This past summer on the evening of July 13th an attempt to assassinate former president Donald J. Trump occurred during his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The assassin, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, thankfully for all concerned, failed in the attempt but did wound Mr. Trump in the right ear. Crooks – before being killed by Secret Service…
As another Halloween approaches, our secularist culture is more and more removed from the annual October 31st Christian religious observance of a “Hallowed Evening;” a Hallowed Evening in anticipation of the next day’s Festival of All Saints. What remains for most of our modern-day observance of Halloween is a time of horror versions of nightmares on…
In just a few months I will have a 76th birthday. I am certainly looking forward to it. That said, however, I often wonder – particularly when seeing my reflection in the mirror while shaving each morning – how it is that all the years have so quickly gone. Other wonderings occur to me as well. While most…
We are in the final phase of the presidential campaigns leading up to our opportunity to vote on Tuesday, November 5th. It is so difficult for me to imagine, given the two presidential candidates campaigning for our votes, that there are “undecided voters”; persons waiting for more information or still weighing the candidates in terms…
Just two months ago, Jeff Landry, governor of Louisiana, signed a bill requiring all state public schools, colleges, and universities to display the Ten Commandments – no smaller than 11” x 14” – in every classroom. My guess is that Landry, like most people, could not name more than three of those ancient commandments. And the…
During the rally at the founding of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) in 1964, Malcom X called for racial justice in America and advocated securing that justice “by any means necessary.” The reaction of outrage and horror by millions of white people – and particularly evangelical white church goers – to Malcolm X opening…
Many years ago, I travelled to EJ Thomas Hall in Akron to hear journalist and former Press Secretary to President Lyndon Johnson, Bill Moyers. Just prior to the conclusion of Moyer’s presentation he set up his closing remarks by paraphrasing an inscription which is over the Staunton Harold Church in Leicestershire, England. Moyers’ paraphrase was…
Heather Cox Richardson is an American academic historian, author, and educator. She is also a professor of history at Boston College and publishes a daily on-line column, “Letters from an American.” In her April 28th post, Richardson reported that at the beginning of his Sunday morning show – ABC’S This Week – host George Stephanopoulos said: “Until now no…
On Monday afternoon, April 8th – along with millions of others – I was in the long anticipated “path of totality” for a solar eclipse. I have never been in such a path before. I have seen pictures of a total solar eclipse. But after having been in and observing the path of the moon’s total shadow, a picture,…
Had Jesus not been raised from the dead three days after his public execution on a Roman Cross nearly two millennia ago, no one would have ever heard of him. Had Jesus not been raised from the dead, his life as an itinerant rabbi who never traveled more than 100 miles from his birthplace and…