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March 2020

March 31, 2020

Don’t Be Afraid to Die

Last Sunday was the Fifth Sunday of Lent; we are heading directly for Palm Sunday,...

March 14, 2020

Jesus’ Advice Concerning the Coronavirus: Don’t Be Afraid of Tomorrow

If there ever was a time when Jesus’ suggestion that we should “not worry about...

March 02, 2020

God Is Doing the Best that God Can Do

Frank Tupper, an important Baptist theologian who argued that God is in control of very...

February 2020

February 08, 2020

The Gospel at Gun-Point

In the religious world of my youth and adolescence, Billy Graham was a rock star....

January 2020

January 28, 2020

When to Care, and When Not to Care

The only way I can get through the tedium of working out on an aerobic...

January 26, 2020

Staying Sane During the Impeachment Trial

The other day somebody wrote on Twitter that “President Trump is the best president in...

January 21, 2020

As the Impeachment Trial Begins, Don’t Forget to Think–Even When It’s Hard

Today, the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump begins in earnest. As we...

January 06, 2020

An Epiphany in Real Time

Yesterday was the Feast of the Epiphany, the first day of the liturgical season that...

December 2019

December 31, 2019

The Best and the Worst: My New Year’s Hope for 2020

There are eight to ten movies that Jeanne and I watch religiously during the Christmas...

December 29, 2019

A Family on the Run, and Dead Babies in the Streets

This Christmas season seems more dissonant than most, with violence across the globe, an impeachment...

December 26, 2019

Dammit, It’s the Incarnation!

Last year around this time, I posted an essay that turned out to be more...

December 23, 2019

Why the Details of Jesus’ Birth Don’t Matter

A couple of years ago, I was asked to take on a temporary administrative position...

December 15, 2019

What May We Hope For?

Advent is the liturgical season that is most meaningful to me. I first encountered the...

December 10, 2019

Living in a Minor Key

At some point early in their musical training, all serious musicians are introduced to the...

December 05, 2019

Preserving Hope when Things Turn Dark

For the past several years, I have had the privilege of giving a sermon at...

November 2019

November 27, 2019

My Advent Wish: Peace Be To You

Advent begins this coming Sunday. I was raised in a version of Christianity that had...

November 21, 2019

What Are You Afraid Of?

I had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours with a young man named...

November 12, 2019

One Wife for Seven Brothers: An important lesson from a strange story

A strange story from Luke's gospel was the gospel for the day last Sunday. It...

November 08, 2019

Does God Exist? What would a betting person say?

During a recent unit in my General Ethics class called “Does ethics have anything to...

November 03, 2019

Noah and his Children: Bad News for White Evangelical Christians

“White evangelical Protestants (WEPs) are fully disrobed,” writes Michael Gerson, concluding that “the older generation...

October 2019

October 03, 2019

Possible Responses to the Current Insanity: “Whatever” and “Oh, Well”

Given my teaching schedule this semester, I begin each Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday on the...

September 2019

September 24, 2019

Living an Autumn Faith

Yesterday was the first day of autumn, which is good thing, because autumn is (by...

September 22, 2019

Are You Jesus? A Prophetic Challenge from Joan Chittister

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending a talk given by one of my heroes....

August 2019

August 20, 2019

Will All Things Be Well?

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall...

August 18, 2019

Finding the Light

We are not simply made by God—we are made of God Julian of Norwich Toward the end of a...

August 11, 2019

This is Just Too Weird: Dealing with Inconvenient Truths from the Gospels

During the three years that I lived in Milwaukee while completing my Ph.D. studies at...

August 08, 2019

We are not better than this, and this is exactly who we are

In the aftermath of two more mass shootings last Saturday, I read a number of...

August 06, 2019

Are We Tending Toward Justice?

I was reminded when I visited the MLK Memorial in Washington DC a couple of...

August 01, 2019

Facing the Greatest Fear of All

Have you never felt like one of those pawns forgotten in a corner of the...

July 2019

July 30, 2019

Elijah Cummings and Donald Trump: Can Anything Good Come Out Of Baltimore?

Another Saturday morning, another vile stream of racist and/or misogynistic tweets from the President. This...

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