Note: This statement was released today in the US. I was one of the 300+ original signatories. Check it out at: https://acalltochristians.org/ A Call to Christians in a Crisis of Faith and Democracy. Why We Write There are moments that call for repentance and resistance, courage and conviction, faith and fortitude. This is one of […]
A Clarion Call to US Christians
I realized after fourteen months of dumbfounded mainly-silence that I had succumbed to hopelessness about the US, the country that I love and that it was time to snap out of it. There are three problems with hopelessness. One: it closes its eyes to reasons for hope; therefore, in the name of realism it misses
Helpless Hopelessness is Disempowering: And the difference between hope and optimism
Note: I have been giving versions of my talk on democracy since 2022. Call this one version 5.0. It was presented on October 6 at the gorgeous Sacred Heart Cultural Arts Center in Augusta, Georgia. My host was the Progressive Religious Coalition of Augusta, a fine group of public-minded folks in that grand old city. The
Note: I preached this sermon today at Towne View Baptist Church, Kennesaw, Georgia. Text (NRSVue) 15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with
Note: A slightly longer version of this talk was presented on Friday night, 19 September, at a conference in Hamburg, Germany called the Entscheidungschristentum (“Decision Christianity”) Conference. The title in the German program was: “Believers Churches als Auslaufmodell ? – Eine amerikanische Perspektive,” which translates as “Believers Churches as an Obsolete Model? An American Perspective.” INTRODUCTION Greetings
Don’t bury the lede, they say, and so I won’t. Now 63 years old, I write this personal update from the north Cotswolds in England, where we now live part of the year, where I have joined the Church of England, and where I am apprenticing with diocesan leaders on a path toward (non-stipended, very
Plenary Address to Festival of Homiletics, Atlanta, Georgia, May 14, 2025 Note: This is the formal text of my address to the wonderful Festival of Homiletics conference, which gathered over 1400 primarily mainline Protestant church leaders from around the world. I was very struck by the strong response to this message and to a workshop
Proclaiming the Moral Teaching of Jesus
Sermon, Commissioning Service, Mercer University School of Theology, May 9, 2025 Note to Readers: This message reflects the profound challenges that I believe face all ministers of the Gospel at this moment in this context, and the kind of character and faith with which we must meet those challenges. It was presented to the graduates
Convictional. Resistant. Steadfast.
A Sermon on Luke 4:16-30 and Isaiah 61 Note: I wrote this sermon and preached it with (this was a participatory congregation!) the lovely Edgewood Church, in Atlanta, on Sunday, 23 March, the 3rd Sunday of Lent. The Luke 4 text was selected by the pastors of the church. Luke 4:16-30 16 When he came
How Jesus Subverted Nationalist Religion and Almost Got Himself Killed
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went to Munich on September 29, 1938 for a last-ditch peace conference with Adolf Hitler. The issue was Hitler’s demand for the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia as the price for Germany not invading. With the Czech government refused admittance to the conference room within which its survival was being debated, British
Winston Churchill on Appeasement: In Honor and in Defense of Ukraine