The Pastoral Is Political Is Personal: Transgender People Are Sacred

I’m going to say it explicitly: I am a transgender person. I’m saying this from a place of privilege: I’m saying this as a white, middle class person who owns a home. I’m saying this as someone who has what’s known as “passing privilege” – that most people don’t assume I’m transgender just by looking… Read More

11th Hour Preacher Party – Time Warp Edition

Welcome to the 11th hour preacher party – or the 10th hour, or the 12th hour, depending on where in the world you are. If you’re in the Bahamas, Bermuda, Canada, Cuba, Haiti, or most of the United States, you’re getting an extra hour to finish that sermon. If you’re in Fiji, on the other… Read More

The Pastoral Is Political: When the Cure Is Worse than the Disease

Wheaton College had a difficult decision to make: whether to obey the law of man, or the law of God. One would expect that a Christian college would obey the law of God, and that’s what they did. But they also didn’t want to incur the penalties associated with breaking the law of man, so… Read More

11th Hour Preacher Party – Three-in-One Edition

It’s Trinity Sunday. Are you experiencing the presence of the creator as Isaiah describes? Are you listening to Jesus telling us how to be born from above, as Nicodemus did? Or, like the Romans,  are you feeling the spirit of adoption? Or are you going to cover all three in one sermon? See what I… Read More

The Pastoral Is Political: Parenthood Is not Punishment

I saw it again today: the argument that birth control is a way for women to have sex without consequence; that somehow single motherhood is the punishment for having a sexual relationship before marriage. Let us tease that apart a bit. First, let us acknowledge that there are women who desire to be mothers. Many… Read More

The Pastoral Is Political: What Color Is that Dress, REALLY?

Last Thursday, social media was filled with pictures of a striped dress. Posts asked people what colors they saw, and debates began about whether the dress was white and gold, or blue and black, or some other combination of colors. People on my bowling league brought their phones to me to ask “what colors do… Read More

The Pastoral Is Political – Our Finest Gifts: Affirmation, Inclusion, and Solidarity for Transgender People

We’re approaching Epiphany. Whether you observe this twelfth day of Christmas on January 5 or January 6, it’s a day for remembering those who came to see the Christ child and recognized him as a king, despite the outward signs of humble birth. In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem… Read More

The Pastoral is Political – The _Pastor_ Is Political

In the US, we just had “mid term elections,” where we don’t have an election for president but we do elect the entire lower house of our legislature (House of Representatives) and roughly one third of our upper house (Senate), as well as many state, county/parish, township, city, and other positions. So when I say… Read More