Top Sixteen Books of 2020 This was a good reading year in spite of the pandemic, and I especially leaned in to reading older material. That being said, I had the chance to read many 2020 publications, and so I list my top sixteen here. Naomi Novik, A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1) (https://amzn.to/3n9Engg) Like this was seriously my favorite. I’ve been telling everyone I can about it. Better than Harry Potter because it is so much worse.... Read more
I like to joke that progressive Christians DO talk about “sin,” we just spell it “systemic.” I think this issue of how we think about sin and whether we think about sin is a significant divide in Western forms of Christianity. For much of Christianity in the west sin is very individual. It therefore focuses on personal morality, because it is those personal sins that separate one from the personal God. Since one’s relationship to God is, in evangelicalism, primarily personal,... Read more
If I open my phone and swipe left, top of the screen are indicators for the DOW, NASDAQ, and S&P 500. Numbers measuring the value of these funds also top the page of the newspaper, get mention on NPR, and scroll across the bottom of CNN. Last week, the DOW topped 30,000. It’s never been valued so highly. Now, ask yourself: is the value of the DOW a true measure of how we are doing as a society? Also ask... Read more
Let’s start here: if you were against Donald Trump’s Muslim ban, you should be against Andrew Cuomo’s restrictions targeting Hasidic Jews. In this sense, the Supreme Court made the right call. Let’s continue here: The Hasidic Jews gathering in large groups are foolish and irresponsible, as are any religious groups gathering during this pandemic. In this sense, the Supreme Court seems to have disregarded the need sometimes for emergency measures to supersede certain rights. Herein lies my central belief: we... Read more
This week we remember we live on the original, unceded lands of the Osage people, humans who knew every creek and hill of this area as a tapestry of homeland. We can see visual reminders yet today of some of this history. You can walk the trail in South Fayetteville marked as the Trail of Tears. The Cherokees who left their homelands voluntarily, years before the forced march, were assigned lands all over middle Arkansas. Then, when the forced removal... Read more
We are culturally quite adapted to the concept of “membership.” Probably most of us have memberships in many things. You may be a member of the Rotary, or Planet Fitness, the AARP, a political party, or a monthly club for the delivery of chocolates. Protestant churches, particularly in North America, have conformed their understanding of membership to these popular “voluntary association” patterns. For example, our church has an official definition of a member. You become a member either by baptism,... Read more
I was raised in a Christian culture that idealized charity and mission trips. Our church, solidly middle class, was one of those large churches before there were mega-churches. When we helped people, which we did often, it was very much a patron-client model. As in: Our youth group is going to the soup kitchen to feed the hungry We are taking a group on a mission trip to help that blighted community two states away We are donating some funds... Read more
Gonna start dropping various advocacy letters here as I/we write and use them. Hoping they might inspire local advocacy among readers of this blog. — You know that feeling, the tingle that runs up your spine and neck when you come into close proximity with threat, or see evil embodied in a horror film? That’s about exactly the feeling I had when I read the Northwest Arkansas Council was investing a million dollars over the next six months in ten... Read more
There are no special ways to be Christian. If you woke up today and thought to yourself, “I really want to do something special for God,” you might start with washing the dishes. And this because there isn’t a Christian life to live separate from your daily life. Pastoring, volunteering, none of these are particular forms of the Christian life. No, daily life IS the Christian life. It’s hard to shake off our attraction to works of supererogation. We think,... Read more
“As much as Americans may hanker after individualism in Christianity, the facts are that there is no such thing as the solitary believer but only the Christian assembly, gathered around Word and sacrament” (Timothy Wengert, The Augsburg Confession). In some ways, this insight is being sorely tested by a global pandemic. The Christian assembly is not “assembling/gathering” around Word and sacrament in the way it had grown accustomed. In other ways, this insight is expanding and transforming. We are learning... Read more
Clint Schnekloth
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