3 days ago · S ome years ago, I began a strange and wobbly effort to write a book I tentatively called The Unauthorized Autobiography of Jesus Christ.It was, I thought, a catchy title, though not as arresting as another book I started to write but never finished: Dinosaur Extinction: The Lone Gunman Theory. On a road trip, I, as the passenger, read a few chapters of the Jesus book to a pastor friend of ...

Feb 2, 2025 · I n this time of rising Christian Nationalism, we Americans need examples of people who can help followers of any and all religious traditions find their common ground and work together for the common good.. It turns out there's an uncommon man available to help us with all that. He's the Rev. A. Roy Medley, a leader in the American Baptist denomination, who, as this RNS article says, recently ...

Jan 1, 2025 · A few weeks ago here on the blog, I wrote about the difference between "private religion" and more communal approaches to being part of a faith tradition.. I invited readers to respond with their experiences of one kind of faith or the other. Today, to start out a brand new year, I want to share a couple of responses to that post because I thought they were insightful for me and might be for ...

B ill Tammeus is the former Faith section columnist for The Kansas City Star.He came to The Star in 1970 as a reporter, spent nearly 27 years on the paper’s editorial page, mostly writing the daily "Starbeams" column, and then moved his column in March 2004 to the weekly Faith section. He took formal retirement in mid-2006 but continued as …

Aug 31, 2024 · O nce upon a time, when I knew a lot more than I know today, I thought, sort of, that the world would be a lot more peaceful if everyone became, say, a Presbyterian like me. Or a Methodist. Or a Muslim. Or a Jew. Or, or, or. . . My immaturity and foolishness were little short of monumental. My thinking at the time, as I recall, was that such unanimity would end a lot of fighting that is rooted ...

Jan 1, 2024 · F or well over 50 years, the story about the decline in religious participation in the U.S. has been followed, told and retold. And it's an intriguing phenomenon with many ramifications. But a story that gets told less often is about how people committed to a particular faith tradition can -- and sometimes do -- take actions that are radically contrary to the teachings of that tradition.

Bill Tammeus writes about religion and ethics.

Nov 30, 2024 · O ne of the intriguing results of the recent presidential election was the voter turnout, which was down more than 8.5 million votes compared with turnout in 2020.. As I write this, the turnout this year as counted so far was just under 147 million compared with the 2020 turnout of about 155.5 million.. What happened? Lots of theories, some of which make sense.

Dec 28, 2024 · P atriotism, meaning a commitment to one's country, is quite different from a commitment to one's faith tradition. But they share at least this in common: Both require an unswerving willingness to speak the truth, to question and challenge policies and actions that seem destructive and to know not only what you stand for …

Jan 20, 2024 · E very human being at some point experiences pain, grief, catastrophe, loss. In fact, I wrote about a few examples in my own life in my most recent blog post here.. The ultimate question is how we respond to disasters so they don't irrevocably break us.