A few days after the presidential election, I attended a conference where I heard Rev. Lennox Yearwood speak about what he thought lay ahead. He noted that the left still thinks it’s fighting Jim Crow. “But we’re actually fighting his grandson, James R. Crow III,” he told the room. He went on to make the […]
Tag: God
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Earth
Growing up in a Southern, progressive Christian church and going to seminary, we often made fun of the Jonathan Edwards’ style ‘fire and brimstone’ preachers throughout West Tennessee. Their vision of the future and the afterlife was dark and ominous. In hindsight, we should have taken their fiery spirit more seriously. We’re facing a future […]
The sin of empathy
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, prelate of the Episcopal Church had the audacity to do something truly radical recently: she asked a president for mercy. Mercy is not necessarily entirely foreign to this particular president. He showed “mercy” to 1,500 men and women pardoned on his first day in office, some charged with violent crimes, for […]
Art and the Sacred in the Unexpected
Most every concert I’ve ever been to, when the main act starts, the crowd goes wild. Everyone paid for it, everyone anticipated it, everyone is glad it’s finally here. Even when the music was slower, there was always something about that first note that sends the crowd over the edge. There’s one notable exception in […]
Complicit Theologies: the Status Quo Church
I’m saddened and appalled by all that has happened at the Capitol, even more so by what I expect in the coming days and weeks will be horrific revelations that it’s much worse than we currently realize as evidence is already mounting to suggest as much. Saddened, appalled, yes–not shocked. Now comes the harder part: […]
Quarantine, Day 37
Coming out of the Great Depression, one of the Civil Works Administration projects of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal was the construction of a small stretch of road through Bergen County, New Jersey and into lower New York State. It’s maybe one of the most beautiful drives you can take in this part of the […]
Don’t Be Afraid
Walking through the streets of New York City in the rain today, I had a brief moment where I thought I wasn’t in the United States. People have started wearing face masks to protect themselves from COVID-19, the “coronavirus,” and it’s a bit of a jarring display of something that falls somewhere between preparedness and […]
Sister
They say your brother or sister is generally the person you will know longer than any other human being. My sister and I started that off on the right foot. Four years apart, I’m pretty sure the first dozen or so of my life, all we did was bicker. There was the time she pushed […]
On Migration
You may already know the first book of the Bible, Genesis, literally translates, “Beginnings.” The very next book, Exodus, means “mass migration.” We are made. And then, we go. And that story is repeated constantly throughout our holy texts. It’s Adam and Eve banished. It’s Abram’s journey out of his homeland. It’s Joseph sold into […]
Making Sacred Space Where There is None
There’s this moment during a misty rain in New York City where if you look up to the skyline, the familiarity of the buildings you’ve grown accustomed to seeing in the sunshine is lost to the low-hanging clouds. If you squint, you can see one of the taller towers just peering through the fog but […]
