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Posts from the ‘Politics’ Category

Apr 16

3 Comments

Who Else Will Put the Stones Down?

On Sunday morning, a few of us were going through some last-minute details in preparation for the service. Among these, was the addition of a slide to be projected during the sermon. The person who had requested the slide had it ready to go on a USB drive and was going to deliver it to the people responsible for making sure such things happen. I couldn’t help but notice that the USB drive had the logo of a certain political party on it. I made some offhand comment about it. This led to a bit of harmless political banter. “Better not use that drive when so-and-so is running the tech,” one person said with a wink. “Yeah, but other-so-and-so would love it” said someone else.  And so and so forth. It was a light moment of brevity before worship, perhaps even an unwitting acknowledgement that even though we don’t all see things the same way politically, we can still come together in worship. Read more

Mar 28

12 Comments

We Do Not Want to Understand Each Other

I had never heard of Threads before I opened my computer this morning and read an article about it in The New York Times. Evidently, Threads is (or was designed to be) an un-Twitter, er, I mean an un-X or… Whatever. It was to be a “safe space” from the evils of Elon Musk and the festering cesspit of rancour and ignorance and misinformation and disinformation and tribalistic stupidity that he had let loose in the world. Because obviously Twitter was such a peaceful playground of mutuality and rational benevolence before Musk sent it straight to hell. Read more

Mar 26

6 Comments

Our Selves and Our God

What kind of selves do we need to be to live in harmony with others?

I came across this question in a recent interview with Yale theologian Miroslav Volf. The context for the question was the endlessly discussed and analyzed “polarization” that defines our cultural moment. But the question extends far beyond the culture wars or the toxicity of social media or the relentless politicizing of everyday life. It’s the kind of question we should always be asking, I think. And yet so few of us give even a passing thought to the “kinds of selves” we are becoming through the habits and disciplines (or not) that we are daily cultivating. Read more

Feb 27

6 Comments

Our Despair Might Say More About Us Than it Does About Reality

As I’ve mentioned before, over the last six years or so, I have devoted my sermons between Epiphany and Lent to questions of faith asked by members of our congregation. These can range from questions about specific biblical texts, to theological issues, to how faith intersects with this or that social issue. Sometimes I get only a few questions, sometimes I get so many that I have to extend the series. It’s a series that I find both enjoyable and challenging. The preacher always tends to approach the task with his or her own questions buzzing in the background. It’s always fascinating to take what’s on other people’s minds as my starting point. Read more

Feb 21

5 Comments

On the Impossibility of Going Backwards

I remember the first time I saw the image to my left. It was almost exactly eight years ago on my first of two learning tours to the West Bank and Israel. On both tours, we visited the Aida refugee camp in between Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and Jerusalem. On both occasions we paused at the gate and pondered this haunting image of a giant key. The symbolism was explained to us. Many families in this camp still have the keys to the homes from which they fled or were forcibly displaced during one of the wars that attended the founding of the nation of Israel. The key is a symbol of the memory of this trauma and of the hope that they will one day return. Read more

Jan 3

7 Comments

In Search of a Mea Culpa

So, Harvard president Claudine Gay has resigned. This has felt inevitable pretty much from the moment she and two of her Ivy League colleagues couldn’t bring themselves to offer an unambiguous response to the question of whether or not calling for the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment in the wake of October 7. It felt like even more of a foregone conclusion after evidence of multiple instances of plagiarism in her published work began to surface. Read more

Nov 14

4 Comments

Tuesday Miscellany: Wars and Rumours

I sat down in my study this morning in a bit of a state, a bunch of things belligerently crashing around in my head. So, I decided to try to give them some shape. Or at least to let them out. It gets crowded and unruly in there.

***

Paul Kingsnorth is quickly taking up residence in my category of “people who I’ll read anything they write and listen to anything they say.” I’m sure he’ll be delighted to learn this—it’s a very exclusive category. His 2021 article “The Cross and the Machine” is one of my favourite conversion stories ever. His path has wound through the bored religious apathy of childhood, a more determined atheism in young adulthood, a deep love of ecology and environmental activism, Zen Buddhism, Wiccan paganism, and pretty much anything else he could take for a spin. Read more

Oct 25

8 Comments

On Polarization

I have always been a peacemaker of sorts. Whenever I take one of those Enneagram or Myers Briggs or DISC tests (which I find to be of dubious value, truth be told), I usually land in whatever category they have for peacemaker-ish people. The positive spin on this is that I genuinely do long for peace — between people, families, churches, nations, etc. The less positive spin is that I just hate conflict, like to be liked, and prefer being comfortable to wading into the discomfort of generative conflict. It’s not particularly flattering to admit this, but, well, the truth isn’t always flattering. Read more

