The American experience of slavery was marked by racism, torture, rape and other forms of violence. The question of how to present it to students is being debated across the country, most recently in the State of Florida. Since slaves and slavery are a part of the biblical story, our next class will focus on how slavery should be understood and presented in the Christian community.  If you wish to start thinking about our topic in advance, here is the lesson for Sunday, November 19.   Blacks 'Developed Skills' Thanks to Enslavement, Says Florida Board of Education  In the News  In July, the Florida Board of Education approved new state social studies standards, including norms for American history (including African American history), civics, government, and economics. Included in the instructions for middle school students is the assertion that "slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit." Some people criticized the...

Dear Class Member,  An article in The Atlantic explains that personalities are not unchangeable -- that they are more like "a set of dials we can modulate than a hand of cards we've been dealt" (to use a metaphor from the article).  The focus of the article, however, is that some of these changes take place in our older age -- a time when we're likely to think our personalities are set in stone. So we are using our next class on October 22 to explore this topic and consider what it means for people of faith.  The Personalities of Some Change as We Age  In the News  An article this month in The Atlantic tells of recent studies that challenge the long-held assumption that in our senior years, we are so stuck in our ways that we are unlikely to change. The new studies, however, indicate that as we reach and continue into our 60s, our personality may undergo some changes.  While some of these changes may be attributed to issues of an aging brain, such as cognit...

An article from 2021 led us to think about the differences between being nice (that word is not in the Bible) and being kind (the Bible uses that word many places) and, more importantly, to think about what all this suggests for us as we live as followers of Jesus. So that will be the topic of our next class on October 8.  If you wish to start thinking about our topic in advance, here is the lesson.  'Nice' Is Not a Biblical Word; 'Kindness' Is  In the News  Editor's note: Our topic today was suggested by a recent opinion piece that referred disparagingly to Christians as "nice people." But the article, in our opinion, was more of a polemic than a helpful discussion starter. So we have chosen to address the topic suggested by the headline rather than detail the article's point of view.  The American humorist Mark Twain once wisecracked that the church is "a place where a nice, respectable person stands in front of other nice, respectable people an...