Remembering is not enough

Monday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking the 75th anniversary of the Soviet liberation of the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz. As is usually the case, today has been marked by a flurry of social media memes, articles and public statements by politicians and religious leaders, all urging us to remember the victims of the Holocaust, …

Genocide persists because of our collective indifference

This post, originally published in the Enid News & Eagle on Friday, April 26, 2019, is a modified version of the April 24, 2019 sermon delivered for Noonday Prayers at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Enid, Oklahoma. When the late Nobel Laureate and noted Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel reflected on the horrors of Nazi concentration camps, …

Genocide remembrance: Love, indifference and the long-suffering of God

This post originally was delivered as a sermon for Noonday Prayers at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Enid, Okla., April 24, 2019.   "If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible." C .S. Lewis, in this brief quote from "The …

Giving thanks for the harvest to come

Thanksgiving has passed, leftovers are packed away, and, if we’re lucky, the antacids are working. Hopefully we took time to give thanks. I am blessed with an amazing wife, two wonderful daughters, good friends, a reverent and inspiring church, my job and a warm place to sleep tonight, among other blessings. But, I’d like to …

A tale of two Christianties

A tale of two Christianities is now playing out in Bangassou, a city of about 25,000 in the Central African Republic. U.S. News & World Report on Thursday reported that Muslims in the city have been paying huge sums of money to U.N. contractors to smuggle them to the relative safety of the nation’s capital. …

Shades of suffering

What human suffering can teach us about our empathy bias There's been no shortage of opportunities for us to grieve lately, to wonder at the horrors of human violence and the destructive power of nature. From the shooting in Las Vegas to war in Syria, from the aftermath of Harvey in Texas to the plight …