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Posts from the ‘Culture’ Category

Sep 17

The Shape of Our Hearts

I’ve lost track of the number of articles, podcasts, video clips, etc. I’ve seen over the last few days bearing a headline or title something along the lines of, “Will Charlie Kirk’s death be a turning point for America?” American media, Canadian media, international media (because of course, American culture wars are among their many exports to the rest of the world). I haven’t clicked on many of these links mostly because I think the answer to the question is a rather obvious, “almost certainly not.” Read more

Sep 11

In the Name of Jesus

I had never heard of Charlie Kirk before yesterday. But his assassination is, of course, front page news everywhere today. Another disgusting tragedy, another spasm of violence in culture addicted to violence, another casualty of a toxic political culture and a diseased discursive climate, another outrage to dominate and be weaponized by social media before we collectively yawn and move on to the next outrage. It all feels so utterly wearisome and predictable and inevitable in our fractious, polarized, and distractible times. Read more

Sep 2

2 Comments

On Mental and Spiritual Health

For at least the last few decades, I have regularly encountered a shift in how Christians employ the categories of mental health and spiritual health. I can’t remember precisely when this shift started, sometime in my twenties or thirties probably. Often someone would share some story of a clumsy pastoral interaction where they came to the church with a problem—say trouble in a marriage or a difficult child or abuse of some kind or some traumatic experience that was proving debilitating—and the pastor left the impression that all you really had to do was pray the problem away. Read more

Aug 27

3 Comments

I Guess I Just Have to Try Harder

What do a young man in prison, a senior struggling with cognitive decline, and a global superstar athlete have in common? All three struggle with feeling like they are “enough.” And all three, to varying degrees, feel like the solution to this feeling of “not enoughness” is to work harder, do better, be better. Which is to say that all three—again, to varying degrees—have a hard time with grace. Read more

Aug 13

3 Comments

A Year on a Boat

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I’ve been taking some time this summer to read Scripture in larger chunks than the sermon-sized bites that I’ve grown accustomed to over a decade and a half of regular preaching. I read the gospel of Matthew over a few mornings while on a holiday. This week, it’s the book of Genesis. The first book of the Bible is, of course, a vast sweeping landscape which takes us from the creation of the world to the death of Joseph and the Israelites flight to Egypt. The narrative is rich, the characters are compelling and bewildering and oh-so-very-much-like-us in countless ways. Again, I am finding the experience to be a rewarding and interesting one. Read more

Aug 7

1 Comment

We Will Have Our Moral Meaning

A friend recently sent me an article by Amanda Knox in The Atlantic called “What is Evil?” She’s reflecting on Bryan Kohlberger, the man who stabbed four University of Idaho students to death three years ago. This week, Kohlberger was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. He has shown no hint of remorse, hasn’t offered even one clue as to a motive. He seems like a genuine sociopath, a monster simply bent on violence and destruction come hell or high water. If ever the word “evil” seemed appropriate, it would be here. Read more

Jul 8

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All Things to All People

I couldn’t help but cringe along this morning as I read an article by Giles Fraser on the search for a replacement for Justin Welby as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the head of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion. The piece is ominously titled “Anglicanism’s Poisoned Chalice.” According to Fraser, it’s a job that nobody with any sense would want.

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Jun 14

4 Comments

Mercy is the Way

When you walk the Camino, you hear the same phrase repeatedly. From locals, from fellow pilgrims, from whoever: Bom Caminho (in Portugal) or Buen Camino (in Spain). Literally, these both translate into English as “Good Way.” More colloquially and contextually it means something like “Have a good journey.” It was nice to hear these words and to speak them to others. Read more

Apr 16

Here We Are Now, Entertain (or Train) Us!

Apparently, the kids are turning back to Jesus. That’s a bit of an overstatement, perhaps. We’re not talking about Jesus People 2.0 or mass waves of feverish Pentecostal revivalism (at least not yet). But the data does seem to point to a significant trend. According to a recent Barna survey, Gen Z and Millennials are driving a significant return to Christianity in America (around 10-15 percentage points from 2019 to 2025). A British study pointed to a similar trend, noting that “the proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds who attend church at least monthly has risen from 4% in 2018 to 16% in 2024.” No, the overall numbers are not huge and, yes, statistics and surveys are malleable, but still. Something does seem to be afoot.

