Letters: November 2018

For Faith and Union

Thank you for “Make Unions Great Again,” by Tony Campolo (September-October 2018), a wonderful article that advocates for Christians to support unions. As a full-time staff member for the teachers’ union in Los Angeles and a woman of faith, I find the bias about Christians working in unions goes both ways. My colleagues lump me with the “Trump-vangelicals” and my Christian friends view me as a union “thug.” I am neither. I’m committed to bringing about “expressions of God’s kingdom” by working toward better worker rights for my members and excellent schools for all students, not just the wealthy. I will share Campolo’s article with my colleagues, union members, and councils.

Kim McLaughlin
Burbank, California

Who Will Care?

Bless you, Jemar Tisby and Sojourners, for “The Most Powerful People in the System” (August 2018). The role that prosecutors play as the feeding tube for the prison-industrial complex has been overlooked for too long. I’m a chaplain at a homeless shelter. While accompanying the shelter’s guests to court appearances, I’ve witnessed firsthand prosecutors charging poor people with a crime more serious than the one they’re guilty of, because the prosecutors can, and who will care if one more homeless person is taken off the streets and shipped away to prison? Well, I care. Good people are being victimized to increase conviction rates and feed political ambitions. This is nothing short of human sacrifice, and it’s wrong.

Rob Cairns
Nevada City, California

Christian Indictments

Danny Duncan Collum’s recent critique of Rob Bell (“Individualism Wins,” August 2018) is weak. What appears to bother Collum most about Rob Bell is that Bell has many non-Christian fans, to which I say, “Really?” If you want someone speaking truths that only appeal to what Collum calls “orthodox” Christianity, then you will find yourself in an echo chamber. Collum’s piece reeks of the “I’m-against-Rob-Bell-because-it-makes-me-look-more-like-a-real-Christian” indictments that abound in fundamentalist Christian circles.

Brian Knox
Mauldin, South Carolina

Solidarity and Interdependence

Danny Duncan Collum’s column “Individualism Wins” is interesting. I, too, had not followed the evolution of Rob Bell’s message, and I can see Collum’s conclusion that it may be more American than Christian. As a recently retired pastor in the United Methodist Church, I am watching yet another mainline denomination—a “big, broad” institution—face the prospect of splitting. When I look around my United Methodist family, I see little diversity, yet I am unconvinced that diversity would lead us to holy “solidarity and interdependence.” Perhaps even within this institution, too many of us have clumped “into self-selected tribes of ‘people like us.’”

Deborah Rose
West Wyoming, Pennsylvania

Correction: The September-October 2018 article “Make Unions Great Again,” by Tony Campolo, stated that “81 percent of evangelicals” voted for Donald Trump. Eighty-one percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump.

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