Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

  • On Saturday, a bishop of the church rejected the authority of the Episcopal Church. The next morning, scripture rebuked him. Of course, nobody thinks this started on Saturday. We’ve been fighting about sex for decades. But Saturday, something new happened. Bishop William Love, as The Episcopal Bishop of Albany, you wrote a pastoral letter to…

  • Jesus doesn’t simply criticize the priests for their hubris, he exposes the whole system for its corruption, exploitation, and rejection of the poor. of poverty and hubris in the Temple Proper 27B  |  Mark 12:38-44 Less than a week after starting at my first congregation out of seminary, I went to my first clericus—a meeting of…

  • Rethink Voting

    Voting in the United States looks nothing like the open, efficient, and fair rhetoric we use to describe it. It’s time we changed that. I looked up the closest polling place on my phone. Then drove to it. The door was locked. I looked it up again. The location was right. It was clearly the…

  • There’s a certain kind of bizarro argument we put up with. An intentional deception which claims we’re all responsible for our demise. They’re wrong. I honestly couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was like buying a copy of Superman and finding the issue is really about Bizarro. Women should leave the dirty world of…

  • Love Rising

    In Mark 10:46-52, Jesus is interrupted on his journey to Jerusalem. But this final moment embodies the discipleship journey itself. In Bartimaeus, we have the true disciple and a vision of hope Proper 25B | Mark 10:46-52 If we just cracked open our Bibles to this passage in Mark, I think we’d be excused if…

  • We hide the truth behind violence and blind justifications. And yet our fears make the danger all the greater for those seeking the truth. Reading this morning that two more pipe bombs were prevented from being delivered to prominent Democrats, media, and civilians chills me to the bone. It leaves me fearful and confused; frustrated…