Carl Krieg

We might be tempted to think that apocalypticism was limited to ancient peoples, but we would be wrong. Some of the most powerful people in the world are today envisioning the end time and are preparing accordingly.

Facing a continually shrinking membership, mainline Protestant churches face a self-identity question that won’t go away: Who are we, and what should we be doing? More than once in the past year, I have heard references to a typology offered by H. Richard Niebuhr in his classic book Christ and Culture, wherein he offers three main ways that the two can be related.

Court orders are being ignored, people are unlawfully detained, those who speak out are intimidated and threatened, universities lose grants, and millions of innocent people are treated as though they did not exist.

Trump himself has seriously called for Canada to become our 51st state. Suppose, on the other hand, that various US states would choose to join Canada, if the neighbor to the north would be so kind.

Apparently, we all have what is called a “default mode setting” in our brains.  “That is where all the self-representational processes take place: I’m thinking about myself, my time, my goals, my strivings, my checklist.” The first discovery was that all this self-centered activity quiets down when we experience awe.

Perception is not a one-way street, wherein all the information comes from the outside and informs a blank slate brain. We come to everything with memories, expectations and hopes, and these predispositions encourage us to pick and choose, to pay attention to, and to neglect certain sensory information.

The story of Christmas has yet to end, and continues in the goodness and goodwill of our everyday lives. It may be that there are others such as he in different times and places, in distant galaxies or on the other side of earth, but for us, right here and right now, we are given a light, and a hope-certainty that loving-kindness is our truth and our destiny.

It had taken quite a few decades, but the groundwork was now finished. Income inequality produced a disaffected, disenfranchised class of citizens. Citizens United allowed corporations to contribute unlimited amounts of money to political candidates

The fifth part of a seven-part series that looks at the life of Jesus.

What I have described previously as The Simple Truth is also the simple message of Jesus, and it is a tragedy that what, in essence, is so simple has been made so alien and convoluted that it makes no sense.

When JD Vance denounces childless cat ladies, he represents the heart of fundamentalism, all those white Christian nationalists who define a man by the size of his gun collection and a woman by the number of her offspring. Jesus is/would be horrified.

Thoreau’s exhortation about how to achieve a happy life- Simplify! Hemingway wrote short sentences with a minimum of adjectives and adverbs. I have here tried to follow this advice, communicating as concisely as possible what I see as basic human truth.

A decade of planning a coup has taught the greedy, super-rich, and powerful that the immigration card trumps everything. They’re coming for your job, taking aim at your family, your home, your religion, your country, and you need a strongman to protect you. Trump uses this fear all the time.

The fourth part of a seven-part series that looks at the life of Jesus.

This is where we are, and it makes me very, very angry. The Jesus fabricated by evangelical politicians and billionaires is everywhere, an “awesome god” who really, really loves America and free enterprise. But this is not the real Jesus.

The third part of a seven-part series that looks at the life of Jesus.

This question may be the number one ethical issue after the upcoming election. Walking a mile in another person’s shoes does not mean following them off a cliff.

How have we come to this? Is the American social conscience so malleable and impressionable that we so easily turn from believers in democracy to proponents of dictatorship?

The little community of 25 that Jesus gathered had equal numbers of women and men, had no slaves, shared what they possessed, and cared for one another.

Baffled though we may be, we Americans want to believe that in drafting the Constitution, the “Founding Fathers” exhibited unparalleled wisdom in creating the bedrock of our society, our law, and our democracy.

In the academic comfort of a library study alcove, I look out over the central green at Dartmouth College, where one week ago storm, troopers in full riot gear armed with batons moved across this space in the eerie hours of post-dusk darkness, forcefully breaking up a small, peaceful gathering of students and faculty supporters and tearing down a six tent encampment prohibited by college rules.

Christian nationalism that had led to the first world war, was now leading to the second. Almost all of the 60 million Germans in 1933 were Christians. The country was suffering in the aftermath of WWI, and it was ready for a new “Leader” who would restore the economy and national pride.

For the first time in my life, I decided it was time to find out firsthand what the mega-church experience was all about. That’s mega, not maga. I half expected that the two might have merged into one, but was pleasantly surprised that politics was not mentioned at all.

The fact is that civil-minded folk outnumber the forces on the other side. There are just more of us than there are of them. The problem is that we have not recognized the current existential threat. We slide along the path we are on, pretending as though next year will be the same as this year. It will not.