Bil Aulenbach The concept of marriage in 2024 is very different from when I was born in 1932. Few people were shacking up or having premarital sex (supposedly), and for the most part, marriage ceremonies were performed in churches and synagogues, not by judges or court clerks. I met my Anne in 1960 and wanted to marry … Read more
Carol asks, Why does the church talk about sin so much, especially in Evangelical and Roman Catholic churches? It seems clergy and parishioners constantly talk about it, and it makes me uncomfortable. I agree with you, Carol. Let me start with Jesus. He was born, lived, and died as a Jew. His ministry primarily was … Read more
My silence since November 5 has been deliberate. I haven’t known what to say after such a stunning defeat. I have a confession: I did unload on an Episcopal bishop whose reaction to the election was “Not everyone will be happy.” He didn’t like my rant about being a coward and giving Donald Trump a … Read more
The New Testament gives us different choices about who Jesus was. Let’s look at nine of them, and then you can pick the one that makes sense to you. Son of God—The Son of God is probably the title that would receive the most votes. Not mine! I don’t believe in an anthropomorphic God who … Read more
Greg asks, Why are you so down on the Trinity? You’re right, Greg: I am down on the idea of a Trinity. I have never understood it. Early in my ministry, a priest suggested that many aspects of the church are a mystery, and the Trinity is one of them. Because I was a young … Read more
When I entered the ministry in 1957, there was no such thing as a volunteer priest in the Episcopal Church. (Roman Catholic priests didn’t receive a salary, but their church gave them everything else.) On my first assignment, the church housed me and gave me an old car, medical benefits, a retirement fund, and $2,400 … Read more
Dave asks, I went to an Episcopal church (someone said it was a “high church”) and watched as the priest kept kissing things: the altar, the Bible before and after he read it, and vestments when he was changing them. Then he started swinging an incense pot (my eyes didn’t like the smoke) and genuflected … Read more
My wife and I start almost every day with a power walk for an hour or so. After sixty-four years, she didn’t need to hear me pontificate anymore, so we thought, “Let’s listen to audiobooks.” One was Jon Meachem’s And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (2022), the story of Lincoln from … Read more
Joan asks, Is there anyone who answers prayers? Sixty-six years ago, in my second year of seminary, after a tragic accident in which my best friend was killed, I was forced to abruptly deal with this issue when a priest came into my hospital room the next day and asked, “What did you and Brad … Read more
For months, I found myself unhappy and sad, occasionally morphing into mad. I didn’t see any hope of preventing the forty-fifth president from becoming the forty-seventh. Trump’s Project 2025 (his takeover plans) is extremely scary. An unSupreme Court seemed to be the Christian Nationalist’s answered prayer. With Project 2025 comes the end of our democracy … Read more