The New York Times ran an article by historian David Williams about Thomas Jefferson’s more or less Christian attitude and how taking a similar stance might allow the Democratic Party to win over those who find Democrats essentially secular and…
Category: Church for Writers
The Jefferson Attitude
Posted in Church for Writers Tagged with: Christian doctrine, Christianity in politics, Democrats, Dostoyevski, science, the answer to everything, Thomas Jefferson
The Answer to Everything
Some folks are no doubt dying to know the story of my writing career, so I’m going to attempt a capsule version. Of course I once set out to write a short story and ended up with 1400 pages. I’ll try my best…
Posted in Church for Writers
Obeying the President
The president has instructed the IRS not to mess with churches who get political. He wants us churches to speak our minds, right? Here goes. The other day I was talking to my cousin Patti and feeling impassioned by some…
Posted in Church for Writers Tagged with: Dr. Laura, Fox News, James Dobson, Media, Rush Limgbaugh, Trump
Trump and Assad
“For the son of God became like us so that we could become like him.” Athanasius On Palm Sunday, Dr. Cherith Nording, a seminary professor, gave a powerful sermon in which she proposed that Christ could live in connection with…
Happy Endings
Lots of us pray the Lord’s prayer fairly regularly, thereby requesting that, “Your will be done.” Recently I heard a pastor quote a Christian writer’s prediction that anyone who can pray with perfect sincerity for God’s will to be done…
Posted in Church for Writers Tagged with: Abraham and Isaac, Bob Dylan, happy endings, Soren Kierkegaard
Joan of Arcadia
Zoe took a trip with her mom and left me alone for five days. Every one of those evenings, my entertainment was Joan of Arcadia, a television drama that aired for two seasons about a dozen years ago. The premise…
For the Love of Money
If you’d prefer, listen to the podcast. 1 Timothy 6:10 NIV: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”…
Posted in Church for Writers Tagged with: investing in oil companies, legal thrillers, sympathetic characters, tension in fiction, the love of money
How Did Trump Win?
The day after the recent election, Zoe asked me, “How did Trump win?” I said, “Ask your grandma,” because her grandma had voted for the fellow. But that was only an easy answer I gave because I felt too dismayed…
Posted in Church for Writers
Hope and Bob Dylan
About a week before Bob Dylan was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature, a mighty powerful thought came to me. I had been talking to a friend about the way we often distort our thinking. Suppose a loved one…
Posted in Church for Writers Tagged with: Bob Dylan, cognitive therapy, hope, Nobel prize, W.B. Yeats
The Necessity of Hope
I can’t seem to make myself stop beginning the day with a dose of world news. This morning I read about the many political assassinations in Russia, and about the thousands of deaths and nearly unfathomable misery the people of…
