¨Let every person be subject to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist…
Life, love and Elmer’s glue
I’ll confess, I didn’t hear the Christmas tree come crashing down in the middle of the night. I vaguely remember my husband asking me if I heard dishes shattering. Just another bizarre dream, I thought. No thief in the night…
In America today, who gets to use possessive pronouns?
The crowds trudged through the rain from the main square in order to block the street in front of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department headquarters. “Whose streets? Our streets!” they shouted, in defiance of the long history of Charlotte. Here, streets and…
Finding a place to ask the tough questions
Early in my pastoral work I found myself in the middle of an intense season of transformation and conflict at my church. I wasn’t prepared for the dynamics I faced then; really, nobody at church knew quite what to do…
Fake news and fake gospels
See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe and not according to Christ. (Colossians 2:8, NRSV) For the time is coming when…
If you’re not outraged …
Several years ago, a bumper sticker popped up here and there that said, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” We need to print up some more of those for times like these. Love him or hate him, you’ve…
Jesus’ family’s values
This past Thanksgiving, my wife and I had both of our families gather together as we celebrated our first holiday as a married couple. It was a really special time where we had amazing food, fun, and fellowship. As we…
A Christmas wish list to enact social justice
’Tis the season for giving, or, at least, that is what we say. The conclusion of the year 2016 comes as a relief of many of us. Not only was this year riddled with the deaths of Alan Rickman, David…
Joining the resistance: A 100-day counter-agenda for the Church
The Christian movement has never been in a cozy relationship with empire and remained a healthy and vital movement. Rightly spoken, “Jesus is Lord” is always a statement of subversion to the empire’s rule. And there are no easy or…
Am I not radical enough to be on the Professor Watchlist?
An open letter to the folks at Professor Watchlist: I am deeply angry, upset, frustrated and irritated with the aggregated list you all compiled of “dangerous professors” with “radical agendas.” Specifically, what deeply disturbs me about your list is that…
The ‘Water of Life’ in an age of water scarcity
It’s only a matter of time when two nations go to war not over access to oil, but to water. Bypass the debate about whether climate change is causing this — the reality, according to the United Nations, is that…
I’ll be somewhere else for Christmas
In December of 1998 my father made an unusual holiday journey. Less than a year earlier he’d been diagnosed with melanoma which eventually laid siege to his brain. After fruitless rounds of chemotherapy and gamma knife treatments, Dad had a…