Tom Tarrants first questioned his extremist ideology while serving a 35-year sentence in prison for attempting to bomb a Jewish businessman’s residence. Previously, Tarrants had avoided any literature that didn’t support his white supremacist views. But with nothing to do in his tiny cell except think and read, he began devouring books about philosophy, history, and ethics. For the first time, Tarrants was forced to reexamine his beliefs—and he realized then how much he had been a slave to his ideology.

Early this summer, I joined a group of World Journalism Institute students via Skype to talk about my experiences as a Christian journalist. World Journalism Institute is an intensive course that teaches participants how to do Biblical journalism, and I myself am a WJI alumna. 

I was at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport last week, waiting for my flight back to Los Angeles, when I did something I never do: I ate lunch by myself without my iPhone, my laptop, or a book.

Not long ago, I sat between two church friends in their 30s and listened to a heated debate about race. One friend is a black woman, the other is white.

Let’s call the first woman Esther, and the second Mary. They’re close friends and sisters in Christ who have walked through life’s hardships and joys together, but this was the first time they’d ever had such an intense discussion regarding race. I watched the whole interaction as a third party. This is what I observed.

As she tells it, Detroit was practically dead for two days, passed out on the sidewalk of Skid Row. She remembers ingesting some kind of drug—it could have been crack, powder cocaine, or meth. She wasn’t picky when it came to getting high. 

Last year, I joined a group for World War II historical tour in Europe. Part of that trip took us to Dachau concentration camp, the first Nazi death camp, where a documented 32,000 prisoners died due to brutal treatment, murder, diseases, malnutrition, and suicide.

Noah Farkas still remembers the night someone targeted his family.

He was a 10th grader in Plano, Texas, where he and his family were one of the few Jewish families in a mostly Southern Baptist town. At about 3 a.m., he woke up to a thunder of booms and cracks outside his bedroom window. Someone had planted pipe bombs on their front yard. The family’s brick mailbox lay shattered to pieces on the street, their lawn glowed with flames, and on top of their car hung a T-shirt flag painted with swastikas and angry words: “Get Out Jew!” “We know who you are.”