Bil Aulenbach As a child and teen, church was the center of my life. My dad was the rector, which made me a PK (Preacher’s Kid). I was an acolyte and loved serving at the altar. I was big into our youth group. If you wanted, I would give you a private tour under the church, in … Read more
My father was an Episcopal clergyman. He thought he was a Christian. My mother was born and baptized a Methodist but became an Episcopalian when she married my father. She, too, thought she was a Christian. I was baptized when I was three weeks old in the Episcopal church, but my parents said later it … Read more
I have never been attracted to science fiction. It’s too far-fetched. I’ve tried to read Harry Potter—three times. By the second chapter, I’ve lost interest. Whenever I hear one of those preposterous stories told in the Bible, I cringe for fear that people will literalize it. For example, all the stories about Jesus’s resurrection, which … Read more
D&D is short for Dogma and Doctrine, which reminds me of a riddle: Why don’t cats go to church? Too much dogma! (Shame on me!) Watch what happens to most of the D&D when the theistic god of yesterday is promoted to encompass the entire universe. One can no longer think about a small Master … Read more
I don’t think it’s any secret that the institutional church, especially in developed countries, is dying. The worst part: the leaders don’t seem to know how to revitalize it. What are your feelings? From my vantage point, I don’t see how a church can survive if church leaders insist that a god lives up there, … Read more
I have been terrified of John for some fifty-five years. He’s complicated, threatening, outrageous at times, secretive, and almost unintelligible. I wanted to have nothing to do with him. He was poison. Then a strange thing happened. My wife and I had been working with inmates at the local jail on Tuesday afternoons, but the … Read more
When I went to seminary in 1957, the Episcopal Church Evangelism Society gave me a scholarship because I was going into the mission field to share Jesus’s concept of agape love and to teach people how to fish, not just give them a fish. About thirty years ago, I learned that the word evangelical had … Read more
Many people are surprised by this fact. Perhaps some folks think that Mary, the virgin who gave birth to Jesus, remained a virgin, a perpetual one. If this were the case, how could there be more children? Others think one kid like Jesus is enough. Folklore suggests the siblings were stepchildren. Joseph was their dad. … Read more
The story of the flood and Noah’s Ark is found in the book of Genesis, chapters 6–9. As a child I always loved that story, but for some reason I had never heard the ending until I went to seminary. It’s sad! About five years ago my wife and I went to Turkey and spent … Read more
Most folks don’t realize that there are many different Jesuses. I’m not talking about south of the border where quite a few men are named Jesus. I am also not including the patients in the psychiatric hospital where I interned in the 1950s who believed they were Jesus. The most popular Jesus is probably the … Read more