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2025-12-26T14:54:59-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Demise of the Executioner: A Parable

Last updated on: December 26, 2025 at 2:54 pm By Jeff Hood

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*The characters and events in this parable are entirely fictional. The Demise of the Executioner Death came for the executioner the way it comes for everyone. He had spent decades watching others cross over. Forty-seven men and women. He had memorized their final breaths. He knew the exact second when life leaves the body…that moment when the eyes go somewhere else. He thought he understood it. He didn’t understand anything. The Chamber He opened his eyes to a room he... Read more

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2025-12-26T02:19:11-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I Watched You Kill Him: A Priest’s Plea to Executioners

Last updated on: December 26, 2025 at 2:19 am By Jeff Hood

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December 25, 2025 Dear Executioner, I have watched you work. Eleven times now. Eleven men. Eleven deaths I stood close enough to touch. I was the one holding his hand while you strapped the other one down. I was the one praying while you checked the lines. I was the one whispering scripture while you waited for the warden’s nod. We breathed the same air in that room. We heard the same last words. We watched the same body go... Read more

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2025-12-24T20:24:33-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Emmanuel = God With Us = Merry Christmas.

Last updated on: December 24, 2025 at 8:24 pm By Jeff Hood

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“They will call him Emmanuel = God with us.” –Matthew 1:23, paraphrased God Entered Flesh = Emmanuel Christmas hope does not begin with foolish optimism. It begins with incarnation. Emmanuel. Not with an idea, not with a feeling, not with a moral lesson…but with God taking on flesh. And that matters, because flesh is where history always counts. The Christian confession is not simply that Jesus was a good teacher or a moral revolutionary…though he was both. The confession is... Read more

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2025-12-24T01:26:13-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

From 1812: John Murray’s Radical Theology of Hope

Last updated on: December 24, 2025 at 1:26 am By Jeff Hood

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That Sublime and Never Failing Confidence: John Murray’s Radical Theology of Hope for a Terrified World John Murray (1741-1815) was born in England to strict Calvinist parents and raised to believe most of humanity was damned. After converting to Universalism, he lost everything and sailed for America in 1770, intending to disappear. Instead, he became the founder of American Universalism, establishing the first Universalist congregation at Gloucester, Massachusetts, and later pastoring the Universalist Society of Boston. A stroke left him... Read more

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2025-12-23T16:53:52-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Healed: A Theological Tribute to Garth Kasimu Baker-Fletcher

Last updated on: December 23, 2025 at 4:53 pm By Jeff Hood

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Healed for Good: A Theological Tribute to The Rev. Dr. Garth Kasimu Baker-Fletcher This tribute reflects on the life, work and theological contributions of The Rev. Dr. Garth Kasimu Baker-Fletcher, drawing from a series of conversations we had. Through conversations about pain, disability and healing, Baker-Fletcher articulated a radical theology that reimagined disability not as deficit but as spiritual gift. His concepts of the “differently-abled” and the “spiritually superhuman” challenge normative frameworks that have long oppressed those whose bodies and... Read more

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2025-12-23T01:19:57-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Christmas : The Beginning of an Execution

Last updated on: December 23, 2025 at 1:19 am By Jeff Hood

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Christmas : When God Became Executable Christmas is God Made Administrable To say God became executable is to say God entered the world already marked. Not just vulnerable, but legible to power. Flesh can be counted, registered, hunted. A body can be named, tracked, eliminated. Incarnation is not simply God “with us”; it is God made administrable. God takes on a body that can be processed through the same systems that process every unwanted body…courts, prisons, borders, gallows. From the... Read more

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2025-12-20T23:04:07-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Joseph the Feminist : A Sermon on Matthew 1:18-25

Last updated on: December 20, 2025 at 11:04 pm By Jeff Hood

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The New Testament’s First Feminist : Joseph : Matthew 1:18-25 The night Joseph found out, he didn’t sleep. He lay on his mat in the dark, staring at the ceiling, running his fingers along the edge of his blanket, trying to make the story work. Trying to find any explanation that didn’t end with the woman he loved being dragged to the edge of town and buried under stones. Mary was pregnant. The child was not his. In first century... Read more

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2025-12-18T10:13:50-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Learning to See in the Dark: Finding God on Death Row (Text)

Last updated on: December 18, 2025 at 10:13 am By Jeff Hood

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Learning to See in the Dark: Finding God on Death Row: Complete Text ______________________________ *To my friend Cari Willis, who also knows the cost of learning to see in the dark. ______________________________ For Christmas this year, I decided to write an original spirituality that pushes into this difficult space of helping some of the most isolated people in our society to find God. Learning to See in the Dark is the fruit of such effort. I wanted to have a... Read more

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2025-12-18T00:56:44-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Innocent in Florida: The Paul Everett Story

Last updated on: December 18, 2025 at 12:56 am By Jeff Hood

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I’ve listened to Paul Everett’s voice come through a prison phone line in Florida…steady, unbroken, unadorned. He sounds like a man who has made peace with who he is, but not with the lie that put him in a cage. That lie has cost him more than twenty years of his life. Now the state of Florida is preparing to end what remains. This article is based on conversations that I had with him about what really happened to... Read more

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2025-12-16T00:44:28-06:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

On Death Row Without a Conviction: Jonathan Stephenson

Last updated on: December 16, 2025 at 12:44 am By Jeff Hood

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The Man on Death Row Without a Conviction: The Case of Jonathan Stephenson Jonathan Stephenson has spent over three decades on Tennessee’s death row. But according to the very law Tennessee applies to every other defendant, Jonathan Stephenson has no valid murder conviction. The guilty plea that should have saved his life was voided by the Tennessee Supreme Court…and with it, any legal basis for his death sentence. This is not a story about guilt or innocence. This is... Read more

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