“A Migrant Syrian was my Father” (Deut 26:5)
Broadly speaking, advocates engaged in the contemporary debate surrounding US immigration and border control issues represent two camps divided over whether the determinative factors shaping policy involve protecting the interests of US citizens or meeting the needs of refugees fleeing poverty and violence. Proponents of the former Continue reading Immigration Policy: Legality and Morality
“The one persecuting us then, now preaches the faith he destroyed” (Gal 1:23)
Listening to the current public debate about the proper course of action to be taken by or regarding the governor and the attorney general of Virginia, both of whom admit to having worn black-face in the 1980’s, I am struck by a failure to examine the situation in terms of the complex history of white culture in the South in the era immediately following the huge Continue reading On Wasting an Opportunity to Learn
I, Too, Don’t Trust “Organized Religion”
By all accounts, we are well into a cultural period defined in part by the decreasing importance of religion in peoples’ lives. We hear and read almost daily about the millennial generation’s a-religiosity, the so-called “nones,” and those who profess spirituality without religion. People discount and decry “organized religion” with a tone of contempt. After all, Continue reading The “Nones” and I Have Something in Common
“Some speak rashly like thrusting with the sword, but the tongue of the wise heals” (Prov 12:18, my trans.)
Words can cut and wound. Words are groupings of sounds that represent ideas, actions, things, relationships. The aggregate sounds, themselves, have no essential “meaning.” They are conventions whose representations are tacitly agreed upon by native speakers of a given language. A given aggregation of sounds may, therefore, represent entirely different concepts in two distinct Continue reading Words that Cut
For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. (Deut 30:11-14 RSV)
This summer, I have been blogging about the harm done by propagating misinterpretations of scripture. In most cases, the scripture passages in question have at least been tricky enough to open the door for such misinterpretation – although not enough to excuse it. Recent events at Charlottesville, just a few miles to the west of my Continue reading Plain Language is Difficult to Misinterpret, but Easy to Ignore
And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it upon both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father’s nakedness. When Noah Continue reading The Curse of Ham: An Admonitory Case-Study in Misreading Scripture
A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. Eccl 1:4 RSV
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was born in February of 1957, when the union still had only forty-eight states, three years after the US Supreme Court handed down the historic Brown v. Board of Education (347 U.S. 483), and just a few months before the first nine black students enrolled in Little Rock Arkansas schools implementing the ruling. Local sit-in campaigns began at a Woolworth Continue reading Tireless Exertions
The concept of “Christian values” is playing a prominent role in the public arena today, but my Facebook® feed lately suggests very little agreement among those who call themselves Christian concerning the identification of these values or the definition of them individually. No one should wonder that people outside the church view it with suspicion Continue reading Hermeneutics, Consistency, and “Christian Values”
Saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace – Jer 8:11
Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount with nine “Beatitudes” that readers often unfortunately reduce to platitudes. The seventh, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” for example, can sound like a call to passivity and placidity: “Blessed are those who accept life with serenity, remaining calm, preserving calm, spreading calm.” Both the context and Continue reading “Blessed are the peacemakers” – Matt 5:9
Eph 4:26 (Ps 4:5 [4])
My parents had a mixed marriage of sorts. My mother had Quaker and strict Methodist heritage; my father was (still is, he would say) a United States Marine. Mother taught me that I should avoid conflict, bear insult and injury with quiet grace, and, above all else, maintain control of my temper. In her view, anger was always and only as dangerous and Continue reading “Be Angry and Sin Not”