Chamber Music Republics
This July we have once again received a special gift of music in our spacious and resonant sanctuary from the Chamber Music Society of the Carolinas. Led by J and …
Theo of Golden
I have just finished reading Theo of Golden: A Novel, by Allen Levi (Atria, 2025). Theo is an old man who arrives quietly in a small mid-Georgia city for a late-life sojourn …
The American Revolution
We just finished watching the PBS 12-hour documentary on The American Revolution, by Ken Burns and his colleagues. I urge everyone to view it and talk about it with others, regardless …
Courthouse Protest
Like millions of other Americans I have been spending an hour each week lifting a sign of protest against the tyrannical actions of the Trump administration. Locally, this takes the …
A Declaration of Political Liberty
My “Prayer for the Republic” (February 8, 2025) is an expression of what we might call a revival of public piety. For too long the symbols, rituals, and writings of …
Pray for the Republic
We pray for the republic where each voice is heard speaking freely from the heart, where each ear is bent upon the task of understanding, where the stranger finds a …
Bishops, Kings, and Tyrants
On January 21, 2025, Bishop Mariann Budde of the Episcopal diocese of Washington DC turned to the newly inaugurated President Donald Trump at the end of her homily during the …
Meeting Roger Williams (again)
I have long known that one of my distant ancestors is Roger Williams, the seventeenth century founder of Rhode Island. (For you genealogists: Roger, Daniel, Peleg, Daniel, Thomas, Mary (Hoag), …
What is Pravda?
When the Communist Party of Russia came to power in 1918, they set up a newspaper that would be their official organ of propaganda until the collapse of the Soviet …
Christmas in Ukraine
There are times in our individual lives, in the lives of communities and nations, and now even on this planet, when a catalytic flash seems to weld together our fitful …
Fetal Personhood?
The US Supreme Court’s reversal of its earlier ruling (Roe v. Wade) upholding women’s right to abortion, has intensified the argument that the fetus, from the moment of conception, is …
Aiming at our Heart
Even as our throats are choked with grief and our tongues are silenced before the evil of the violence in Ukraine and across America, we know that we must return …
The Holy Work of Reparations
I recently finished leading a group of about 20 people here at our church through the book Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair, by Duke Kwon and Gregory …
A Collision of Christendoms
We are all trying to make our way through the images of inhuman warfare in Ukraine, grief-stricken by the loss not only of lives but of dreams of stability and …