Resistance Is Necessary

Mr. Trump, Mr. Miller, et. al.: I am a long-time liberal, so I have given up on ever convincing you because we share values. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am appealing to you purely on the grounds of your self-interest. There is something to be had in it for you: wealth beyond…

Christ came to church this morning. He looked different than previous pictures I’d seen, but I recognized him. At South Church’s annual Martin Luther King Day service — one of their quarterly series of ecumenical worships between four churches — an old Black man in what amounts to a wheelchair came out and spoke about…

For years now, we’ve been on a kick that we’ve seen before. The kick was dangerous before and gotten more dangerous as time has gone by. In the 1960s, one of Martin Luther King’s teachers at Boston University School of Theology wrote a book called The Religious Revolt Against Reason”. In 2019, we pushed the…

I was just on Twitter and it’s getting thick over there. Both to keep my head clear and remind others what it used to be like, I thought I’d write this down. There are 3 co-equal branches of government: 1) The Executive 2) The Legislative and 3) The Judicial. By “co-equal”, it means each keeps…

I’ve had this “button” for years. It’s always driven me nuts, and it continues to this day. I hated it when I used to hear, “It’s a ________ thing. You wouldn’t understand”. I still hate it, but now I mostly hear it from liberals and members of “the oppressed” (non-White, non-male, not Cis-gendered. In other…

For the last few years, it has become clear that there are different types of political leaders. There are those who relish power. There are those who enjoy the money that comes along with the job. There are those who are good at politics, using words and deals and polls to get what they want.…

Tonight, as the Kurds are left to twist in the wind and Turkey attacks, and as a friend of mine wrote a lovely poem about ministry, I struggle with my pacifism, sort of. I find myself thinking, “What kind of person willingly lets someone get butchered, especially when that person or group has been a…

I have spent the day hearing news report after news report saying that Donald Trump is a racist. Even the people at FOX News seem to agree, Mick Mulvaney notwithstanding. At this point, no one believes that Trump isn’t racist, that his tweets aren’t racist, that his policies aren’t racist. Even those people who go…

When all is said and done, some good may come out of this administration, but only as a by-product and only if we live long enough to learn the lessons, of course. It seems to me that there are two lessons here: one factual, and one moral. The first one, pointed out by the great…

Today, I saw a news article that said the administration was going to try to cut 3.1 million people’s Food Stamps. The idea, said the man who proposed it, is that only the truly needy can get them. This may well be the final battle in the war on the poor. There will be casualties.…