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You’ve heard the narratives about “what all Christians believe.” And you’ve heard many a high-profile pastor speak for all of Christians. He tells you precisely what we all believe, like we’re 3 billion cultists in the world with an identical worldview. We don’t all believe the same stuff. And yet this view of a singular…
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I never got the devil. Satan. I never believed it existed. My earliest memories of Satan were the conflicted and stretched arguments of cartoons and Bible stories in church, none of which made the devil ever seem real. It was like thinking thunder came from God bowling in the clouds or stepping on a crack…
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An Embarrassment of Grace
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10 min read
Jesus sends his disciples out before they’re ready to do the work they don’t understand. A lot like us. Because that’s the work for us to do. Proper 6A | Matthew 9:35-10:23 Some time ago. A few years before seminary, before I preached my first sermon or proclaimed my first gospel, I was getting up…
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Bernie Sanders doesn’t care what you believe about hell. He does care if your beliefs demonize other people. This is the context in which Christian conservatives fell back to seeing persecutions everywhere. Often looking for persecutions precisely when asked to recognize their bias. At a recent confirmation hearing for Russell Vought who was nominated to become…
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A Book of Prayer for Common People
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5 min read
For many, the Book of Common Prayer is a source of continuity and comfort. What they rarely recognize is that it is a radical, world-changing document. Written and updated by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury (1533-1556), the Book of Common Prayer, or BCP was a radical invention formed of a radical time. England, thoroughly enmeshed in another of…
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The failure of rigidity in Christian faith
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8 min read
I went to seminary to find the answers. All of them. To be smart and do the right things. It took longer than it should’ve to see how wrong I was. I had swallowed that ridiculousness whole. Liturgy was uniform and precise. Beliefs were specific and certain. There was a common understanding that went all…
Make a New Normal
