Beyond Belief
Missouri Exoneree Using Ministry To Help Other Freed Prisoners
While he spent some 24 years in Missouri prisons, Darryl Burton — wrongfully convicted of capital murder — wrote letters to everyone he could think of. From presidents to governors to Hollywood stars. Eventually he wrote to Jesus but hid it from prison guards, he told me, believing that if they found it they’d think…
‘Feminine Energy’ Infusing Faiths
Well before this #MeToo era of unmasked sexual misconduct — with its appalling revelation that an admitted sexual predator can be elected president — faith communities began to recognize that they have been complicit in the sin of misogyny. Today that recognition is turning into constructive action as people of faith across the nation, including…
Righting A World Turned Upside Down
When Mindy Corporon turned 45 in August 2013, life was good. Really good. She was chief executive officer of Boyer Corporon Wealth Management, the business she co-founded in 2007. She was happily married with two great kids. Her parents lived nearby and were terrific grandparents. When she turned 50 a few weeks ago, almost nothing…
Covenant Presbyterian Church Steps It Up In Kansas City’s Urban Core
One day last year Berta Washington wasn’t feeling well. So she went for a blood pressure check at Covenant Health and Wellness Center near 60th Street and Swope Parkway in Kansas City, Missouri. It was 86-over-69. “Me being a black female,” she told me, “that was heart attack time.” She quickly went to her doctor…
Court Experience Exposes Anti-Islam Sham
In 2012, Kansas passed a law forbidding courts in the state from making any ruling based on foreign law. Critics widely — and accurately — viewed it as the product of a campaign by anti-Islam bigots who were hyperventilating about Shari’a, sometimes called Islamic canonical law. Those bigots spread the alarm that Shari’a would replace…
Bet You Didn’t Know ‘Amazing’ Religious Archive is So Close To KC
You may be surprised to learn that the first King James Version of the Bible, published in 1611, came in “he” and “she” editions. No, one wasn’t for males and one for females. Rather, in the book of Ruth, one translation said “he went into the city” in verse 15 of chapter three, and one…
Historic Site Gets Some Comic Relief
As attendance at religious services declines nationwide, houses of worship are getting repurposed, including an old brick church just east of 199th and Metcalf in southern Johnson County, on four-block-long Park Street. Calvin Coolidge is loving it back to life. No, not that Coolidge. Rather, his distant cousin, the Kansas City singer and comic. When…
Singers Extend Range Beyond Their Own Faith Tradition
Elizabeth Birger is Jewish, but she is also a professional musician with a love for all kinds of religious works, which is how she ended up singing with a Christian church choir in Wichita some years back. At one point there she was asked to prepare kids to sing in an upcoming worship service. The…
For Openly Gay Clergy, the Goal Is To Keep the Momentum
The Rev. Donna Simon says being a female member of the clergy sometimes is tougher than being a gay member. And Rabbi Javier Cattapan says his professional difficulties have more to do with being an immigrant from Argentina with an accent than with being gay. Those are signs of the welcome reality that many religious…
You’ll Find Clergy In All Sorts Of Places Around Kansas City
Keith Brown is a Protestant pastor who works in an elementary charter school, not a church. Jonathan Rudnick is a rabbi who doesn’t work in a synagogue but as a “community rabbi.” And Sulaiman Z. Salaam Jr. is an imam at a small mosque, but to earn a living, he operates a franchise restaurant at…