We’re sixteen Republican debates into the election season. By November, we’ll have all whipped ourselves into a vitriolic froth and will have convinced ourselves that the very survival of the planet hinged on the result of the...

I’m doing some character research for an upcoming book and have been looking a quartet of characters in Revelation we commonly refer to as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Interpreters generally see the four horsemen as personifications of “conquest”, “war”, “pestilence/...

It was a cold and drizzling Easter Sunday morning, early just before the sun rises, in rural northern Kentucky. I was assisting the local Methodist pastor in leading the community Sunrise Easter Service. Rev. Davenport decided to serve Communion to everyone in attendance at the conclusion of his devotional....

In 1988, I had been a Christian for a couple years, when I first really read Matthew 25, “..when I was hungry you fed me, when I was naked you clothed me…” and James 1:27 “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in...

Today our nation honors the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., a Christian activist who led the civil rights movement using nonviolent means.  He was assassinated for it. And though the civil rights movement continued, and though I believe that history is teleological, lately it doesn’t seem to be moving...

My great state of Washington had an initiative 1107 on the ballot a few weeks ago, which passed resoundingly and as a result, banished sales tax from the important necessities of life: soda, candy, and bottled water. Thus is surely good news for all those living on the edge, who’ll now be able...

Since we returned to the U.S., I have dreaded the constant confrontation that is politics. Many of the friends and family we see every day are quite conservative, and are less than pleased when we admit we don’t like Fox News. This leads to a discussion that concludes with the fact that: a) we...

I will never, if I live to be a hundred, understand the wedding of a particular political party (left or right) with Christianity.  The “religious right” days of the eighties, or the neo-religious right resurgence of the tea party, are both examples of politicians portraying themselves as...

The Senate race in Nevada is a real barnburner. The Democrat, Majority Leader Harry Reid, trailed in the polls before his challenger was determined in the Republican primary. Now that his opponent has a name – Sharron Angle – he’s inched a few points ahead, according to the latest Rasmussen...

There is now a strong and perplexing dichotomy in American Christianity: the Social Justice Christian and the Libertarian Christian. Both have been formed and strengthened by the politics of the last 10 years. They are polars, they wage against each other, yet both ideologies base their belief in...