Eugene Peterson was, of course, good with the pen. But the deeper reason his words reverberated within so many of us is because of how deeply God’s ways and Word reverberated in his own soul.
Getting out the ‘Christian’ vote: Today’s Vote Common Good is much like yesterday’s Moral Majority
The problem with some organizations, like Vote Common Good on the left or Moral Majority on the right, is this: They attempt to shoehorn faith into the mold of a political party, instead of letting faith be the mold through which Christians reach their political decisions.
Communion of the saints: remembering those souls, past and present, who light our way
Remembering those who have shaped our lives is an instructive spiritual discipline. We tend to think that those who have died have disappeared utterly from this world, no longer accessible. Yet, our imagination can bridge heaven and earth, and we can continue to receive the impact of their lives.
Vote, or don’t. The issues are larger than elections
Elections are but the end result of an advocacy for the common good that starts in each watershed. Imagine a different future, find collaborators and spend yourself extravagantly.
In our neighborhood, ‘eyes on the street’ takes on deeper meaning
From one perspective, Skeet was the embodiment of all the problems plaguing our neighborhood. When you can only see broken windows, Skeet looked only like a broken man. But no person or neighborhood is only broken. What the folks closest to the ground knew was that Skeet helped hold Enderly Park together.
Family violence: an injustice that churches must address
As people of faith, let us seize this holy commission, covering survivors of family violence with the compassionate cloak of justice, confronting violence wherever it casts its shadow and following God into every place where oppression must be overcome by justice.
If Jesus came to church today
I’m not sure Jesus would come to church today. But if he did, there would be plenty of drama.
I’m a preacher. Yes, I have a political agenda
As Election Day approaches I can tell you that when politicians talk, I listen. I listen to hear if they are concerned for all people, or only some people. I listen to hear if they have any plans for lowering the mountains and raising the valleys of disparity.
Silence in the face of evil: learning from an obscure schoolteacher who urged Karl Barth and other theologians to stand in solidarity with the Jews in Nazi Germany
If I thought Nazi-era Germany was an aberration I could probably move on; but in Donald Trump’s America, who can think that? The Church of Jesus Christ is confronted by an anti-Gospel once again. The German Church never acknowledged her complicity with the National Socialists, and the white churches of America are equally resistant to truth.
Teaching and learning dissent: the witness of the minority
Learning dissent is never easy. One person’s prophet is another’s anti-Christ. One person’s conscience is another’s bigotry. Sometimes dissent can get you damned. Sometimes (like now?) silence can too.
Christianity still has a Kavanaugh problem
For a megachurch pastor, who for millions of Evangelicals represents their religious and political thinking, to go on television and declare that Brett Kavanagh’s ascent to the Supreme Court is a defeat of evil not only smears the story of millions of women and men who have been sexually abused but makes Christianity about a power grab instead of the sacrificial way of Jesus.
Continuing to cast God as male does a disservice to us all – women and men, sons and daughters
With one breath the Church is teaching my daughter that she is created in the image of God and in the next is telling her repeatedly that God is a man. “Daughter, you’re created in the image of God. Just not quite as fully in God’s image as your brothers.”