What is Christmas? Is it like Thanksgiving – a holiday to eat good food, enjoy family, and rest from labor? Is it a time to go just a little farther into debt, buying presents and celebrating Santa Claus? Is Christmas a solstice celebration? A myth of elves and flying reindeer? A time to re-affirm religious orthodoxy? For …
One of the central mottos of the radical movements of the 1960s was: Question authority. The Baby Boomer generation was coming of age, caught up in the culminating battles of the civil rights movement. They faced conscription into an unjust war in Vietnam, where reports of atrocities resounded louder every day. Increasingly, America’s young people were …
Presidential candidate Donald Trump has removed all ambiguity. He is running his campaign on a platform of xenophobia and unambiguous fascism that, if enacted, would change the character of the United States just as surely as if the Third Reich had won the second world war. The enduring popularity of Trump’s campaign represents more than …
The battle over the role that guns should play in our national life has been intensifying in recent months. And rightly so. The murderous attack in San Bernardino, and the string of mass shootings that came before that, should be a wake-up call that our relationship with firearms is unhealthy. America’s gun problem is far more …
These mass shootings are starting to seem routine. In the wake of the San Bernardino murders, all the politicians and talking heads were behaving predictably. Those who support more gun regulations were using the shooting as another opportunity to press that point home. Friends of the NRA were doing everything they could to avoid touching the …
When there are armed killers in the street and you’re running for your life, where can you hide? When the country you grew up in is no longer safe, when masked men with militant ideologies are massacring the people you love, how will you react? When your children don’t have enough to eat and the bombs are …
Despite what you may have picked up about Christianity from some of our more loud-mouthed brethren, Jesus did not spend his time denouncing gay people, foreigners, or people of other religions. And, believe it or not, he rarely talked about hell. But when he did… Buckle your safety belts, America. In the Book of Matthew, Jesus …