activists and residents of Chicago chanted "Justice for Laquan" after a jury on Friday found a white police officer, Jason Van Dyke, guilty of second-degree murder for fatally shooting 17-year-old African-American Laquan McDonald 16 times on the evening of Oct. 20, 2014.
The Cook County jury also found Van Dyke guilty of all 16 counts of aggravated battery while finding him not guilty of official misconduct. Each aggravated battery count carries a sentence of six to 30 years, which he may be required to serve consecutively. As Van Dyke awaits sentencing, the jury's decision was praised by local activists working to eradicate police brutality.

Larycia Hawkins never questioned what she should do.
It was days after the 2015 San Bernardino shooting, in which 14 people were killed at a center for people with developmental disabilities. Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump seized upon the religion of the two shooters and declared he’d ban all Muslims from entering the country, and Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. encouraged students at his evangelical Christian school to get concealed-carry permits because “good people” with guns could “end those Muslims.”...

Hawkins wanted to send a different message.
So Hawkins — then a political science professor at Wheaton College, an evangelical school in the Chicago suburbs — posted a photo on Facebook of herself in a hijab and announced plans to wear it through the Christian season of Advent as an act of “embodied solidarity” with Muslim women.
“I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book. And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God,” she wrote.

The pushback was immediate. Within a few months, the first black, female tenured professor at Wheaton had lost her job.
Hawkins’ story is detailed in “Same God,” a documentary that premiered late last month at the LA Film Festival.
To filmmaker Linda Midgett, responses to the professor’s act revealed the polarization within both evangelical Christianity and the country as a whole.