NOTE: In this, my final blog for Phillips Theological Seminary (I retire on January 31 after 29.5 years in theological education and 24.5 at Phillips), I’ve tried to sum up the most important perspectives I’ve formed in the work I’ve been privileged to do for Phillips during the past 3.5 years. My overall calling in being involved in seminary education since 1993 has been the same of the blog: I hope that, when Christians speak on public issues, we have something thoughtful to say. With the blog, I hoped to bring a way of reasoning to a public broader than can attend a graduate seminary. To bo ..read more

With apologies to the author of Job 38:4-30 When your species talks about history, your timeline is too short. Not unimportant but truncated. You’re too focused on yourselves. I need for you to change your timeline and how you see. You and I come from the same Source. Some 14 billion years ago, time and space, matter and antimatter, and energies beyond your powers of imagination exploded and expanded. The “stuff” of you and me began then and there. When some of the materials cooled into stars and planets, I was formed. Several billion years before you evolved, I was formed. No, I did not gener ..read more

Early in my ministry, when the United Methodist Church’s arguments about the place of homosexuals among the clergy were a decade old, I recall there was a young queer person who sought ordination. She did not seem cut out to become a symbol. Whoever she was in her personal and private life soon became irrelevant. She was pulled into the vortex of loud, angry, public debate. In my annual conference (a regional expression of church comprised of all clergy and equal numbers of authorized laity), she became the face of the issue. I can’t image the pressure she felt. She committed suicide. When a p ..read more

As the new calendar year dawns, pundits and journalists often review the top stories of the previous year or predict which will be the big stories of the new year. For such stories I trust the Public Religion Research Institute, the Religion News Service, and The Christian Century. I’m neither reviewing nor predicting. The following are simply religion-in-public matters to which I’ll be paying attention in the new year. In no particular order: Will religious congregations across the theological spectrum become louder in ringing the alarm for the urgency of action to avert catastrophic climate ..read more

Historian David Hollinger argues that liberal, ecumenical, old-mainline Christianity in the U.S. prepared a sizeable part of the population to shift toward more tolerant and accepting attitudes. He credits moderate-to-liberal Protestant Christianity for remarkable social changes in stances toward birth control, women’s roles, race relations, and acceptance of same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ persons. Hollinger’s most recent book, Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became more Conservative and Society More Secular, sits on my desk and awaits the holiday break. (In his previous work, Holling ..read more

Once again, a human-made object takes a picture of the earth from near the moon. Once again, everyone who sees the picture is reminded of how rare the earth is. As far as we can see, whether from a moon capsule or the Webb telescope, we’ve not yet seen another orb with blue seas and green lands. I’m convinced there are others out there and other sentient beings. For God would not be so stingy or stupid as to put all the cosmic eggs for sentient life in one basket. So, given what we know about how rare the earth is, why do the most technologically developed societies on this planet seem so inte ..read more

A Prayer by the Oklahoma Governor, 2022, speaking in front of the state Capitol, “Father, we just claim Oklahoma for you. Every square inch, we claim it for you in the name of Jesus. Father, we can do nothing apart from you. We don’t battle against flesh and blood but against principalities and darkness. And Father, we just come against that, we just loose your will over our state right now in the name of Jesus. We just thank you and we claim Oklahoma for you as the authority that I have as governor and the spiritual authority and the physical authority that you give me. I claim Oklahoma for ..read more

Deception is hardly new. The serpent lied to Eve. Cain lied to God. Laban and Jacob deceived each other so badly they had to set up a cairn as a marker and reminder not to cross into each other’s path. One of the business practices the prophets condemned nearly three millennia ago was using fraudulent scales. Deception is not new, but we are in our day have nearly perfected it. And no one person can even comprehend all the ways our lives rest on lies. No wonder we feel anxious, suspicious, and fearful. Before you get out of bed, you’re lying on a mattress of some sort. Most newer mattresses ar ..read more

From 1977 to 1981, I was a seminary student. From 1993 until the present, I’ve been an educator in graduate theological seminaries. Every level of education has been changed, most radically, since 1977. Here are three of the most significant changes I’ve seen and experienced in seminary life. There are many others, such as accreditation, evaluation, the shift from what we think we’re teaching to what students are learning, expanded staffs to raise endowments, what “diversity” means and who it includes and excludes, faculty composition and recruitment and institutional expectations, what are th ..read more

With apologies to the author of Job 38:4-30 When your species talks about history, your timeline is too short. Not unimportant but truncated. You’re too focused on yourselves. I need for you to change your timeline and how you see. You and I come from the same Source. Some 14 billion years ago, time and space, matter and antimatter, and energies beyond your powers of imagination exploded and expanded. The “stuff” of you and me began then and there. When some of the materials cooled into stars and planets, I was formed. Several billion years before you evolved, I was formed. No, I did not gener ..read more