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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

Poetry

Hail! Childish Slave Of Social Rules

Childish slaves of social rules You had yourselves a hand in making! How I could shake your faith, ye fools, If but I thought it worth the shaking.

Universal

Robert Louis Stevenson

321 words

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Poetry

The Drowned Lover

faint are her limbs, and her footstep is weary, Yet far must the desolate wanderer roam; Though the tempest is stern, and the mountain is dreary, She must quit at deep midnight her pitiless home.

Universal

Percy Bysshe Shelley

198 words

Poetry

Daylight and Moonlight

In broad daylight, and at noon, Yesterday I saw the moon Sailing high, but faint and white, As a schoolboy's paper kite. In broad daylight, yesterday, I read a poet's mystic lay; And it seemed to me at most As a phantom, or a ghost.

Universal

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Short90 words

Poetry

Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been

How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December's bareness everywhere!

Summer and Winter

It was a bright and cheerful afternoon, Towards the end of the sunny month of June, When the north wind congregates in crowds The floating mountains of the silver clouds From the horizon--and the stainless sky Opens beyond them like eternity.

Fragment: The False Laurel and the True

'What art thou, Presumptuous, who profanest The wreath to mighty poets only due, Even whilst like a forgotten moon thou wanest?

Sonnet 146: Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, My sinful earth these rebel powers array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost...

Fare Thee Well

they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth: And Constancy lives in realms above; And Life is thorny; and youth is vain: And to be wroth with one we love, Doth work like madness in the...

Universal

George Gordon, Lord Byron

553 words

Poetry

A Child Asleep

How he sleepeth! having drunken Weary childhood's mandragore, From his pretty eyes have sunken Pleasures, to make room for more--- Sleeping near the withered nosegay, which he pulled the day before. leave them for the waking: Throw them earthward where they grew.

Universal

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

342 words

Poetry

Sonnet 28: How can I then return in happy plight

How can I then return in happy plight, That am debarre'd the benefit of rest?

Lord Byron's Verses on Sam Rogers

Nose and Chin that make a knocker, Wrinkles that would puzzle Cocker; Mouth that marks the envious Scorner, With a Scorpion in each corner Curling up his tail to sting you, In the place that most may wring you; Eyes...

Universal

George Gordon, Lord Byron

374 words

Poetry

Sonnet 07 - The face of all the world is changed, I think

The face of all the world is changed, I think, Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink Of obvious death, where I,...

Universal

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

115 words

Poetry

Vision of Belshazzar

The King was on his throne, The Satraps thronged the hall: A thousand bright lamps shone O'er that high festival. A thousand cups of gold, In Judah deemed divine-- Jehovah's vessels hold The godless Heathen's wine!

Universal

George Gordon, Lord Byron

238 words

Poetry

The Starlight Night

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies! O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there! Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes! The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!

Universal

Gerard Manley Hopkins

116 words

Poetry

Lines Written During the Castlereagh Administration

Corpses are cold in the tomb; Stones on the pavement are dumb; Abortions are dead in the womb, And their mothers look pale--like the death-white shore Of Albion, free no more.

To the Republicans of North America

between you and me Whirlwinds sweep and billows roar: Yet in spirit oft I see On thy wild and winding shore Freedom's bloodless banners wave,-- Feel the pulses of the brave Unextinguished in the grave,-- See them drenched in sacred...

Music At The Villa Marina

FOR some abiding central source of power, Strong-smitten steady chords, ye seem to flow And, flowing, carry virtue.

Universal

Robert Louis Stevenson

199 words

Poetry

On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People

A Brother and Sister O I admire and sorrow! The heart’s eye grieves Discovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years. A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves, And beauty’s dearest veriest vein is tears. Happy the father, mother of these!

Universal

Gerard Manley Hopkins

271 words

Poetry

Hayeswater

A region desolate and wild. Black, chafing water: and afloat, And lonely as a truant child In a waste wood, a single boat: No mast, no sails are set thereon; It moves, but never moveth on: And welters like a...

The Flowers

All the names I know from nurse: Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse, Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock, And the Lady Hollyhock. Fairy places, fairy things, Fairy woods where the wild bee wings, Tiny trees for tiny dames-- These must all be fairy names!

Universal

Robert Louis Stevenson

Short71 words

Poetry

To a Young Child

Margaret, are you grieving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves, like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Universal

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Short80 words

Poetry

Romance

Romance, who loves to nod and sing, With drowsy head and folded wing, Among the green leaves as they shake Far down within some shadowy...

A Woman's Shortcomings

She has laughed as softly as if she sighed, She has counted six, and over, Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried - Oh, each a worthy lover!

Universal

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

252 words

Poetry

Sonnet 33: Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Full many a glorious morning have I seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his...

Universal

William Shakespeare

101 words