If God’s name is love, then God compels us to resist the fall to sinful violence by pushing back with muscular resolve against the social structures that confine our capacity to care. A universalist God for a tragic era is not a gauzy, hymn-singing force of personal devotion that draws us...

When we say, "Save the rainforest," we don’t mean that we cease to honor the mighty cedars or the reaching pines. We mean that one particular piece of a deeply sacred whole is more at risk than others, and that this risk, this threat, is worthy of our very bravest actions. So it is with black...