Today, political, commercial and religious ‘thieves and wolves’ are threatening humanity and the creation. But the Good Shepherd has not left us defenseless. We are vulnerable, but not abandoned; weak, but not without protection. We go astray, but God is always determined to find and restore us.
Listening to Christians with whom we disagree: maybe they see through other windows because they live in other rooms
Maybe God doesn’t expect people of faith to agree on everything. Maybe God wants us to feel cross-pressured, uncertain and confused. If we are to grow in love we must listen to people who see through other windows because they live in other rooms.
Listening to depression as a spiritual and political practice
The bad news that our world isn’t fine, that life is profoundly unfair, misaligned and wobbly and violently broken should tell us all something important about depression – namely, that depression isn’t wrong to declare life on earth uninhabitable; it’s just terribly misguided about what causes our maladies and exactly what solutions provide their remedy.
Do we love children enough to put our guns aside?
Could the Constitutional right to own guns be in direct conflict with the Christian responsibility to love one’s neighbor, protect human life and prioritize the vulnerable?
Apocalypse soon? Faith communities and preparing for the environmental end times
The creeping things got here first, Genesis tells us. Human beings came later. That was then; this is now: it appears that millennia later humanity is working diligently to reverse creation and be alone again.
Female jet pilot or astronaut? Sure. Preacher? No. So where can I buy a dragon?
Southern Baptists seem to have no problem with women serving on the Supreme Court or flying fighter jets or traveling into space. Heck, they would have been happy to put Sarah Palin in the White House. But a woman in the pulpit? No way.
I’m awaiting a kidney transplant. I care about our nation’s health care crisis. But churches should too
Like the majority of American Christians, for most of my adult life I had only a passing interest in this country’s health care crisis. Now, as I await a kidney transplant, personal experience has led me to care deeply about this issue. But I believe faith communities should care too.
Today I am thinking about May 17, 1954, and white Baptists then and now
May 17 is a special day for me. On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court unanimously issued the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that declared racial segregation in public education unconstitutional. On May 17, 2019, I have reasons to hope, but also cause to mourn.
A response: 5 things Orthodox Christians can learn from Protestants in the U.S.
Prioritizing open dialogue and mutual respect in the future will help move Orthodox and Protestant traditions toward the realization of Christ’s ultimate prayer for unity “that they may be one just as we are one” (John 17:22). With that hope in mind, I’ve listed 5 things Orthodox Christians can learn from Protestants.