When I was a child and into my high school years, I was made to say the "Pledge of Allegiance." This nationalistic pledge is still said in some schools today despite the fact that it is quite dangerous for anyone to say for a variety of reasons, which I will highlight below. For Christians, it …
Tag: patriotic
Fourth of July reflections
Summer time and the living is easy...so goes the song lyric. When I was a kid in elementary school living in Kansas City, MO, summer time was a time when good memories got made. Some of those memories are related to the fourth of July celebrations, that in my youthful innocence and ignorance I took …
“I’m still here.” – A veteran’s story.
This morning I had therapy at the local V.A. clinic. When I went in to my appointment I had thought that this would be a fairly routine session. My plan was to ask my therapist some questions related to the book I am currently working on, which is entitled Traumatic Episodes: Finding grace in a life …
Veteran’s Day: A theological view
In my book Go Golden, I write about war and peace, because warfare is the polar opposite of enacting the golden rule. Yet, here in the U.S. (and in other powerful nations) the military is constantly front and center in society. One way in which militarism is perpetuated is the near deification of the military …
America first?
We are in the midst of yet another dark chapter in American history, which is replete with various crimes against humanity including genocide, murder, chattel slavery, warfare for profit, and being the only nation to ever drop nuclear weapons on another country-- the second bomb being a weapons test and not strategically "necessary". …
Today’s theological reflection
June 23, 2018 “The confusion of peace with security is a daily routine in our violent state of affairs. Judicial peace, school peace, marital peace – all degenerate into security under the influence of violent methods. The use of violence , expressed in force, extortion, and control, destroys the the end and increasingly replaces it …
Thank you for your service
I grew up in a rural north Texas town after relocating there with my family from Kansas City, MO in the early 1980s. During my childhood and teens, I was exposed to evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity of the conservative Church of Christ variety along with the Southern Baptist Church variety. In 1990, after graduating from high …
The Tattooed Theologian 