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Home›Traditions›Progressive/Social Justice

Progressive/Social Justice Illustrations

Reading scripture through liberation, equality, and advocacy for the marginalized.

Key question: “How does this text speak to issues of justice, equality, and the liberation of the oppressed?”

25,724 sermon illustrations through the Progressive/Social Justice lens

Sermon Illustration

The Neural Anatomy of Courage

In 2010, neuroscientist Dr. Yadin Dudai and his team at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel conducted a remarkable study on fear and courage....

Universalcourage

248 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Hobbit Who Found His Purpose

In the opening pages of J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Hobbit*, Bilbo Baggins is perfectly comfortable. He lives in a cozy hole in the ground, eats six...

Universalpurpose

236 words

Sermon Illustration

William Tyndale and the Power of a Forbidden Book

In 1535, William Tyndale sat in a cold Belgian prison cell, awaiting execution for a single crime: translating the Bible into English. Church authorities had...

Romans 1:16Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Letters Bach Left on Every Page

For nearly three decades, Johann Sebastian Bach served as the music director at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. He composed cantatas for Sunday services, trained...

Universalpurpose

237 words

Movie Analogy

The Courage to Stand in the Gap

In *The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers*, there is a moment that still makes my throat tighten. The fortress of Helm's Deep is...

Universalcourage

234 words

Sermon Illustration

Fanny Crosby's Hymn Written in the Dark

When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a quack doctor's poultice destroyed her sight forever. She would never see her mother's face, never watch a...

Psalm 25:1-10Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Membership We Were Made For

In Wendell Berry's novel *Hannah Coulter*, the title character looks back on life in the small farming community of Port William, Kentucky. She describes what...

Universalcommunity

226 words

Sermon Illustration

The Gift You Never Wanted

Dr. Paul Brand spent decades treating leprosy patients in Vellore, India, and he made a discovery that changed medicine. Leprosy, he found, does not cause...

Universalpurpose

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Law That Bones Already Know

In 1892, German surgeon Julius Wolff published a discovery that changed orthopedic medicine forever. Wolff's Law states that bone remodels itself in response to the...

Universalfaith

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Day the Ceiling Blazed With Color

For nearly five centuries, visitors to the Sistine Chapel tilted their heads back and squinted at Michelangelo's frescoes through a veil of candle soot, incense...

Hebrews 1:1-4Universal

221 words

Sermon Illustration

The Courage That Begins Already Beaten

In Harper Lee's *To Kill a Mockingbird*, young Jem Finch despises the cantankerous Mrs. Dubose, who hurls insults at him from her porch every afternoon....

Universalcourage

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Four-Day Wait in the ICU

When Marcus Rivera's wife collapsed at a grocery store in El Paso, the doctors told him the brain bleed was catastrophic. For four days, Marcus...

John 11:1-45Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

Stronger Where It Broke

In 1892, German anatomist Julius Wolff described a principle that still guides orthopedic medicine: bone remodels itself in response to the forces placed upon it....

Universalrestoration

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The Riptide at Pensacola Beach

Every summer, lifeguards along the Gulf Coast at Pensacola Beach, Florida, pull dozens of swimmers from riptides — narrow channels of water rushing seaward at...

Exodus 14:13-14Universal

238 words

Movie Analogy

The List That Cost Everything

In Steven Spielberg's *Schindler's List*, there is a moment near the end of the war that reveals what sacrifice truly looks like. Oskar Schindler, a...

Universalsacrifice

241 words

Sermon Illustration

A Star Above Mordor

In J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Return of the King*, there is a moment that has quietly sustained readers for generations. Sam Gamgee is deep in the...

Universalhope

236 words

Movie Analogy

The Man Who Nearly Threw It All Away

In Frank Capra's *It's a Wonderful Life*, George Bailey stands on a bridge in the falling snow, convinced the world would be better off without...

Universalpurpose

260 words

Sermon Illustration

The Frog That Thaws Back to Life

Every autumn in the forests of northern Canada, the wood frog does something that should be impossible. As temperatures plunge, its body freezes solid. No...

Universalfreedom

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Wound That Only Opens From the Inside

In 2001, psychophysiologist Dr. Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet conducted a landmark study at Hope College that revealed something pastors have long suspected. She asked participants to...

Universalforgiveness

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Molecular Machinery of Mending

In 2015, Swedish scientist Tomas Lindahl shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a discovery that reshaped our understanding of life at its smallest scale....

Universalforgiveness

261 words

Sermon Illustration

The Reaching Hand

In the most famous panel of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michelangelo painted something theologians have marveled at for five centuries. In *The Creation of Adam*,...

Universaltrust

245 words

Movie Analogy

The Man Who Walked Unarmed

In Clint Eastwood's *Gran Torino*, Walt Kowalski is a bitter Korean War veteran who has spent his whole life building walls. He sits on his...

Universalsacrifice

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Brain That Rewires Itself

In 2004, neuroscientist Dr. Sara Lazar at Harvard Medical School published groundbreaking research showing that meditation and sustained mental practice physically alter the structure of...

Universalforgiveness

239 words

Movie Analogy

The Gold Pin He Wished He'd Given Away

In the closing moments of Schindler's List, Oskar Schindler stands surrounded by the eleven hundred Jewish workers he rescued from the Holocaust. They present him...

Universalsacrifice

214 words