A journey of theological exploration with the tattooed theologian Dillon Naber Cruz
I recently read Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's landmark book Stamped from the Beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas in America and then sat down to discuss this truly important book with the host of Book Ish: The Canon Continues podcast (Book Ish ). Because this book is so well researched and covers the history …
Continue reading Discussing Dr. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning
"Why are you making Jesus political?" "The social gospel proponents don't care about individual salvation, and that's what Jesus was all about." Interacting online is something that I do as a public theologian and I often see questions and statements like those above while perusing the internet. A major, if not THE major, theme of …
Once upon a time... I was a bigot, brazenly proclaiming my bigotry towards God's beautiful and wholly beloved LGBTQIA rainbow children. Once upon a time... I was completely unaware of the racism I carried within me that sometimes came out of my mouth. Once upon a time... I had no concept of white privilege or …
When it comes to perusing Biblical scripture, genealogies hardly make for scintillating reading, but that's what we tucked into last Sunday night at Ember Faith Community in Lancaster, PA. To the uninitiated, genealogies can come across as tedious lists of difficult to pronounce names that at first glance do not hold any real theological importance. …
Continue reading Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus: An Advent reflection
In an earlier post, I wrote about what the Bible actually is because many people are truly confused about the Bible. They think that it is a single coherent narrative with a consistent theological view point despite the fact that it is really a disparate collection of writings that show a great variety of views. …
In permaculture design, one of the principles is to make the least change for the greatest effect. One of the reasons to do this is to ensure that one doesn't overdo something--like I did while trimming my beard the other day which left me with some designer stubble rather than a full beard...Another reason, in …
Vice President, and fundamentalist Christian, Mike Pence recently told the predominantly white graduates of Liberty University (a fundamentalist university run by Jerry Falwell, Jr. who is a vocal Trump supporter) that they should be prepared to be ridiculed and shunned for holding what he calls "traditional Christian beliefs." In his view the "voices for tolerance" …
In my last post, I posited the argument that God loves diversity and based that statement on the obvious abundance of diversity found throughout the natural world. To me that abundance means we should not only accept people in the LGBTQIA community, we should recognize that they were born exactly as they were supposed to …
There is a great deal being said about diversity in society today. Inexplicably, this has become a political issue, because some politicians and their allies believe that certain people deserve better treatment than others, which is strange given that in the Gospels Jesus reiterated the Jewish teaching to love our neighbors without condition and …
The calendar has flipped to a new year. Despite the somewhat arbitrary nature of the Gregorian calendar, starting the new year on the winter solstice makes more sense to me, we are now at the beginning of a new year, where a new you is possible and everything seems to be new, new, new...As human …
The Tattooed Theologian 