Tag: politics
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The Politics of Accountability
FaithLink, the faith and currents event curriculum of the United Methodist Publishing House, just published its final issue. I’ll have more reflections on the loss of this venerable resource in a later post, but here’s a link to the essay from that last issue, which was picked up by Ministry Matters. After 20-some years writing…
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Dispatch from the Age of Idolatry
We live in the Age of Idolatry. If you want the bill of particulars, I’ve got it, but it does no good to rehearse the many ways that we have discovered gods who are not God since few of us will own up to such heresy. Idolators are always the other guys. And if I…
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Is There Anything to Say After El Paso?
I wasn’t preaching last Sunday so I didn’t face the decision that most preachers entertained that morning: Do I say something about the violence and death? This time it had happened in El Paso and Dayton, but we have a long list of American cities and schools that now have the words “hosted a mass…
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Stirring, Terrifying, Inspiring, Troubling—Yeah, That’s America
The first thing I note about Jill Lepore’s new one-volume history of the United States is how out of style it is. In an age of disintegrating consensus and competing truths, who would dare to attempt a comprehensive narrative of our national story? Fortunately, Jill Lepore would and the result is a book you’ll surely…
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How to Get Over the Election – 2018 Edition
We went to the polls. We voted for change or not. We resisted or didn’t. And in the end, we remain divided. One pundit I heard this morning said that the most profound and confounding divide in America is the rural-urban/suburban split. As a site begun after the 2016 elections and devoted to understanding the…
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Still Kinda In Kansas: Talking Politics with Robert Wuthnow, Part 1 of 3
Robert Wuthnow is that rare academic who still keeps a foot in the heartlands. Wuthnow is a respected Professor of Social Sciences at Princeton University but he’s as apt to talk to you about his native Kansas as he is the cultural capitals of DC and New York. I caught up with Wuthnow a few…
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Why You Need to Know What’s Happening on God’s Island
Earl Swift spent the better part of a year on Tangier Island and grew to love the people and the culture of the place. But when he wrote about the experience for his new book, his takeaway was not subtle. It’s there in the title. He believes the island is not long for this world.…
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There’s Something Still the Matter with Kansas: Thomas Frank and a Sinking Society
Thomas Frank is the kind of writer who gets trotted out when the national media wants to cast its distracted gaze on the hinterlands. It helped that he wrote a book a decade and more back about his home state titled What’s the Matter with Kansas? After the 2016 election a whole lot of pundits…
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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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Jeff Sessions and the Things Church Trials Can’t Do
Church trials don’t create community; they create tribes. And that’s got me concerned for The United Methodist Church. Some 640 United Methodists recently lodged a formal complaint against the Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions, who is a United Methodist with membership in a Mobile, Alabama church. Though it is almost so rare…
Heartlands 