Populism is a political ontology, in which political being is centered on the question of collective identity. It is also a political theology embedded within constitutional democracy.
Struggling with Revolutionary Love
In this sermon in honor of MLK's birthday, I consider where we might find revolutionary love today.
Finding each other on the road to emmaus
My 2021 Easter sermon.
Truth and Lies
We are arguably living through the great age of propaganda. The rise of social media and its resulting social fractures and competing claims of truths led to a dynamic that played out in the recent presidential election and its aftermath.
How can we find the truth at such a time? And how can direct experience of awe and wonder help us to discover it?
Sermon: The Resurrection of the Living
as preached for the January 24, 2021 online service of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston Something rather momentous occurred since I was last with you. The United States has a new President and a new Vice President. A man with almost five decades of experience in government is now the country’s chief executive. A woman is now in the nation’s second highest office. The new cabinet...
1876, 1968, and Today: The Need for a Radical King
In this sermon, I reflect on how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. combined the prophetic with the pastoral in his effort to dismantle white supremacy. He taught that our efforts towards a more spiritual life for ourselves and more just society for all can only be pursued together.
The Senate Should Expel Senators Cruz and Hawley
Note: I wrote this op-ed on Friday and sent it to the Houston Chronicle with the intention of sending it on to the Kansas City Star and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch if the Chronicle declined to run it. Since writing it the editorial boards of all three newspapers have written editorials calling for resignations and so I have decided to just post it to my blog. The Chronicle’s op-ed calling...
Truth and Reconciliation: An Open Letter to President-Elect Joe Biden
The United States needs to establish a National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation if it is to ever address systematic racism, rural poverty, and white supremacy.
Sermon: Foundations
Over the years, I have tried to follow the injunction, attributed to Karl Barth but probably apocryphal, to preach with “the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” Not being a Christian, I have never taken the injunction literally. Rather I have understood it to mean, root yourself in your tradition, ground yourself in the goodness of the Earth, and from that foundation offer up what...
The Waters of Time
And as we traverse the water of time, whether the waters be smooth or rocky, we must each answer the questions: What is worth saving? What must be let go?