Following Jesus in rejecting empire
Years ago, I was in the downtown Eastside of Vancouver, a very troubled corner of North America with some of the highest rates of homelessness and intravenous drug use. I was hanging out with an intentional community that had located themselves in this neighborhood as agents of grace and beauty and change. One night, I…
The world just got a whole lot smaller. Whether you live in Milan, Italy or Moline, Illinois; York, England or New York, New York; Johannesburg, California or Johannesburg, South Africa, we are all now sheltering in place and watching a pandemic sweep the globe. I don’t want to minimize the disparities here. One look at…
Experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic these last few weeks has reminded me of a section of my unpublished novel, Nocturn: The Ethiopian Orthodox. In it I describe the shift that occurs in a population as a disease moves from bubonic form, carried by fleas, to pneumonic form, carried through the air. In it the gap between…
Evangelicalism has degenerated in the US church. Why stay? https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZXhwZXJpZW50aWFsZGlzY2lwbGVzaGlwLmNvbS90aGUtYXJ0LW9mLXZlbm4_Zm9ybWF0PXJzcw&episode=NWI2ZGU5YjdlYzRlYjcwOGM0MDgxZTA4OjVkMGQ5ZWVkN2FlZTQ3MDAwMTU3NTNiZTo1ZTY3YmNiZTc4NDU2MjBkNTY3ZmE3NmU&ved=0CAIQkfYCahcKEwiI4MazypDoAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ&hl=en
I chose into the Christian faith as an adult – well almost. I was 17. Even though I’d been born into a Christian family and had held a genuine fascination with Jesus since childhood, I didn’t actively chose into the faith until the first week or so of my freshman year at Iowa State University.…