God Is Not 3 Guys

Women, Blacks, & Violence, April 9, 2019 Time  magazine has a great article by Henry Louis Gates,  America's Second Sin,  and starting this evening, PBS presents the series,  Reconstruction: America after The Civil War.  In article and television broadcast, Gates informs us with amazing facts about Reconstruction that were unknown to me until recently. Also, I'm convinced after 16 years of supervising student teachers, unknown to high school teachers of American history. I don't blame the teachers; I blame our still-racist society. Reconstruction raised African Americans from slavery to dignified positions in society. They became voters, educators, and legislators. Then, the federal government gave in to Southern states and they rolled back the gains of people freed by the 14th and 15th Amendments. One tiny fact. In 1898, 130,000 black men were registered to vote in Louisiana. By 1904, only 6 years later, the number had dwindled to 1,342. Whenever I he...

Democratic socialism, September 2018 I’m sharing another of my published opinion pieces, this one in the St. Cloud  Times . An email friend told me it was in. That’s usually how I find out it’s been published, because I don’t get the paper until days later from a kind neighbor. This arrangement saves both the environment and my pocketbook. The  Times  used my suggested title—  “Socialism” is not a dirty word . ”  I explain that democratic socialism does not reject capitalism but checks its vices—power-grabbing, union-busting profiteering at the expense of all citizens with less money and power. The U.S. already has forms of socialism because our taxes fund transportation, police, schools, FEMA, Social Security, Medicare, and many more socialist institutions. They provide for the welfare of all and check the power of capitalist bosses to control what rightly belongs to everyone—like our government.   Without socialist checks, Washington D....

It happens sometimes that I read one of my letters in a publication, agree with it, and discover I’m the author. (I admit my countless letters are one reason I haven’t blogged faithfully.) It just happened again. I came upon a letter I submitted to National Catholic Reporter in December. It applauded an article about “churchless nones.” They are identified as non-affiliated with any religion in surveys of religious participation by the Pew Research Center. The article that drew my comment accepted “nones” as often being spiritual without being religious. . . . If you’re looking for a place to comfortably park your soul, coming out as spiritual offers benefits. But it wondered what the “nones” believe. I wrote, What do they believe? It matters not what God-images draw them to the Inner Realm. But what’s better than the images given by the spiritual master Jesus? The inner Reign is like yeast, like a seed, like buried treasure, like a pearl (Matthew 13). I vastly prefer these im...