“God bless the people of every nation.” That’s what my favorite July 4th shirt says. It was the theme of a July 4 celebration in which I participated several years ago. The quote, I believe, is from David Lamotte. I used to have a bumper sticker that said the same thing. “God bless the people [...]
A letter to my representatives
Also posted at Gathering Voices with The Thoughtful Christian.com To my new congressional representatives: Sen. Al Franken, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and Rep. Collin Peterson, I have recently moved into your district and I thought I would take the time to introduce myself. Though I’ve moved plenty in the past few years, I’ve never written my [...]
Taxing the uninformed
Also posted at Gathering Voices a blog for TheThoughtfulChristian.com The Obamas and Bidens released their tax returns this week. If you were wondering, President Obama made $1.7 million, well down from last year (I guess e-book sales really are hurting authors these days). The Bidens’ income was $379,000, though their charitable giving of 1.4% of their [...]
A Quick Gender Analysis of President Obama’s Libya Speech
This post was supposed to be on President’s Obama lack of inclusive language in his Libya speech last week. After many years of President Bush using “man” to mean “human” and “mankind” to supposedly include women, I had become sick and tired of hearing such male-dominated rhetoric from presidents. So, after I heard President Obama [...]
MPR crosspost: The art of the public invocation
Originally posted as a Commentary here on MPR News To Whom it may concern: the art of the public invocation I think it was in my second week as the new Presbyterian pastor in a rural northwest Minnesota town that I was asked to pray at a public gathering. I received — and promptly accepted [...]
Congress goes to college
At least 32 members of Congress sleep in their congressional offices when they stay in Washington. Here’s a story on Utah’s up-and-comer Jason Chaffetz (who I follow on Twitter and disagree with about 90% of his tweets), re Jason’s cot and underwear washing plans According to TIME though, a “watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and [...]
Praying the headlines: Egypt unrest
Originally posted at Gathering Voices: Faith Conversations from TheThoughtfulChristian.com As the pastor of a small rural church in northwest Minnesota, until recently the only time I mentioned “Egypt” was when reading scripture in worship. We’re situated many miles from a stoplight and thousands of miles from the troubles in the Middle East, but last Sunday in [...]
Playing politics with the Constitution
A progressive pastor friend of mine recently argued that progressive Christianity has done itself a huge disservice by ceding the Bible to conservatives. This friend senses that instead of fighting back against Biblical literalism and out-of-context proof-texting by diving into the Bible, progressives give up too easily and often fail to read the Bible with [...]
“In the quite-likely event of an emergency, remain calm”
Bailouts, breached levees, and pregnant chads, oh my! I’m not much of a retrospective guy, but David Von Drehle’s “2000: A Nation Divided” in TIME a few weeks back has kept me in the mood for some time now. And reading Dave Eggers’ fantastic book Zeitoun this week only drove the nail home. Here’s what [...]
