It so happened that I preached last weekend at my church, All Saints Episcopal in Sacramento. I don’t typically re-use sermon ideas as blog posts (You’re welcome! There are plenty of sermonish things already accessible on the internet.), but something about the week’s lectionary readings struck a chord that I would like to share here. …
Tag Archives: recovering evangelical
Sacred
I am not a fan of seeing secular/sacred as a binary, wherein something is either “sacred” or “secular.” Instead, I conceptualize them as a dyad, a construction that leaves a lot of room for the both/and instead of the either/or. In other words, while there may be some things that are purely sacred and others …
To Be and Not To Do
Who AM I when I DO nothing? I don’t know whether most people ask themselves that question regularly. I do, but then I’m quirky. But I do suspect that in this time of COVID-19 quarantine, more people than ever before are being confronted by that question whether they like it or not. In our culture, …
Advent, Embodied
My body seemed to know that I needed to follow the pattern of the liturgical year long before my mind did. For those who might not know, the liturgical year is the annual seasonal pattern of the Christian year. It begins around the first of December with Advent, celebrates Christmas and Epiphany, moves into the …
Faith in the Hard Times
Apparently there are now four new seasons in California: Spring Hotter Than It Should Be Wind, Fire and Smoke Drought/Flood. As I am writing this, we are the midst of Wind and Fire season, and for the third year in a row it seems that much of the state is on fire. My power has …
I’m [not] gonna “love on” you
Some time ago–10 years? 15 years?–I began to hear Evangelical pastors encourage their flocks to “love on” other people. As in, “Let’s make hot chocolate and sandwiches and go ‘love on’ those homeless people in the park” or “I know Brother or Sister X is struggling with their faith right now, but we’re gonna ‘love …
“Salvation”
One of the key incidents in the reconstruction of my faith happened as I worked through my grief at my father’s death. I had been taught a hard-lined Evangelical sense of “salvation”—if you haven’t said a specific prayer “asking Jesus into your heart,” you are not a Christian and are going to hell. I was …
The Recovering Evangelical 