Ten and Some Change

Here’s the deal: Sister Erika Haub over at The Margins tagged me the other day. It’s an honor to be included on her list of “excellent or subversive” blogs—though I’m not sure which category I fall under. I usually run the other way on stuff like this, but I decided this could be an excuse [...]

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Wright and Wrong

Okay, just for the record, I have a problem with the glee Jeremiah Wright seems to be taking in responding to his critics during his current comeback tour. While entertaining and full of truthful nuggets, the reckless and arrogant tone of Wright’s recent speeches (particularly his appearance at the National Press Club yesterday) only serve [...]

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The Jeremiah Wright Interview

Watching Bill Moyers’s interview with Jeremiah Wright last night on PBS, I wondered if the media would latch on to sound bites from this broadcast the way they did the snippets from those now-infamous sermons that established Wright as an anti-American nut job. Of course, without Wright we wouldn’t have gotten Barack Obama’s brilliant Philadelphia [...]

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What’s in a (Church) Name?

Last week, Charisma published a provocative online commentary by editor Lee Grady. Lee is a bold analyzer of Christian culture and one of my former racquetball partners back when I lived in Florida in the late ’90s. In his April 16 column, “Tired Labels and Worn-out Wineskins,” Lee urges Christian leaders to reconsider the bewildering [...]

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What I Discovered at Calvin

On Sunday I returned from the Calvin College Festival of Faith & Writing. What a great event! If you love books, writing, poetry, theology, the arts, intellectual engagement, etc., you’ll dig this biennial conference. I had the privilege of doing one solo presentation about my book, and I took part in two panel discussions–”Writing Toward [...]

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When Jesse Was King

 
The Root just posted a thoughtful piece on the diminished relevance of Jesse Jackson. The writer, Marjorie Valbrun, ponders the fact that, though Jackson was present on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel during Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder, he was strangely absent from the media’s recent commemoration of the 40th anniversary of King’s death. “Perhaps it [...]

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Please Keep Praying

 A couple months back, I requested prayer for my friends Leslie and Tyson Aschliman. Leslie had been recovering well from her latest surgery, but now there’s another twist of uncertainty. Please visit the Aschlimans’ blog, Leslie’s Journey, for the latest information. Just want to ask you, again, to remember this family in prayer. Thank you.
UPDATE: Thanks [...]

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Leaving Kids Alone

Last week I was intrigued by the case of Lenore Skenazy. Skenazy equipped her 9-year-old son with a map, a subway card, and 20 bucks, then dropped him off at a New York department store to find his way home by himself. Skenazy wrote about this in The New York Sun and promptly heard it [...]

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Coming Soon: UrbanFaith.com

Okay, here’s a shameless plug for one of the projects I’ve been working on in my new job at Urban Ministries, Inc. The project is a new blog and online community for those interested in stuff related to urban ministry, racial reconciliation, contemporary culture, and more. The name of the site is UrbanFaith.com, and we [...]

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The End of the Olympics?

Any strong opinions out there about the upcoming Summer Olympics in Beijing? It’s been fascinating to watch the chaotic journey of the Olympic torch, how it’s been forced to take unexpected detours around the various protest rallies. Consequently, the flame’s relay through San Francisco earlier this week turned into a farce. The protests, of course, [...]

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