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Fracking & A Fractured Land
The Washington County Fair in 2010 should have been unalloyed joy for Stacey Haney and her family. After all, Haney’s 14-year-old son, Harley, and his goat, Boots, took the Grand Champion Showmanship award. Paige, her 11-year-old daughter, got awards for her two rabbits, Pepsi & Phantom, and for her Mexi-SPAM Mac and Cheese entry in →
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No One’s Anything: A Reflection on Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens for a Reason
Peter Surran, is a pastor, teacher, EMT, building inspector, and a good friend. He’s also a heck of a writer. I’ve been wanting to get him on the blog for awhile and finally roped him in with a review of Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens For a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved. Enjoy: I bustled into my →
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Why We Don’t Care About ‘The National Water Situation’
“For all my love of rivers, ‘our nation’s rivers’ have not moved me once. The rivers that move me are those I’ve fished, canoed, slept beside, lived on, nearly drowned in, dreamed about, sipped tea and wine by, taught my kids to swim in, pulled a thousand fish from, fought and fought to defend. I’ve →
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A Quick Reminder of Why Wesley Still Matters
John Wesley has been claimed by so many different heirs and used to so many and varied ends that it is refreshing to have someone like Hal Knight come along and point us back to the source. John Wesley: Optimist of Grace, his new entry in the Cascade Companions series designed for nonspecialist readers, comes →
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Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor: Yossi Klein Halevi’s Call Across the Wall
I don’t talk much on this blog about Palestine and Israel, even though you’ll see a link here to my 2014 book, A Space for Peace in the Holy Land: Listening to Modern Israel and Palestine. That’s partly due to the fact that the commitment of this site is to understanding rural life and ministry, →
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Normal is How America Got This Way: A Review of The View from Flyover Country
“The absence of complaining should be taken as a sign that something is rotting in a society,” Sarah Kendzior says. “Complaining is beautiful. Complaining should be encouraged. Complaining means you have a chance.” (225) Sometimes it takes a critic to get things to change, and Kendzior is such a critic. Her book, The View from →
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Han Solo and the Myth of the Heroic Leader
There’s no doubt that a charismatic leader can have a big impact on the size of a congregation. It’s what most churches ask for when I go around doing consultations about the missional needs of the congregation as they prepare for a new pastoral appointment. “If we had somebody who would knock on doors and →
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Musicals, Monuments, and Historical Optimism: The Ed Ayers Interview concludes
Is there reason, as a historian, to be an optimist? Edward Ayers, among other things the co-host of the BackStory podcast and radio program, narrates a troubled chapter of American history in his latest book, The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America. In the first two segments →
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Doughfaces, Denzel & Racing against Racism: The Ed Ayers Interview, Part 2 of 3
Think the racial narratives of American political discourse are bad today? As Edward Ayers reveals in his latest book, The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America, it’s nothing new and it’s been worse. In the second part of my interview with my former professor, we talk about racial narratives →
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The Vicious State of Politics…Then: Ed Ayers on Heartlands-part 1 of 3
Edward Ayers is not only one of the nation’s preeminent interpreters of American History, he is a consummate storyteller and educator. Ayers is the Tucker Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and president emeritus at the University of Richmond. His latest book, The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America won →
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Heartlands 