Sorrow and Repentance in Digital 3D

Remembering the life, work, and message of Martin Luther King Jr. -- preacher, peacemaker, prophet.

A new Time magazine article explores the budding promise of racial diversity at evangelical megachurches that were once bastions of homogeneity. Can Willow Creek pastor Bill Hybels take his congregation all the way? An interview with Time religion writer David Van Biema.

Fifty Christian leaders from this Nebraska city traveled to the Deep South on a mission of racial healing and reconciliation. Now, they're working together to pass on the lessons learned from their life-changing Justice Journey.

When black and white church leaders from this deceptively pleasant Nebraska city recognized the need for racial healing in their community, they got on a bus together and traveled south to visit landmarks of the civil rights movement. On their "Justice Journey," they explored the complex emotions that still divide us as a nation -- and the divine grace needed for true reconciliation.

If race, as many agree, is a social construct, why are Christians so good at holding on to it as a way to define, describe, and divide ourselves?

"Integration" and "diversity" do not express God's purpose for reconciliation deeply enough. What we need is a fresh paradigm that declares our new culture in Christ.

The state of Mississippi has a new civil and human rights curriculum for its public school students. It's the first of its kind in the nation. Not bad for a state that Martin Luther King Jr. once famously said was "sweltering with the heat of injustice."

A special forum featuring William Pannell, Cheryl Sanders, Glenn Loury, Curtiss DeYoung, Art Lucero, Vashti Murphy McKenzie, and Tali Hairston.

People wanted to make the Henry Louis Gates Jr. arrest and subsequent brouhaha a parable about a lot of things -- the prevalence of racial profiling, Ivy League elitism, disrespect for law enforcement, racism, classism, black rage, white privilege. The episode may have had shades of all those things. But the truth is always more complicated and multilayered than the pre-wrapped boxes in which we're inclined to deposit racial events. And in the end, nobody's mind really seemed to change about any of the issues at stake. Even Gates and Sergeant Crowley, the arresting officer, said they would simply "agree to disagree" after their much-heralded reunion at President Obama's so-called "Beer Summit."

Are we living in the golden age of racial debates? Every week seems to bring some new wrinkle in the national conversation about race, class, and ethnicity. And with the emergence of social media, we can now engage in these conversations with ever-greater frequency and intensity.

If spiritual renewal breaks out in a forest and no American Christians are around to witness it, does that mean it never happened?

Pardon the paraphrase of the old philosophical riddle, but this probably sums up the thinking of many in the evangelical community in years past. But the times are a-changin'. According to Soong-Chan Rah, author of The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity (IVP), if the American church is going to be a relevant participant in the future of global Christianity, it had better recognize the church's new multicultural reality. And the future is now.