I wrote last time about the futility of finding God through reason, logic, facts, evidence, doctrine, and so on. To do so assumes that God is “out there” somewhere, so that is where we think we need to look. In contrast to that approach, Elizabeth Brunig, the author of the essay I featured, believes we need to pay attention to our experiences and the feelings they gen...

The Universe’s earliest galaxies viewed by the James Webb Space Telescope

The question “Does God exist?” has been asked and debated, it seems, for as long as humans have been around. Over the past four hundred years or so, the question has centered on whether modern science’s understanding of the universe is incompatible with the idea of God. You would think that would be ple...

American poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019)

I wrote the following after the death of the popular American poet Mary Oliver (1935-2019). Her poetry and her life reflect the most basic themes of Holy Week and their importance in our lives: cross bearing and resurrection. Oliver guides us in how to bear our own crosses, help others with theirs, and find the hope and new life God p...

Recently, a reader observed that I’ve never mentioned “Christian nationalism.” So, I guess it’s time to do so! But to begin, I would say my silence thus far is mostly due to not being sure if it is actually a “thing” or not. For example, a recent survey showed that conservatives are most likely to say they’ve never heard of the term, while most liberals are very famil...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1909-1945)

“Ryan Burge (born 1982) is an American political scientist, statistician, and former pastor,” to quote Wikipedia. Burge has become the nationally recognized expert on demographic and other trends on the American religious scene. He has often been cited in stories about the rise of the “Nones” and the decline of Christian churches generally. Thi...