As you can see, I have decided to return to the Revised Common Lectionary as source for at least some of my essays. I am doing this for several reasons: my wife is currently the children and family minister of our church, and this church, as do many, uses the lectionary as the basis for its preaching and its children and youth education; and it has been some time since I have addressed this cycle of texts, a cycle that... Read more

This week, the presumptive presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, Joe Biden, chose as his vice-presidential running mate, Kamala Harris, the Junior Senator from California. This is an historic choice in several ways. Senator Harris is bi-racial, though she does identify as Black. In addition, she is the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, so not only is she the first Black person to run for the Vice- Presidency, she is also the first Indian person as well.... Read more

I thought I was finished with my latest look at the Bible and its use in the 21stcentury, but after a conversation with my preacher wife, she made it clear to me that I needed one more essay, attempting to describe more precisely just how the Bible is in reality being read now. I do not only mean how it is being read by progressives like me, but also how it is being read by those who would hardly be... Read more

In two previous essays, I attempted to draw a sketch for how the Bible may have grown into its current shape, and how some readers over the centuries of its existence actually read it over nearly two millennia. Today, I want to examine, from my own limited perspective, how the Bible actually functions in the contested theologies of the year 2020. Let me say clearly up front that I think the Bible is for many readers a blunt instrument, used... Read more

In my last essay I made an imaginative attempt to reconstruct possible ways that the Bible we now easily hold in our hands grew from tales around campfires in the ancient near east to a canonical book that served the Christian church, as well as the lives of Jews in their diaspora, without the books of the New Testament, of course, as the norm for faith and life. In today’s article, I propose to look at the myriad ways that... Read more

I have spent well over 50 years of my life as a student and teacher of the Bible. It has often been jokingly said that the Bible is the most bought, least read book in the history of publication. That may be true, but its pages have had an outsized influence on culture over the two millennia of its publication, now in hundreds of languages, across hundreds of cultures. What I want to try to do in what may finally... Read more

I was especially struck by the interview that President Trump conducted recently with the journalist, Jonathan Swan, for several notable reasons. The president rarely strays outside of the Fox News shell, always ready to respond to those who in general favor him and his policies, and seldom anxious to lob arguments with those who are not inclined to agree with him on most things. Perhaps this is not a completely unusual experience with US leaders or anyone else; who enjoys... Read more

Later this week, I will be performing a wedding here in Los Angeles, the first one here I have been asked to do. I have in reality not officiated at that many such ceremonies in my 50 years of ministry. Because I was only an Associate Pastor of a Louisiana church for two years in the 1970’s, and an interim pastor of two congregations in the 1990’s, my opportunities for leading wedding ceremonies have been limited. Over the years, I... Read more

Biblically, there is simply no such thing as private salvation, a kind of “come to the garden alone” with Jesus, “who walks and talks with me” and “tells me I am his own.” That famous hymn, always among the top five on the churchy charts, paints a portrait of our relationship to the Savior that is in the main false, and at its worst finally short-sighted in the extreme. For all of you who have marched down the aisle of... Read more

I have been thinking about the art of conversation recently, spurred on by the very real difficulties that our divided nation presents as we attempt to navigate the choppy waters of serious dilemmas and discord. And, of course, all of our racial, ethnic, and class divisions have been exposed and exacerbated by the ongoing horrors of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has lingered and exploded here in the US over the past two months. How can we talk to one another... Read more