I have sung in choirs of one sort or another for about 65 years, beginning with my 3rd grade daily singing lessons with Mr. ten Harkel, an infinitely patient and talented man who drilled us aspirant choristers on tone, pitch, and a semblance of blend each morning at my local Phoenix public grade school. My, those were the days! Music every day in a public school! There is no doubt in my mind that those lessons set me on a... Read more

It seems to me frankly absurd that I should have to address this topic to what appears to be a majority of professed Christians in May, 2020, but a recent poll suggested that about 2/3 of the Christians who were asked about God’s involvement in the COVID- 19 pandemic believed that God had sent it for one reason or another. The usual justifications were offered to the pollsters. “We are in the last days of earth,” intoned some ardent fundamentalists,... Read more

I have long found the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit to be both vague and bizarre in its formulation. I suppose that statement itself may sound both odd and heretical, because since the Council of Constantinople in 381CE, the Holy Spirit was judged to be a full member of the Holy Trinity of the Godhead, one of the “three coequal persons,” as the orthodox theologians described the person of God, relegating any who denied that the Spirit was divine... Read more

I doubt there is more confusion and complexity in any Christian doctrinal understanding than may be found in the question of the nature and person of Jesus Christ. On one side there is the simple, loving peasant preacher of first-century Palestine, inviting all who would listen into his fresh way of conceiving the rule and realm of God. It remains nearly inconceivable that such a figure could act and speak in ways that would cause him to be killed by... Read more

For those of us who have dedicated our lives to understanding who God may be and to communicating that understanding to others, the age of COVID-19 presents us with the enormous task of thinking about God clearly so as to speak about God intelligibly to other persons who seek to approach God with a faith that matters deeply to every seeker after the truth. It is plain to me that the age of a pandemic raises huge questions about the... Read more

During this pandemic time, my church has been offering each Tuesday and Thursday evening a brief prayer service, led by one of the pastors, consisting of prayer, brief solo song, and two readings from the Bible, keyed generally to the Revised Common Lectionary. The pastor stands in the empty sanctuary, using an I-phone for delivery of the 15-minute service. It offers a traditional and calming experience in these days, when long tradition and sources of calm can be of inestimable... Read more

The famous words from Deuteronomy have long been my marching orders as a teacher of theology: “Hear, Israel! YHWH our God is one YHWH! You shall love YHWH with all your heart (your intelligence), all your life, and with all your strength. Guard these words that I am commanding you today with your heart (your intelligence). Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and... Read more

Some of my most painful memories of Christian worship have occurred around that monumental secular holiday, Mother’s Day. More than I ever wanted, I have heard preachers, usually male ones, extoll the power of motherhood, saying in so many ill- chosen words that “the hand the rocks the cradle rules the world.” On one occasion, I sat in a pew with seven women, not a single one of whom was a biological mother. Some of those women wished they were... Read more

I finished my college education in 1968, having been schooled during the “turbulent 60’s,” a time of radical and uprooting changes in the world. The Vietnam war was raging, many of us young men were facing the distinct possibility of being drafted for that war, a war many of us felt was horrifying, needlessly destructive both of American and Vietnamese lives, being fought on false pretenses. When the lies of the events surrounding the incident in the Tonkin Gulf became... Read more

Yesterday, the current occupant of the White House was quoted as follows: “If we have learned one thing from the pandemic, it is that I was right.” Yes, that is a direct quote from the President of the United States. Over 71,000 people have now died as a result of COVID-19, and there are recorded over 260,000 confirmed cases of the virus in this country, a number almost surely too low, given the relative lack of testing available throughout the... Read more