politics on Tragedy

In 1830, the Indian Removal Act led to what’s known as the Trail of Tears, in which almost fifty thousand indigenous people were removed from the southeastern United States and relocated west of the M...

God of grace and God of glory on your people pour your power...Grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the facing of this hour. Lord—we need You...today, tomorrow and forever. We need you to heal those ...

Sometimes moments of forgiveness and friendship come from unexpected places. In 2018, the comedian Pete Davidson appeared on the “Weekend Update” segment of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Davidson made a ...

Presentations of the Matthean narrative that have had such an illustrious life in art and imagination are not complete without the disturbing involvement of Herod and the political killings that resul...

Compassion does not demand that we know who is right and who is wrong. In fact, it does not ask for us to know anything at all about [people] except the fact that they are in need. As I facilitated...

Whoever seeks to avoid danger at all costs may ultimately lose the fullness of life, but the one who, out of love for Christ, dedicates themselves to serving others discovers a life that endures. Arch...

Almighty God, harsh words and personal attacks can bring out the worst in us. We find ourselves spending energy on thoughts of retaliation and plans to protect ourselves. Father forgive us. We long to...

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Pastor: Lord, we confess that too often we don’t live as people filled with the light of eternity. People: We complain. We focus on the problems we face and not the blessings you give. Pastor: W...

For years Kyle and I [Jamin Goggin] had no trouble looking critically upon others in their quest for power. We bemoaned the rock-star pastors who were in the spotlight, whose churches appeared to be m...

John Chrysostom, the eloquent Church Father, had incurred the wrath of the Byzantine (aka Roman) Emperor Arcadius. Enraged, the emperor consulted his counselors on how to punish the powerful preacher....

The crux of our dilemma is that for some Christians, we’ve allowed our politics to inform our theology rather than our theology and worship of the Christ informing our politics.

When I meet someone with whom I disagree, whom I dislike, or whom I find threatening, I can do one of four things. I can kill them, I can create a structure of coercion so I can control them, or I can...

Bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible.

People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.

"All these I will give you..." One of the three diabolical tests of Jesus in the Judean wilderness is the “temptation to be powerful” as Henri Nouwen puts it in his 1989 reflection on Chris...

I see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with p...

O God, you have bound us together in a common life. Help us, in the midst of our struggles for justice and truth, to confront one another without hatred or bitterness, and to work together with mutual...

When in conflict we should demonstrate that our public witness is more important than winning a political battle. This means that if our side has to do something unloving or corrupt to win, then it’s ...

The ascension of Jesus was the supreme political event of world history. He ascended not so much to a place as to an office. He departed from the arena of humiliation and suffering to enter into his g...

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

War is merely the continuation of politics by other means.

Though American Christians do have genuine opponents in the public square and in elite institutions, they have often been their own worst enemies, making disastrous political compromises and looking t...

Since Jesus isn’t attached to the same things we are, he can take the God-view, which is about more than redeeming our individual lives. God means to redeem the world, which is going to require some m...

When we observe evil, sinful behavior from a distance, the inclination is simply to see people as acting with malicious intent. We assume they are “bad people.” But often the motivations that lead to ...

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

Lord, forgive us for saying that you are not enough. Though you give us shelter, food, clothing, and all that we need, we are not satisfied. We spurn your fatherly care like a petulant and ungrateful ...

At one point in his career, Themistocles was overheard saying that his young son ruled all of Greece. When his talking companion asked him to explain, he said, “Athens holds sway over all Greece; I do...