Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold fascinated me, frustrated me, and inspired me. It is a difficult book to describe–and yet it is also a book that I could not put down. In an interview with Patheos, author Peter Mommsen describes this story about his grandfather, J. Heinrich (Heiner) Arnold, this way: “Rebirth, forgiveness, and reconciliation – but no tidy endings.” Arnold grew up in a community in post-World War I Germany founded by his... Read more
This weekend, I spent a large portion of time binge-watching HBO’s The Newsroom, which just went up on Amazon Prime. The show centers around a group of idealists who get together and decide to do the news based on higher principles rather than getting viewers at all cost. Instead, they decide to ask themselves a few questions before they put a story on the air: 1) Is this something the viewers need to know? 2) Is this the best possible... Read more
On July 17, Franklin Graham made some deeply disturbing remarks on his Facebook page. This man who was once known for his acts of mercy and love through Samaritan’s Purse (an organization he still heads up, which still does tremendous work to ease suffering around the world) continued his growing political and xenophobic tendencies and actively advocated that Muslims no longer be allowed to immigrate to the United States. In part, he wrote: We should stop all immigration of Muslims... Read more
This month, President Obama will be in Ethiopia and Kenya. During this visit, he has a unique opportunity to advocate for the victims of war crimes in the ongoing South Sudanese civil war. South Sudan became the world’s newest nation in 2011, with the help and support of the Obama Administration. However, increasing tensions between President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar erupted in December of 2013. Twenty thousand innocent and unarmed civilians were killed in a door-to-door targeted... Read more
I have heard previously Nick Kristof talk about his admiration for the way that people of faith frequently are the ones to go to really desperate places in the world. He has just done so again, and his column about Dr. Tom Catena, a Catholic surgeon in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan (an area I wrote about in my review of Beats of the Antonov) deserves your time. The people of the Nuba Mountains have been routinely bombed by the... Read more
I’m sure some of my readers have been wondering when I’m going to write about the SCOTUS same-sex marriage ruling. Honestly, I’ve avoided doing so thus far because so much ink is being spilled, tensions and emotions are high, and I’ve been waiting for the right words. Coming up later this summer, I will be featuring a dialogue with a reader (someone who is coming from a very different place in terms of belief and practice) about how we can... Read more
One of the major problems in American Christian thought today is forced dichotomies where they do not actually exist. One of the most prominent areas where this is demonstrated is in the way personal responsibility and systemic sin are treated as mutually exclusive. Nowhere is this most contentious than in debates concerning race in America today. On the one hand, many on the left attribute most things in society to systemic influences. If only we could fix our systems, surely... Read more
If there is anything that we as humans are prone to do, it’s this: set up false gods for ourselves. No matter what our culture is, we will probably find something that culture values and worship it and try to squeeze God into the mold of it. We will melt down our gold and make an idol, an idol that doesn’t challenge us, an idol that makes us look hip and cool to our surrounding culture (and to us). Christians... Read more
Nine died during a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Wednesday night. Nine died in a place of peace and prayer. Nine died because they were African-American. Today, family members and representatives of these nine victims–pastors and old women and younger people–spoke to the murderer at his court appearance. They spoke with intentional and defining words of honesty, grief, anger, love, forgiveness, and an appeal that he repent. “I forgive you. You took something... Read more
Sometimes I have loads of ideas for blogging. Sometimes I sit at my keyboard staring at an empty page, fresh out of ideas. I’m in that second stage right now. So … let’s try something new. What are some topics you wish I’d talk about? No promises to use the ideas, of course, but I’ll at least consider them. Keep in mind: –Stuff that elevates the discourse instead of sinking to lowest common denominator –Stuff I actually know something about... Read more
Rebecca Florence Miller
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In