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Apr 10

“It’s Been a While Since I’ve Done the Church Thing”

I had a conversation this morning with a young woman in a bad place. Abusive boyfriend, unstable living arrangements, struggling to afford groceries. I offered her a grocery card, my best wishes. Prayer. She looked at me sheepishly at the mention of prayer, meeting my gaze for almost the first time since our conversation began. “Thanks… You know, it’s been a while since I’ve really done the church thing.” “Well, no time like the present,” I said. “You’re always welcome.” She said she’d think about it. A lot of people say they’ll think about it. Read more

Apr 8

4 Comments

Always Thursday Night

We didn’t have a television in our home in my early childhood. I think my parents (wisely) had principled objections to it and so we were left to read books, listen to their music (the Beatles’ “Revolution” may have started a lifelong love affair with distortion guitars!), play ball hockey or ping pong (until this led to warfare with my brother), and probably be bored now and then. I remember drawing pictures and custom designing hockey uniforms and even entire leagues on paper. It’s amazing what you’ll come up with when TV isn’t an option. Read more

Mar 25

90/10

I was in a social context the other day where a few of us were grumbling about 90/10 conversations. You know the kind, right? One person takes up 90% of the conversational space. It’s pretty much one-way traffic. You feel more like you’re being talked at than with. Your 10% contribution mostly involves nodding and emoting at the appropriate times. I was in gift shop in Montana last summer that hawked various knickknacks (coffee mugs, tea towels, greeting cards) containing funny, often irreverent little sayings on them. One of them said: “I’m sorry I slapped you, but it didn’t seem like you’d ever stop talking and I panicked!” I’ve never considered physical violence to end a conversation, but I have had my moments of desperation! Read more

Feb 25

5 Comments

The Monsters

Over the last few days, my commutes have been spent listening to a series on The Rest is History called “Horror in the Congo.” It’s grim stuff, to put it mildly. In my last post I talked about how words like “Nazi” or “Hitler” are often used to refer to a special incontrovertible category of evil. After listening to this series, I wonder if we ought to use “Leopold” (as in the king of Belgium) in a similar way. The savage butchery and myriad cruel hypocrisies, not to mention naked greed and overt racism that defined his ownership of the (ironically named) Congo Free State from 1885-1908 boggles the mind. One is tempted to wonder if Leopold would have ranked up there with Hitler and Stalin in our cultural imaginations were his victims white and literate. But I digress. Read more

Feb 19

4 Comments

“We Are Each a Disaster in Our Own Right”

Words like “Nazi” or “Hitler” are regularly invoked as a kind of test case for any number of things. Claim that God will forgive even the worst offenders? Well, what about Hitler? Argue for some form of universalism (everyone gets saved in the end)? Surely not a Nazi? Talk about how every human being bears the image of God and contains something of a “divine spark” within them? Well, you know. Nazis are the worst of the worst. They’re on the very top of the shelf marked “morally reprehensible”—they’re the category we reach for when we want to argue that there are some people who are beyond the pale. Read more

Feb 5

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Christ Ruins (and Reclaims) Everything

For at least the last year or two, two Englishmen have been fighting in my head. Well, maybe “fighting” is too strong a word. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that my brain has been hosting a “lively discussion” between two visions of what Christianity might be in and for the world in the twenty-first century. These visions are not entirely incompatible with one another; there is significant overlap, to be sure. But they are different enough to cause some tension. And it’s a tension that I feel as one tasked with leading a church in these strange times. Read more

Jan 4

5 Comments

What’s Going On?

So, the year 2025 has arrived with a bang. Literally. Shocking violence and increasingly confusing mayhem in New Orleans and Las Vegas. Two deeply troubled souls lashing out at the world in one last spasm of rage or sadness or nihilism or self-hatred or righteous religious fury or resignation or… well God only knows. These sorts of stories still hold the capacity to shock us (I hope), but they are also steadily taking their place in a long list of very angry people exiting this world in one last destructive conflagration. Read more

Dec 27

The Hunger for a Single Story

Around fifteen years ago, the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie delivered her famous TED Talk called “The Danger of a Single Story.” It was hugely popular and influential. It’s among the more popular TED Talks of all time, approaching nearly 40 million views at the time of this writing. In it, she talks about discussed the problem of reducing human beings and cultures to a single narrative. We are all more complicated than the “single story,” whether that story is what it means to be black or African (in her case) or any of the other identities that we associate with or are defined by. Human beings are complex. Human cultures are complex. A single story rarely tells the whole story. Read more

Dec 23

All In (Sing!)

So here we are at the doorstep of another Christmas. This is a time of year that tends to be drenched with an awful lot of hope and nostalgia and longing and kitschy expectation. The family will be together and the snow will be lightly falling and there will be candles and cheer and lights and the perfect present (always gratefully received) and funny movies and good food and hot chocolate and eggnog (or perhaps something stronger) and wistful smiles and everything will be magnificent. Christmas, perhaps like no other holiday, has a lot to live up to each year. Read more

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