January 16, 1977, my nineteen-year-old self joined Jesus People USA. To celebrate my “fortieth anniversary” as a communard Jesus Freak, I offer forty quite random ideas about community. Some are general. Some are specific. Some are a sentence. Others take a fairly beefy paragraph. So…. Forty Random Thoughts on Community from a Forty-year member of Jesus People USA 1. Love […]

I’m cameraman and video editor, neither job being my primary skill set, in this Glenn Kaiser interview of activist prison lawyer Alan Mills. Both men are my friends, and both forgive me. Bonus: music written by Glenn and myself (lyrics) at the tail end. More information about Alan’s organization, Uptown People’s Law Center. And, to visit Glenn Kaiser‘s site. The […]

Jonathan David Brown, grammy-nominated (twice) Christian music producer, died suddenly September 27, 2016, of an apparent heart attack. He was sixty years old. His face book pages (this and this) and a gofundme page are filling with condolences from some of the many well-known artists he worked with creatively. But his death also brings into focus a tangled, extremist legacy of […]

Violence against blacks by police. Yesterday, one black man murdered in Minnesota and one murdered in Louisiana. Many yesterdays here in Chicago. Not a time to hear my own white male voice. Where race is concerned this is doubly true. I thought I’d simply post four black novelists’ words here instead. Need it be said that black fiction is often truer […]

Robert P. Jones’ new book begins with a chapter entitled “An Obituary for White Christian America.” And it doesn’t get better from there. But his premise is driven home even for those of us who’d rather be in denial about the demise of our beloved subculture. Architecture hardly seems a promising genesis point for the topic, but by giving both mainstream […]

I am a Bible-believing Christian who has served Christ full-time in the inner city of Chicago since 1977. I met Christ as a sixteen-year-old in 1973, praying the prayer on the floor of a Jesus Person’s Montana farm house. I pray that first love empowers me daily. I am not going to claim that unless you vote the way I […]

  ‪#‎NRADeathSquad‬ by Jon Trott Easy enough to conceal who you are with the hip-carried friend Sending someone else far away from this place, this life, their universe of time and rhyme gone — snap — watch it congeal on the sidewalk near Leland and Malden I heard the bang-bang-bang-bang-bang And the girl start screaming that they shot her baby […]

Professor of Philosophy Adriel Trott, who as a sideline happens to be my niece, is very patient with me and my continual dialogue regarding feminism. Patience is needed, because while I find myself still hashing out what Second Stage feminists fought through, Dr. Trott and her compatriots are post-Third Stage pioneers re gender identity, intersectionality, and ever so much more. […]

Careful, there…. “intelligent design” can mean two quite different things. First, and most popular in some circles, is the idea that evolution may be occurring much of the time, but that in addition God kinda “sticks his finger in” (my phrase) to stop, start, or alter what is happening. Science tends to object to this on rather simple grounds: there’s […]