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What Ben Affleck Should Have Said to Bill Maher
Dear Bill Maher, I know you aren’t trying to condemn a whole particular religion. But you actually like condemning religion. You’ve done it before. So when you say it’s about “the ideas” rather than the people, I don’t buy it. The argument you made last week, and again this week, is based not on the ideas,…
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I Am Not Your Father: the challenge of the postmodern priesthood
As a kid, I don’t remember my Dad being called Father Tom. That doesn’t mean there weren’t quite a few people who did. Or used the more proper Fr. Downs. Sometimes it was Pastor, Preacher, or the grammatically inappropriate Reverend. Most of my life, as I try to recall it, my Dad went by his…
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Can a tire swing not be made from a tire?
My daughter and I went to a park in Marquette, Michigan last week. Wood play scape, swings, everything. I was drawn to this blue tire swing. When I got there, I discovered it isn’t a tire swing. It is a round swing of molded plastic that looks like a tire swing. But it can’t be.…
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Focus on the Body
The body of Michael Brown lay in the street for over four hours. Nearly every conversation I have had or story I’ve consumed about Michael Brown has focused on the circumstances or the politics surrounding his death. We have focused on what led up to the shooting, about the character, the police, the press, the…
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What war on faith actually looks like in America
You might be under the impression that there is some kind of war on faith in our country. From the talk of many Christians, one could be easily confused by the annual declaration of a War on Christmas and the recent cries for religious liberty from those seeking to diminish ours. You may think there is some…
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From Ferguson to the Washington Football Team
The one thing that can describe everything in my Facebook feed today is this: all of our news right now involves victims of racism. We can call it something else, because we white folks want to feel better about ourselves than we deserve to feel, but systemic racism is the source of everything right now.…
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When evolution begins and our Civil War ends
There is something fitting that this date in history would be momentous. That August 20th would, in 1858 usher in the modern world and eight years later close our bloodiest chapter. Charles Darwin’s The Origin of the Species was published 156 years ago today. The work is credited, as we know, with the birth and…