Imagine how good government could be if those who say God is love took love for the poor, the desire for peace and an insistence on honesty into the voting booth. What wonderful things would happen if our values were derived from virtue rather than partisanship?
Entitlement: one more reason Brett Kavanaugh is unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court
Good lawyers can grow up in a society that offers preference to rich white men, but the privileged have to recognize their privilege as a gift to be shared. President Trump needs to find a nominee who can imagine what life is like for those who know that no matter how smart they are or how hard they work they will never go to Yale.
I am part of the resistance inside the American church
The church is facing a test unlike any faced in the modern era. It’s not just that the church is bitterly divided over politics. The dilemma is that not nearly enough of the church’s leadership is working diligently from within to frustrate the church’s worst inclinations.
Churches, wake up and smell the coffee: communion with a cup of joe?
Here is a question that needs to percolate: would coffee be a better symbol for communion? Grape juice is dull. Wine puts you to sleep. Coffee refreshes, revives and stimulates. The Lord’s Table could be a coffee table.
What I learned from my 8th-grade teacher in Mississippi in 1975
My junior high school reflected Mississippi’s poverty, racism and provincialism. Good teachers like Danny McBrayer fought uphill battles.
Frankly speaking: an Independence Day showdown with drama, daring and indigestion
The gastronomic gamesmanship at the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest every July Fourth is for many a celebration of what makes America great. But I have a few questions.
Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade, my grandmother and bad theology
Amid an epidemic of suicides, some fatalities were victims of bad theology who never heard a helpful word from the church.
Tracking our happiness
Happiness is more in our heads than our circumstances. We know people who have what we want who are unhappy. We know people who have been through the worst that life can give who are happy.
Paul Ryan and the House chaplain: Proof that prayer works?
The scientific study of prayer focuses on the things for which people most often pray — health concerns, financial difficulties, or societal problems — but the prayers we do not pray are the best evidence that prayer works.