Danté Stewart seeks revelation in Black experience

Over the last 18 months, as we continue to navigate tragedy after tragedy, many Catholics are discerning what it means to have grace in moments full of violence and suffering.

In her latest book, Saving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered, And Learn To Coexist With People Who Drive You Nuts, Kirsten Powers offers a perspective into what it means to have grace, which the author describes as the "original self care."

In Saving Grace, Powers writes that grace requires a refusal "to reduce people to the sum of their worst actions." Grace "is first and foremost a matter of the heart. It's an orientation toward the world and other people that keeps us from going down the road of judgment and labeling which in the end harms us more than anybody else."

Read an excerpt of her book here. 

History of white evangelical racism also implicates Catholics, scholar says

Carol Kuruvilla, a former religion reporter at HuffPost, interviewed scholar Anthea Butler about her work and latest book, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics Of Morality In America. When asked why white evangelical racism concerns Catholics, Butler told Kuruvilla: "It should matter to American Catholics because many of them have bought into it. They can't see what they're supposed to be doing as faithful Catholics. This has distorted American Catholicism."

Read the rest of the interview here.

Christian writer Danté Stewart seeks revelation in Black experience

Religion News Service's Emily McFarlan Miller talked with Danté Stewart about his first book, Shoutin' In the Fire: An American Epistle. "I wrote the book for Black people. I wanted to write a book that would be incredibly hard to put in the 'antiracist' category insofar as I didn't want this book to be received as something that can teach white people about Black life in hopes that white people can get better," Stewart told Miller.

He added that "reading Black literature, looking at Black life honestly, expanded my theological imagination but also my ability to write a narrative that introduced and opened up and embraced and explored the Black world, which I believe God has something to say about."

Read the rest of their conversation here.