Thanks, God…We’ll Take It From Here
Jesus taught his followers how to live faithfully through trouble, discomfort and cultural uncertainty. American conservative Christianity increasingly treats those conditions as evidence that Christians have failed to acquire enough political power.
Album in the Key of Me: Breakfast in America
I stumbled across someone hearing Supertramp’s Breakfast in America for the first time and unexpectedly rediscovered questions I had nearly forgotten.
Decades later, “The Logical Song,” “Take the Long Way Home” and “Lord Is It Mine” sound less like old favorites and more like an album that was asking some of my questions before I knew how to ask them.
The Same Right to Be Wrong About God
You don’t have to believe your Muslim neighbor is right about God to believe he has exactly the same right to be wrong about God that you do.
When religious disagreement becomes an argument about who belongs in America, we’ve crossed an important line.
I Knew the Answer Before I Knew There Was a Question
I knew Israel became a nation in 1948 before I was ten years old. I knew because I was taught that it mattered to biblical prophecy.
Decades later, the story of a Palestinian olive farmer has me reconsidering not Israel’s right to exist, but the theology that taught me whose suffering I was supposed to see and whose cruelty I was supposed to excuse.
The Questions We Stop Asking
Watching The Godfather reminded me that our lives may be shaped less by the answers we defend than by the questions we continue to ask.
Growth begins when we refuse to let curiosity die.
You Can’t Claim Scripture and Cherry-Pick It Too
When Paul is wielded to demand lifelong celibacy from LGBTQ people but quietly shelved when his teachings about singleness become personally inconvenient, something important gets revealed — not about scripture, but about how it’s being used.
This post is about the pattern I keep seeing in evangelical spaces: the moment you name the inconsistency, you stop being a truth-seeker and start being a threat.
That’s not discernment. It’s deflection. And it’s one of my deepest tensions with American Christianity today.
Even Superman Let the Atheist Stay in the Room
A 1950s game show host — the original voice of Superman, no less — let an actual atheist crash his college Bible study for a few years. Turns out that’s more biblically sound than “guard your heart” ever was.
Happy 4th: “Christian Nation” and Other Fairy Tales
If early America could call itself a “Christian nation,” it’s partly because Native religions were erased, enslaved Africans weren’t counted as fully human, and Muslims, Hindus, and others were kept an ocean away.
New on the blog: “Christian Nation” And Other July 4 Bedtime Stories—a wry, pointed look at founding documents, Deists, Baptists, and why the Constitution never made “Christian nation” our official status.
Are the Gates of Hell Prevailing?
When Jesus promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against his ekklesia, was he guaranteeing the survival of religious institutions—or something far more enduring?
A reflection on faith, power, institutional Christianity, and the difference between preserving a movement and preserving an organization.
Handing the Keys to Aviva’s Generation
Sometimes the most meaningful questions begin in the most ordinary places. A Facebook ad for laundry detergent prompted me to think about stewardship — not just of money, but of the world we’ll eventually hand over to our grandchildren. This isn’t a post about detergent. It’s about legacy.