I invite younger readers to take a look [at my book, Building a Protestant Left] and see if there is anything there for them. Few of the issues that C&C addressed have gone away. Nor have people in left Christian traditions disappeared. (Yes, they are a minority, but we often underestimate how much that has always been true). We can learn from their experience in the current moment.

What follows has more information, in a tighter package, than you’ll hear about Lutherans in many US religion overviews--so let's shoehorn it into my "1000 words or less" series although it slightly overshoots. Knowing more about Lutherans could matter in various ways, including that if you care about Midwestern swing voters or why Minneapolis mobilized against ICE, it might help you.

Hardwired into religious traditions, as part of longstanding sensibilities, are teachings about justice, care for the weak, and attention to the common good: teachings that command nontrivial respect in the public sphere.... Common sense plus the moral legacies of our religious traditions add up to a combined weight that is not trivial. We may not be able to fight a riptide, but if we can fund a war, then surely we can fund a school.

[Note: if you came here on my poems thread, the poem is at the end. Possibly this should be two posts: "Palestine and Wishy-Washy the Short Version," split off from "Palestine and Wishy-Washy the Framing Parts"] A few weeks ago the New York Times found it newsworthy that a group of black ministers spoke out in opposition to US/Israeli atrocities in Gaza. Not all US Christians are pro-right wing Zionism! Yes, it’s worth noticing. The problem is how such reporting is symptoma

I am pleased to share a new English translation—or singable free paraphrase—of an iconic Danish hymn, Dejlig Er Jorden. This is the tune...

This post is cross-published here on Narrative Paths Journal I fielded a query from a University of Tennessee campus newspaper about...

Before I began my previous post, I imagined an introduction to set up a lightly edited version of some notes I prepared for a reporter....

The flagship institution of politically righteous left-wing Protestants is building luxury condominiums on the Upper West Side of Manhattan! It sounds like a bad joke—or at least a perfect opening for haters to recycle their repertoire of insults. On top of this they are working on the construction just outside my window. Literally, workers have been walking around on scaffolding four feet from my bed, waking me up. How can I be defending them?