One Sunday I decided to pay close attention to the words of the Nicene Creed when it showed up as it does every Sunday morning in the Episcopal liturgy right after the homily. People usually pay about as much attention to the text of the Creed as they do to the words of the Lord’s Prayer—but try it sometime. “Wow,” I thought as I said the words, “there’s some pretty crazy stuff in here. I’m not sure that I believe... Read more
I am not a regular reader of Christianity Today, but the title of Jon Ward’s May 11th article caught my eye—I saw a link to it at the end of Tim Alberta’s The Atlantic article that I referenced a few essays ago. Ward is the chief national correspondent for Yahoo News; the title of his CT article is “Being a Political Journalist Made Me a Better Christian.” CT presents itself as a primary media voice for evangelical Christianity; knowing that,... Read more
The June edition of The Atlantic contains an excellent and sobering article by Tim Alberta. Titled “How Politics Poisoned the Church,” it’s lead says that “The evangelical movement spent 40 years at war with secular America. Now it’s at war with itself.” It’s a sobering piece, particularly for those who come from the world that he is writing about, as I do. I’m sure I’ll be making use of various portions of it frequently this summer. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/06/evangelical-church-pastors-political-radicalization/629631/ One particular passage stood... Read more
A disturbingly common mishap in recent Summer Olympic games has been the failure of U.S. track and field relay teams. Individually, these teams almost always are made up of the best runners, top to bottom, of any nation’s relay contingent. Best times, best individual win-loss records. But great individuals do not a successful relay team make. In a relay race, each runner is required not only to run her or his lap as swiftly as possible, but also to hand... Read more
In her wonderful memoir Take This Bread, Sara Miles tells us of a conversation she had with a fellow volunteer as they distributed food at their church’s food pantry one Friday morning. Both Sara and Steve were lay eucharistic ministers who brought the chalice to parishioners on Sunday morning; they noted the similarities between handing out food on Fridays and their activities at the altar on Sunday, including the importance of looking past the ritual and making eye contact with each... Read more
Here we are again. Mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvaldi in the past few days, just the latest in a tragically endless string of carnage from gun violence that, unfortunately, is unique to our nation.This is the fifth time in the past six years that, in the wake of a mass shooting in a school or place of worship, I have posted the essay below. The sentiment remains the same. Yesterday I posted the following on Facebook: I’m tired–really tired–of... Read more
My political scientist Dominican priest friend and colleague, who was my teaching partner in our “Faith and Doubt” colloquium during the just-completed spring semester, is kind enough to be a regular reader of this blog. He has mentioned to me more than once over the past several weeks, most recently during our usual beer get-together on Friday afternoons, that he’s been interested to see how closely my blog posts have been tracking our course work this semester. Had he been... Read more
Today is Commencement Day for the Class of 2022 at my college. Commencement is always a big day—this year it bigger than usual because it will be my college’s first full-fledged Commencement exercises in three years. All graduation festivities were cancelled in May 2020 during the height of the pandemic; last year a scaled-down ceremony was held outside on a soccer field with everyone wearing masks. Today we return to our usual Commencement location, the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in downtown... Read more
Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again. “The Sound of Silence” One Sunday some time ago as I was listening to our local NPR station in the car during an errand run, I heard a brief piece about “Disturbed,” a heavy metal band that had just received its second Grammy nomination. Their first was in 2009; now, syeveral ears later, they had another one. My knowledge of contemporary heavy metal is non-existent, as is my interest... Read more
To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. Ecclesiastes and The Byrds Now that the Spring 2022 semester is in the books, in keeping with President Josiah Bartlett’s example from “The West Wing,” I immediately find myself asking “What’s next?” At my college, courses and teaching assignments are planned at least a year in advance, so “what’s next?” requires remembering what I have committed myself to (and forgotten about) over the past weeks and... Read more
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