Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe’s Ash Wednesday letter to the church; Episcopal News Service, February 18, 2026

Episcopal News Service; Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe’s Ash Wednesday letter to the church

"Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. With that great commandment, he is teaching us that we are all one, all part of God’s chosen people, and when we hate and revile each other, we are actually destroying ourselves. Theologian Howard Thurman, whose thinking helped shape the Civil Rights movement, put it like this in “Jesus and the Disinherited”: “The logic of the development of hatred is death to the spirit and disintegration of ethical and moral values.”"

Our History Is Our Protection; American Libraries, November 1, 2023

 Tracie D. Hall, American Libraries; Our History Is Our Protection

"Before his own death, another civil rights crusader, US Rep. John Lewis, presciently asserted that in his estimation, access to the internet (and information more broadly) would be the civil rights issue of the 21st century.

Lewis’s words demonstrate uncanny foresight. In this moment where disinformation and information disparity have become normalized, many libraries are forced to fight defunding when they should rightfully be advocating for increased funding to provide the growing educational and social services they are being asked to take on.

We are indeed in the midst of a civil rights movement. Libraries are called to face this moment just as we have in times before, with an indefatigable commitment to information access and the unequivocal belief that right of access applies to everyone.

That legacy, that history, is our protection."