I'm a Tennessee boy. I grew up in East Tennessee most of my life, then came up to Philly to go to college and fell in love with this city, and particularly, my neighborhood on the north side of Philadelphia.

We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.

It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream and struggle.

Biological family is too small of a vision. Patriotism is far too myopic. A love for our own relatives and a love for the people of our own country are not bad things, but our love does not stop at the border.

To be nonpartisan doesn't mean we're nonpolitical.

It's impossible to separate our contemporary practice of the death penalty from our history around race and slavery, and specifically, lynching. Where lynchings were happening 100 years ago is where executions are happening today. And that's a haunting and eerie thing.

I would love to see the Church on the right side of history.