Outside the library at St. John’s Abbey and College is a sign on the green lawn that’s not the expected “Don’t Walk on the Grass” but instead, “Don’t Make Paths.” As long as you don’t beat the grass into paths…
The tangled beauty of America and original sin
The six Southern Baptist seminary presidents have condemned Critical Race Theory and forbade its use in seminary education. With this, they fell into lockstep with President Trump whose executive order forbade its use in federal agencies. He said Critical Race…
Seven ways to embrace a reality-based religion
In these days of “alternative facts,” pronouncements that “truth is relative,” where science is disregarded as just another opinion, and where we are taught to distrust any news except the news on “my” channel, let’s consider what a reality-based religion…
Four toxins to address in healing from this wretched season
What healing can come from this wretched season, and how can I write about it healingly? I’m thinking of this pandemic season stretching on and on with more thousands dying and more upended lives. I’m thinking about this political season,…
Baptists and the rising tide of authoritarianism
One common thread that runs through most of the supporters of President Donald Trump is authoritarianism. “Politics makes odd bedfellows,” the saying goes; and the taste for authoritarianism has drawn together an unlikely crowd. Many people crave a “strongman” leader,…
Who wants the crown Jesus refused in the wilderness?
In a widely circulating op-ed in the New York Times, Elizabeth Dias describes a speech then presidential candidate Donald Trump gave at a small evangelical college, Dordt University in Center City, Iowa. The most famous, or infamous, remark in his…
Trump, Jepthah and the sacrifice of our children
As I write these words, President Trump is politicizing the fall reopening of schools for our children. I cannot imagine a more difficult set of decisions our public officials are having to make than when and how to reopen our…
Amid a pandemic and a fractured nation, how do we live ‘in the meantime’?
What’s going on with your feelings these days? In an old comic strip, Shoe, the curmudgeonly newspaper editor, is sitting at his desk. He declares, “There are mood swings and there are mood bungee jumps!” Some days are like that…
Rebuilding the foundations of ‘The City on the Hill’: the shadow side of American exceptionalism
If we are to rebuild the foundations of this “City on a Hill,” we must work with all people of good will, those of all religions, races and economic classes, to follow the counsel of Micah to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.