Oct 13

4 Comments

On the Failures of Words

Like so many, I have spent large portions of this week marinating in media about the events that have transpired in Israel and Gaza over the last six days. What does one even say at the sight of such scenes, such images, such abject evil and depravity? Perhaps the best thing would be to say nothing. Especially those of us so far removed from things, historically and politically. What need does the world have for so many opinions incubated mostly in ignorance or even of empathy divorced from any kind of experiential connection to the land, its history, its suffering, its people? And yet, silence, too, speaks. I have written about Palestinian suffering in the past. Symmetry, if nothing else, would seem to demand a few words about Israeli suffering. Read more

Oct 10

2 Comments

Our Soul Has Had More Than Its Fill

Christians have an odd relationship with the Hebrew Bible. We call it the “Old Testament” (which is vaguely condescending), and we embrace the sacred texts of the Jewish people as our own. We transpose words originally written by and for a specific people into more a more personal key. We call their Psalms the “prayerbook of the church” and we use them as such. We claim so many of their words as our own because we are convinced that Jesus is the fulfillment of their promise. This is an audacious claim and we should never forget this. Read more

Oct 4

9 Comments

“The Data Present Some Uncomfortable Realities”

My wife and I recently found ourselves at a function where we were seated with a young couple from Zimbabwe. They had met in Canada where they both came to study. They had completed their studies and were now young professionals in a large Canadian city. My wife is relentlessly curious and a good asker of questions. And she asked plenty throughout the dinner. This young couple’s story was a fascinating one in many ways, not least because it was told with such evident joy. Read more

Sep 12

22 Comments

Men Without Fingers

I’ll never forget the first time it happened. One of my tasks at the jail is to connect with inmates seeking one-on-one meetings. Sometimes these are people who won’t (or can’t) come to the regular chapels, so I’ve never met them before. When I introduce myself, I always try to very deliberately make eye contact, refer to them by name, and shake their hands. So much of life in jail is impersonal and dehumanizing. Any little gesture to counter this feels worth it to me. And so, I was very consciously looking this man in the eye when we shook hands. But something felt off. I looked down and was shocked to discover that he only had two out of ten fingers. I was shaking a palm and a few stumps. Read more

Sep 6

6 Comments

Never to Return?

This morning, I read the latest analysis of the “dechurching” of America in The Atlantic (yes, it’s about America, but, as always, the trends are applicable throughout much of the West). “What happens when Americans stop going to church?” Daniel Williams asks. Well, broadly speaking, they become more polarized and politicized. But they also don’t tend to become atheists, agnostics, or even necessarily “nones” (although this last category is indeed growing). They tend to hang on to at least some version of Christian belief, but often a politically distorted version. And, absent the church, a largely self-referential one that reinforces their own views. Read more

Aug 15

6 Comments

We Might Need God to be Less Awful People

I talk to people nearly every day who find our cultural moment simultaneously bewildering and terrifying. The crumbling of institutions and moral norms. The shattering of public trust (accelerated by, but not limited to the pandemic and its discontents). The rising cost of housing and the fear that children and grandchildren will never be able to attain something even approximating their own. The hyper-polarization and politicization of nearly everything. The “slobification” of society. Increasing rates of crime and poverty. And, of course, the endlessly analyzed and oft-discussed skyrocketing rates of addiction, anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide. The overall picture is not a pretty one. Read more

Jun 20

6 Comments

Our Sense of Self

I recently received an email from someone who had concerns about various SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) initiatives being implemented in the school system where they worked. This person had strong convictions on the matter but expressed something bordering on helplessness when it comes to how to wade into an arena where it seems like there are landmines all around, where it seems virtually impossible to have a sane and respectful conversation that does not immediately descend into polarized tribalism and overheated rhetoric. “Well, join the club” I felt like saying. Read more

Jun 15

5 Comments

On (Actual) Diversity and the Changing Face of Christianity

To live in the post-Christian, postmodern West is to live amidst a rather bewildering confluence of competing identities and pieties. We hear endless talk of the importance of honouring and respecting diversity in the context of pluralism, but we often seem to have no idea how to actually do this well. We’re pretty cool with diversity when it comes to race and sexuality and gender, but not so much when it comes to diversity of thought. This leads to a great deal of confusion and no small amount of incoherence in our public discourse. Read more

Mar 28

37 Comments

On the Banishing of Shadows

I have had a number of conversations recently about the deep sadness that seems to have settled over many in the West, particularly the young. These conversations have been with people who would represent the full breadth of the racial, socioeconomic, political and ideological spectrum. Often, they are parents of teenagers and/or young adults. It’s a familiar litany by now. Anxiety, depression, addiction, mental illness, suicidal ideation and self-harm, deaths of despair. A general rootlessness and purposeless drifting. Listless scrolling and binging on junk entertainment rather than engaging with the world. It’s a well-worn road by now. Read more

Jan 11

2 Comments

Our Loneliness Has a Secular Shape

The topic of loneliness came up at a breakfast meeting this morning. This is the devastating norm for Western cultures these days. Anxiety, depression, addiction, bitter cynicism, yes, all these things are rampant. But loneliness and social isolation seem to be the common thread that runs through the despair of our cultural moment. I see this nearly every day in my work as a pastor and as a prison chaplain. Read more

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