President Joe Biden is the highest-profile and most powerful lay Catholic in American life today – but he also holds policy views that diverge from many Catholic bishops. And that is causing some problems.
The dilemma looks like this. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that abortion is the taking of a human life, no different from murder, and so grave a sin that it incurs an automatic excommunication. Yet prominent Roman Catholics in public life – including Democrats such as Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – support abortion rights. It has led to concern from some Catholic bishops that a contradictory picture of Catholic faith is being presented to the public.
William Shakespeare’s role as a religious guide is not an obvious one.
While the work of the bard, whose birthday is celebrated on April 23, has been scoured at various times over the past four centuries for coded messages about Catholicism, Puritanism or Anglicanism, the more common view is that his stunning explorations of humanity leave little space for serious reflection on divinity. Indeed, some Shakespeare scholars have gone further, suggesting that his works display an explicit atheism.
But as a scholar of theology who has published a book exploring Shakespeare’s treatment of faith, I believe the playwright’s best religious impulses are displayed neither through coded affirmations nor straightforward denials. Writing at a time of great religious polarization and upheaval, Shakespeare’s greatest pronouncements on faith are more like curious whispers – and, like whispers, they require deep listening to be heard.
The Black Church is an institution that was forged in crises. Through slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation and the civil rights era, the network of places of worship serving traditionally Black congregations has seen its fair share of traumatic events.
In 2016, the Rev. Robert Franklin, former president of Morehouse College, acknowledged as much in a speech on urban ministries: “Disruption is the question, but the radical love ethic of Jesus is the response.”
And that was before 2020 delivered the COVID-19 pandemic, the related economic crisis and the global movement for Black Lives – forcing Black churches to find new ways to worship and serve their communities.