What does it mean to be an American? If someone said, “I ran into an American today” how would you know what they mean?  What would you know about this person they met based on this description?  Would it tell you anything? I would argue that “American” wouldn’t tell you

Slavery is not the path to success, and once we see that, our history reveals an important lesson for us all. [It is the last week of July 2020.  At the beginning of the month I started writing about race and current events (see “Black Power & Little Micah,” “Measuring

Historically, it seems that Christians have more times than not lost sight of Jesus’ stance on government – and no end of suffering and missed opportunity have been the result. In Jesus’ day, the Jewish culture had a palpable sense of anticipation that the Messiah – the long-awaited rescuer from

For thousands of years humans have sat around camp fires and told stories. In this glowing, flickering light elders of the tribe told stories that were passed down to them as they sat around similar camp fires when they were young.  These stories were passed down this way from generation

There is a class we have begun offering this year at our church to teach women how to be safe in the world and help them recover from trauma.  It’s a unique and needed class that I think is doing a lot of good. Cleaning up after the last class,

This past Monday was a national holiday called Memorial Day.  It is a special day in the United States for remembering those who died while serving in the country’s armed forces.  It is sometimes confused with Veterans Day, which is a national holiday to honor all those who have served

Memory is crucial to living well.  It is how we learn from the past to navigate the present and live into a better future. History is memory beyond the individual level.  It is the preserved memory of our species.  What we remember and whether or not we remember has a

Let’s work backwards in history on this one. You can turn on the news almost any day now and hear American lawmakers demanding that social media platforms censor “hate speech” even more than they already do.  If you didn’t know that the major social media platforms and Google curate what

“One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory.” – Zhou Enlai On Monday of this week, millions of Americans enjoyed a day off of work and out of school to honor their U.S. presidents – past and present.  If the quote above from

A longer and more precise rewording of the title could be, “Saul & How Kings & Governments Get Their People to Murder For Them.” How does one person murder hundreds, thousands, or even millions of other people? They get other people to do it for them, often lots of other