Congregationalism & Churches
After losing my father as a child, I learned to see the Incarnation as my true lineage. As a kid, I loved combing through the Christmas cards my family received each year. In the days before social media, those annual pictures in the mailbox helped me feel connected to long-distance friends and family. After my… Read More
The centuries-old tradition has returned to community theaters after a pandemic hiatus. If you attend this year’s performance of Handel’s Messiah by the Des Moines Community Orchestra, you’ll walk into the sanctuary of Grace United Methodist Church and notice the orchestra, of course. But there’s no choir. Isn’t Messiah famous for the exhilarating “Hallelujah” chorus?… Read More
It’s not the threat of divine surveillance but the extension of divine love that changes our hearts. Around this time of year, some people argue about whether the baristas at their local coffee franchises should say “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas.” Others argue about whether their churches should hang Christmas wreaths before the end of… Read More
Why the Christian worldview is the foundation of the method and spirit of science. In my university teaching experience, my Chinese students often tell me, “From the very start of our elementary school, we have been taught to ‘believe in science.’” This is accepted even in the West. Many people adopt a view shared by… Read More
The words I say every Sunday guide me toward gratefulness. I grew up doing sword drills. The Sunday school teacher or youth group leader would yell out a passage, chapter and verse, and we would scramble to find it first. It was important to the churches I grew up in and the evangelical subculture I… Read More
A serious drug arrest had darkened my horizon. But a sweet, soft voice whispered words of hope. It was March 13, 1986, a snowy Thursday night. I was all alone and getting high. But I had also gotten drunk on fantasies of somehow becoming a drug kingpin at age 18. Earlier that night, I had… Read More
Those who lived through the racially motivated attacks are focusing on the local to see progress. Driving to the East Side of Buffalo, to the Tops grocery store, you take “the 33,” a highway built in the 1950s and 1960s that wiped out a Frederick Law Olmsted–designed green space and cut through a Black neighborhood.… Read More
Prayed-for midterm “red wave” fails to materialize. Mayra Flores thought the full moon, which looked red as it passed through the Earth’s shadow in the early hours of Election Day, was a good sign. The Latina Republican who declared she was “taking Jesus to the halls of Congress” when she won a special election in… Read More