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…
Several posts ago I wrote of my great concern for the ever-expanding influence of persons identifying themselves as right wing evangelical Christian nationalists. In recent days a State Supreme Court ruling in Georgia and the on-going efforts of evangelical Christian nationalists in support of MAGA Trumpism have prompted a revision and expansion of the point…
As a result of a chronic and deteriorating dental condition, I recently completed a long process of prosthodontics. My prosthodontics journey – after much planning and measuring – began in earnest with computer assisted oral surgery five days before last Easter! After nearly nine months of an initial liquid and then graduation to a soft diet,…
I suspect that anyone reading this is well-aware of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech; a speech he delivered to a rigidly segregated America in August of 1963. The soul-inspiring and mind-stirring cadence of King’s marvelously articulated dream of a nation living up to its founding promise for all its citizens has woven…
Stella Immanuel is a licensed, practicing physician in Houston, Texas specializing in pediatric medicine. Her practice out of the Rehoboth Medical Center which she owns is adjacent to the evangelical church she pastors, Fire Power Ministries. Dr. Immanuel, a self-appointed prophet of God, makes such claims as “gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in…
For many years Cove United Methodist Church occupied the northwest corner of Clifton Boulevard and Cove Avenue in Lakewood, Ohio. The name of the church was not an arresting identifier. The church just named itself after the street on which it was located. What was arresting about Cove United Methodist Church was the design of…
In a recent editorial for the New York Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Thomas Friedman wrote this paragraph. … Israel is facing threats from a set of enemies who combine medieval theocratic worldviews with 21st-century weaponry — and are no longer organized as small bands of militiamen but as modern armies with brigades, battalions, cybercapabilities, long-range…
In July of 2006, Hezbollah terrorists from Lebanon, attacked northern Israel. Their first target? Not Israeli soldiers or military defense positions. No. Hezbollah terrorists bombed B’nai Zion Medical Center in Haifa. This act initiated a war between Israel and Lebanon that was finally ended with a UN brokered cease fire on August 14, 2006. The…
In the Christian Bible there are a total of 31,102 verses. Only 11 of those verses have as their subject matter sexual activity between persons of the same gender. ELEVEN! None of those 11 verses has anything to do with our contemporary understandings of the complexities of human sexuality or gender identity. Each of those…