Lenten Reading Guide: Mary Stella Simpson

Posted on April 19, 2019 by PLT Staff

Lysaught’s brilliant and moving chapter on Sr. Mary Stella provides a fitting benediction and charge for this collection and for the Lenten season.

“When Sr. Mary Stella arrived, 59 percent of all the babies born in Bolivar County, Mississippi, were dying every year….But as the story of Shiphrah and Puah attests, God works grace through those who defy the pharaohs of the world. The Israelites multiplied and grew very numerous. Sr. Mary Stella, in her six years in Mound Bayou, never lost a baby.”

Join the conversation in our special Lenten Can I Get a Witness? Facebook group.

Lenten Reading Guide: Daniel Berrigan

Posted on April 15, 2019 by sheatuttle

David Dark writes on Father Daniel Berrigan, priest, poet, and activist:

“On May 17, 1968, following much prayer, [Daniel and Philip Berrigan] walked into a draft board in Catonsville, Maryand, with seven other activists and removed papers with the names of young men scheduled to be conscripted. They then took the draft files outside and burned them with homemade napalm, this liturgy concocted according to the specifications of another: a US Army Special Forces manual. ‘Some property,’ they argued referring to the paperwork, ‘has no right to exist.'”

Join the conversation in our special Lenten Can I Get a Witness? Facebook group.

Lenten Reading Guide: Richard Twiss

Posted on April 11, 2019 by PLT Staff

Soong-Chan Rah writes on his friend, mentor, and colleague Richard Twiss:

“To a largely evangelical audience [Richard Twiss] introduced the narrative of Native American Christianity, presenting his perspective with humor as he challenged US Christian captivity to white supremacy: ‘And the Bible says when you come…to Christ, you become a new creation. All things pass away and all things become white. Amen'” (265).

Join the conversation in our special Lenten Can I Get a Witness? Facebook group.

Lenten Reading Guide: Lucy Randolph Mason

Posted on April 9, 2019 by PLT Staff

Susan M. Glisson and Charles H. Tucker write on Lucy Randolph Mason:

“There are no accounts of the reaction of the union reps who waited for the CIO organizer at the train depot when the ‘roving ambassador’ for the CIO stepped down onto the platform. Most likely, they expected the fearless CIO organizer to be a man, tall and broad shouldered with big hands scarred by work and knuckles deformed from a dozen fights on docks and loading platforms. Most likely they were still looking for him when a slight, bespectacled, fifty-five-year-old white woman carefully made her way down the metal steps and stepped lightly onto the platform. The woman was physically small, with fine, white hair. Lucy Randolph Mason had arrived.”

Join the conversation in our special Lenten Can I Get a Witness? Facebook group.

Lenten Reading Guide: Mahalia Jackson

Posted on April 4, 2019 by PLT Staff

Ralph Eubanks writes on Mahalia Jackson:

“Later, seated near King as he took the stage [at the March on Washington], Jackson continued her witness. As King stood at the podium, she encouraged him to speak: ‘Tell them about the dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream!'”

Join the conversation in our special Lenten Can I Get a Witness? Facebook group.

Lenten Reading Guide: Becca Stevens

Posted on April 2, 2019 by PLT Staff

Becca Stevens writes on William Stringfellow:

“A life of faithful dissent comes at a cost and doesn’t secure power. Even so, Stringfellow believed it allowed him something better: the radical freedom of prophetic witness and the true integrity of the gospel.”

Join the conversation in our special Lenten Can I Get a Witness? Facebook group.

Lenten Reading Guide: John A. Ryan

Posted on March 29, 2019 by PLT Staff

“Where should the priest be if not in the midst of this movement, restraining the destructionist, encouraging the true reformer, and applying the ethics of the Gospel everywhere?” (162).

Author Heather A. Warren shares stories of John A. Ryan, father (Fr.!) of the living wage.

Join the conversation in our special Lenten Can I Get a Witness? Facebook group.

Lenten Reading Guide: Dorothy Day

Posted on March 25, 2019 by PLT Staff

“I truly love sweet clover in God and thank him” (151).

We’re spending the first half of this week with Dorothy Day and author Carlene Bauer. This chapter explores the conflict of flesh and spirit and how Day found relief from that conflict in the sacraments and through the beauty she saw everywhere in the world.

Join the conversation in our special Lenten Can I Get a Witness? Facebook group.

Lenten Reading Guide: Ella Baker

Posted on March 21, 2019 by PLT Staff

On our Lenten journey through “Can I Get a #Witness?”, we are spending the next few days accompanied by writer Nichole M. Flores and “the words and witness of Miss Ella Josephine Baker, a magisterial authority of the civil rights movement and a witness to true human freedom.”

Join the conversation in our special Lenten Can I Get a Witness? Facebook group.

Lenten Reading Guide: Howard Kester

Posted on March 18, 2019 by PLT Staff

“These cockeyed people who go about talking of love and good-will in the midst of all this oppression and hell make me pretty tired,” Kester said. “We won’t love people into the kingdom, we’ve got to bust this damn society to hell before love can find a place in it.”

We are grateful to be spending the next few days with Howard Kester through the writing of Peter Slade.

Join the conversation in our special Lenten Can I Get a Witness? Facebook group.

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