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Cheryl Townsend Gilkes

Cheryl Townsend Gilkes is an author at Religion News Service.

All Stories by Cheryl Townsend Gilkes

We’ll pray for Uvalde. But as gun deaths mount, there’s too much to pray for.

By Cheryl Townsend Gilkes — May 26, 2022
(RNS) — We’ll pray for understanding of God’s grace, but also for an end to a culture of destructiveness.

Praying and cussing at the trial by ordeal of Ketanji Brown Jackson

By Cheryl Townsend Gilkes — March 31, 2022
(RNS) — The inspiration and outrage of an accomplished Black woman's confirmation hearings

What we won’t hear on Martin Luther King Day, and what we need to hear

By Cheryl Townsend Gilkes — January 17, 2022
(RNS) — Our memory of King’s ‘Dream’ speech has been reduced to sanitized sound bites.

Remembering Jan. 6 on its ‘anniversary’ is not enough

By Cheryl Townsend Gilkes — January 6, 2022
(RNS) — The frightening realities exposed on that day should have our constant attention.

Will the Black church continue to sing ‘I Believe I Can Fly’? 

By Cheryl Townsend Gilkes — September 30, 2021
(RNS) — From its beginnings, gospel music has had a strained relationship with commercial interests and secular artists.

The meaning of Tulsa

By Cheryl Townsend Gilkes — May 28, 2021
(RNS) — Unspoken and unspeakable, the Greenwood Massacre is a painful bulwark in the broken soul of America. 

The Chauvin verdict is an island of justice in a river of Black pain

By Cheryl Townsend Gilkes — April 21, 2021
(RNS) — We need to begin to heal from all the horrors of our histories and heritages.

How Kamala Harris delivers on 150 years of Black women’s political history

By Cheryl Townsend Gilkes — August 13, 2020
(RNS) — The Democrats' presumptive vice presidential nominee rose out of a network of women’s organizations and movements, churches and loving communities by which Black women have transformed themselves since Reconstruction.

NFL’s ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ plan will profane ‘Black national anthem’

By Cheryl Townsend Gilkes — July 8, 2020
(RNS) — African Americans’ most sacred hymn shouldn’t be desecrated to support the NFL’s attempts to apologize for its misunderstanding of players’ protests against racism.

Kneeling to venerate hate: The meaning of a police killing in Minnesota

By Cheryl Townsend Gilkes — May 27, 2020
(RNS) — When we see a white police officer kneeling on a black body, we are witnessing an act of worship honoring the demons of racism.

Red Summer, Trump Summer and the politics of hate

By Cheryl Townsend Gilkes — August 16, 2019
(RNS) — Calling Trump 'un-American' exhibits an ignorance of the violent forces — conquest, enslavement, annexation and immigration — that made America.
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