No, Love Does Not Require Unity.

I’ve not experienced a time that felt more divided. Pick the area of discourse, and people are forming camps, drawing lines of who is in and who is out, and naming the folks on the other side of the line as enemies. The emotional temperature seems to ping-pong between frustration and rage. In this environment, […]

We are being gathered. (Unexpected encouragement amidst the hate mail.)

Well, this past week has been a crazy emotional ride! Last week I sent out an email update. As always, the email included a link to my latest blog and podcast. It also started with an open letter to folks who follow my writing online. I thought I’d get hate mail. (Or, maybe more accurately, […]

76% (And why that number guts me).

In the days following the recent election, I saw a graph that stunned me. I cannot get it out of my head. It showed a statistical breakdown of who voted for which candidate from exit poll data, suggesting that 76% of this particular group voted to re-elect the incumbent. 76%. Numbers that high mean that […]

An open letter in a time of increasing fear among Christians

My dearest Christian siblings, I’ve been noticing us, seeing our white knuckles and increasingly strident declarations. Some among us are spending a lot of time defining and announcing who the one true Christians are. Some are shouting about liberal slippery slopes. Others are equally angry about conservative gate-keepers. An awfully large contingent is certain that […]

Is Jesus really your way? (A question & A Book Recommendation.)

When congresspeople get to Washington, one of the first tasks in their governing work is receiving their committee assignments. There are more than fifty committees that do the work of investigating, researching, refining, and writing legislation. One of these committees is the Ways and Means Committee, arguably the most important committee in congress. It’s more […]

An Open Letter to Christians in Election Season

Dear Christian, The election cycle is upon us. Pundits and partisans are powering up for another opportunity to seize the political football. 50% of self-identified Christians vote, some quite loudly, with a sense that this is the chance to “make a difference in the culture” by getting the right people in places of power. Before the […]

I Quit the Culture War

(I wrote this in 2012, but the situation has only gotten worse. I feel even more strongly than I did then.) It’s an election year, apparently.  I’ve noticed the sprouting yard signs and the increasing emotional urgency in political conversations.  The internets buzz with people making their case and stomping their virtual feet. As a […]