While I’m not a psychotherapist or anywhere close to an expert in family systems theory, I’m finding some clarity in applying what little I do know to our current societal predicaments. It goes something like this: Pressure begins to build…
Why your vote matters to God
As of this writing, well more than 18 million people have cast their votes already, and Election Day is still two weeks away. Long waits and long lines have greeted those who are registering their support for or against the…
Listen more, speak less, dispel anger with love
Our country is politically torn apart. This is the reality that greets us every day in the national media, regardless of which network, website or newspaper we follow. Our states are labeled by their Republican or Democratic governors, eliciting opinions…
Remembering Amos: Where white evangelicals lost their way
I have spent 50 years teaching religion to mostly white evangelical students at Christian colleges and universities from California to Pennsylvania and points in between. Most of those students came from evangelical homes and grew up in evangelical churches, and…
In a time of different truth worlds, ‘Bump that, get free’
I write these words from a place of brokenheartedness with the world around me, as political battles rage and shared understanding seems further and further away. I write these words after harrowing (and sometimes heartening) conversations with people I love….
Bonhoeffer moment No. 2: ‘I am now praying quite simply for freedom’
In a letter to his close friend Eberhard Bethge, written from Tegel Prison and dated Nov. 18, 1943, Lutheran pastor/theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: I am finding (I expect you are, too) that the most difficult thing is getting up in…
We need to talk about dying
We were riding in a limousine to the graveside. Most of the people in the car were family so — except for the masks — the conversation was comfortable and familiar. Then the funeral director said: “See those smokestacks. That’s…
Is missions giving ‘paying dues’? And what counts as ‘missions’ anyway?
Several years ago, in my previous life as a pastor, a well-meaning member of our Missions Committee looked at the church’s missions budget, noted the large sum of money we were sending to state and national denominational groups and declared…
‘America First’ is an affront to the heart of God
As the world comes crashing down around Donald Trump and his administration, those folks who voted for him in 2016 and consider themselves evangelical believers are pivoting to say they are electing the platform, not the person. We are to…
An October prayer
Note: This is not a simulation. This is exactly the state of my prayer life right now. “It feels like a bill has come due and God is collecting.” —White House source to Joe Scarborough, Twitter, 8:38 a.m. October 7,…
Rediscovering the songs of lament would wake us up
On a recent day in Washington, D.C., thousands of evangelicals, almost all of them white, gathered to a rally and to sing praise and worship music. One image that sticks in my head is a group surrounding Michael W. Smith,…
What presidential candidates should learn from Quakers and preschool teachers
As I watched the first round of presidential debates alone in my living room, I was tempted to take shelter behind my couch and occasionally peek over the top. I was distressed by the hostile tones, the snarky comments, the…