Christine A. Scheller

"Bittersweet" is how Joshua Canada describes his memories of working to improve the experience of students of color at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, when he was a student there.

As vice president of the Multiethnic Student Association at Taylor, Canada successfully petitioned the school to restructure its ethnic recruiter...

In her groundbreaking new book, Black Fire, theologian Estrelda Y. Alexander shines a light on the African American roots of Pentecostalism. Here, she speaks to UrbanFaith News & Religion editor Christine A. Scheller about the miracles and scandals of Black Pentecostal faith.

Dr. Estrelda Y. Alexander grew up...

Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow" challenges us to confront the shame of our criminal justice system in the pursuit of real justice.

For anyone who has read Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexander's deeply disturbing book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of...

Tom Davis is not only regional editor of Jersey Shore Patch and an adjunct professor of journalism at Rutgers University, he is author of the poignant new memoir, A Legacy of Madness: Recovering My Family from Generations of Mental Illness.

Davis, a Jersey Shore...

How gratitude, a change of scenery and sharing stories have helped me face the Thanksgiving holiday after my son's suicide.

Confronting Memories

My son Gabriel was a Thanksgiving baby. His birthday didn't fall on the actual holiday until his second birthday, but it does every four years, including the year...

As news and religion editor for UrbanFaith.com, I went looking for diverse voices at Occupy Wall Street, and found the 9/11 memorial a better metaphor for "too big to fail."

What I hadn't seen written about -- until last weekend -- in the many stories about...

A major new film presents an unsanitized portrayal of Christian conversion, but it also poses challenging questions about "redemptive violence" and I was on the red carpet at the New York premiere for UrbanFaith.com to find answers to those questions.

Machine Gun Preacher, a new film...

We're already rationing health care, Fordham University ethicist Charles C. Camosy argues in his book Too Expensive to Treat? Finitude, Tragedy, and the Neonatal ICU, so why not reconsider the resources expended on premature babies?

Camosy was a principal organizer of Open Hearts,...

Michael Tait is lead singer of the Grammy nominated group The Newsboys. Best known as a member of the pioneering Christian rock/rap group dc Talk, Tait's career in the Christian music industry has been defined by stretching the boundaries of art, faith and culture. As I...

In an interview that was published earlier this week at UrbanFaith.com, New Jersey's former Secretary of State talked about the debt-ceiling deal, its potential impact on African Americans, and the tension between government and personal responsibility.

Rev. Dr. DeForest B. Soaries Jr. is pastor of First...

Life is good, despite what the end times prophets will tell you. Yes, there are wars and rumors of wars and natural disasters that we virtually experience on a level the apostle John couldn't have imagined when he wrote the Book of Revelation. But it's a beautiful world, and God...

When I talked to Spence Smith, a founding member of the five-time Grammy-nominated band Big Tent Revival, he had just come back from a run, which was appropriate given that Smith is a triathlete who took up the sport after a divorce left him feeling like...

Are Christian donors less likely to write checks to minority-run ministries? Anecdotal evidence from the world of nonprofit fundraising suggests there's a race-based disparity in giving.

Trust is vital to any relationship, but when it comes to funding African American-led urban ministries, it can mean the difference between success and...

On Friday, as the world was rightly absorbed with the epic tragedy in Japan, I was reporting on a local tragedy for Patch.com. A young man, Matthew C. Blum, 32, of Forked River, New Jersey, had collapsed and died after leaving a recreational hockey game because he didn't...

If the poor will always be with us, as Jesus said, then why don't we always see them? Learning from "the least of these" with author and urban ministry leader Arloa Sutter.

Two stories stand out in Arloa Sutter's new book, The Invisible: What the Church Can Do...

I'm a big supporter of suicide prevention efforts. I sometimes get the feeling, however, that there is a subtle misunderstanding of religious conservatives in some prevention communication. Kids Health, for example, has a really good article on its website about teen suicide. The section on risk factors says:

As a Christian, a pro-lifer and a journalist, I'm ambivalent about the Planned Parenthood hidden camera sting that was perpetrated here in central New Jersey and reported sporadically by news outlets last week. The California based anti-abortion activist group Live Action sent two actors...

I'm alive today because God used an urban ministry to bring my parents together, and to lead our family to a more dynamic faith.

My bio at UrbanFaith says that I'm a product of urban ministry. Readers might infer from...

Raising one half-African son and one of mixed European descent posed both ordinary and unique parenting challenges for my husband and me. What was best for one child was not necessarily best for the other. Often, competing concerns led to less than ideal decisions. This is true for all parents,...

It took me all weekend to get used to hearing the name Gabrielle Giffords reported in the tragic context of the Tucson shootings. Not only was the event horrific, but I also couldn't shake the similarity of the congresswoman's name to that of my late son Gabriel Gifford Scheller. The...