by Stephen Phelps | Jan 27, 2013 | racism, sermon 2013, social justice, spiritual community, spiritual practice
At two o’clock today, over seven hundred people will gather here at Riverside Church to see the film “The Central Park 5.” This film proclaims release to the captives. It tells the terribly untold story of how in 1989, the City of New York—D.A., police, people, media, mayor, more—convicted five boys of a violent and bloody rape without any evidence except their own deceitfully forced confessions; and how, as grown men, the captives were released and finally exonerated in 2002
by Stephen Phelps | Oct 28, 2012 | racism, sermon 2012, social justice
We close the series today thinking about racism. As a people, we can barely talk about it, yet it touches virtually everything that has gone wrong in America. The love of war; the love of power by and for the few; the hatred of what is different or foreign; the hatred of real education, real food, real wages, real medicine, real women, and so much more we have considered during these last four months . . .
by Stephen Phelps | Oct 21, 2012 | criminal justice, mass incarceratiom, racism, sermon 2012
We are incarceration nation, apparently so full of hatred for certain people that, like crazed animals, we severely damage our whole tribe with this giant prison industry that fosters the very corrupt and violent behaviors it purports to control. Like a dragon waiting inside a cave to devour the next generation of young black and brown men, we do not see that our mouth-parts are fastened on our own body. Yet hardly any political leader of any stature or color, and hardly any religious leaders, are ever heard to say of our (very) criminal justice system that we have a problem—all of us . . .
by Stephen Phelps | Mar 25, 2012 | Lent, racism, sermon 2012, social justice, suffering, trial
But we are going there, to a place so far from the mere troubles of institution and organization which have vexed us. Hungering after our own experience of God, we will make the last appeal on behalf of the littlest and lost, the deceived and the dead, and thus we shall meet God anew on holy ground in the faith of the future.
by Stephen Phelps | Mar 4, 2012 | America, criminal justice, democracy, Lent, mass incarceratiom, race, racism, sermon 2012, social justice, suffering
Don’t you sometimes feel that religion, the way we do it, is no match for the way the world does wrong? Every day in this city, police stop and frisk–violate–two thousand mostly black and brown men doing nothing wrong–and what has church to say to that sorrow? A few weeks ago, an eighteen year old Bronx boy was shot and killed by a policeman in the bathroom of his own home. He was unarmed, scared, dumping something in the toilet bowl. What is old time religion for that boy, that family, for any citizen whose heart cries out at the dawning of another day of evil?
by Stephen Phelps | Feb 12, 2012 | race, racism, sermon 2012, suffering, trial
or many Sundays to come, we are going to tune our hearts to hear through the book of Job a word of promise and power for the church of God, for this church, and for any people bereft of what belongs to them; any people kept from sharing in what is good by powers that bind them. When we are done, you will never forget God’s word to you through Job.
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