Imagine what would happen if the ninth-largest city in America worked out a deal with Planned Parenthood to host a weeklong convention in city-owned facilities and gave them a $927,000 discount. Conservatives and anti-abortion churches would lose their ever-loving minds….
One year after the Club Q mass shooting, none of us are the same
It’s been more than a year since a man armed with an AR-15-style rifle walked into a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs and opened fire. It was Nov. 19, 2022, the day before Transgender Day of Remembrance. Club Q was…
A voice was heard in Ramah, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Uvalde …
These days the stark realities of American culture can overtake us anytime, anywhere. I learned that again at a recent lunch with Doug Bailey, Episcopal priest and former Wake Forest School of Divinity colleague. We’d not seen each other in…
Are we all guilty of mass shootings?
Here we are again. Another mass shooting. Another set of grieving families and friends. More calls for sensible gun control. More fist-shaking about Second Amendment rights. More inaction. In the 2016 movie The Limehouse Golem, the catchphrase of entertainer Dan Leno…
Our weekly gun massacres mark a devastating cultural failure
Our weekly gun massacres in the United States are shocking in the extreme. They set us apart from other nations in the worst possible sense. I have not yet been in or near one of these massacres. The closest I…
The other epidemic: Fear
The more I read the news, the more I become convinced there’s another epidemic currently facing the nation. It seems to be particularly acute in churches right now, too. And while it’s an epidemic largely of our own making, it…
The Devil’s tool
When I was the age of my grandson Sam, I was enamored with the song “Ya Got Trouble” from the musical The Music Man. I even memorized it and performed it once or twice for some gatherings. It clearly did not…
In the Nashville shooting, talk of gender and mental health interrupt the conversation about guns
Confusion over the gender identity of the Nashville school shooter has allowed some commentators to flip the script and blame mental illness, not guns, for the death of three 9-year-olds and three adults at Covenant Day School last week. U.S….
Maybe we need God
Sorry for sounding so much like a preacher, but I don’t know where else to turn. I keep hearing we’ve had more mass shootings in the U.S. than days in 2023. We seem out of control, and despite their claims…