Egregious Reader

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a prodigy who grew up in the upper class of Berlin during WWI and decided to study theology and become a pastor. He traveled extensively and was deeply impacted by his year in NYC at Union. While there, he spent a lot of time in Harlem working with Abyssinian Baptist and reading the literature of the Harlem Renaissance. He was one of the few early voices warning about the danger of the Fuhrer Principle and of Hitler specifically. He, with others in his family, eventually became part of the attempted coup against Hitler. This led to his death by the state just before Germany surrendered.  One of his famous writings is a longer letter called After Ten Years that he wrote to friends and some fellow conspirators. It is an essay that explores their work and their country with encouragement to not see all their efforts as wasted.  One of the sections is called On Stupidity. He is not using the word in the normal bully put down way, like “Look at the blackboa...

Ideological Fortress (A Modest Explanation*) I have an idea for you all. The best way to keep your world intact is to mark off your own territory and never let yourself see outside of it. Why don’t you come up with a belief system that puts you at the center of salvation! Yes, that will be perfect. Now, the only reason you will ever talk to others is in hopes of converting them! The whole time they are trying to tell you about their life, you will not really be able to listen, right! You will just be looking for just the right door to jump in with your pitch! Actually, the best chance you will get is when people are scared or down on their luck. So you will always be waiting for that low moment or talking to someone who is struggling.** This will only further your ideas that it is people outside your four walls of ideology who need your salvation. You will never really hear from the strong ones right! And if you do, you will just think they are lying because they don’t have your salvat...

Stephen Haynes is a professor of religious studies at Rhodes College in Memphis. This is his fourth publication about the young German theologian who was famously killed for being part of the Abwehr conspiracy to kill Hitler. He felt compelled to write this book to address the outsized use of the “Bonhoeffer moment” language that Eric Metaxes utilized in pleading for evangelicals to vote for Trump , among other battles raging over this long dead young pastor/leader. To get us there, Haynes takes us back to 9/11 and the way Bonhoeffer was utilized to justify America's take down of Sadam Hussein. This was clear appropriation of the most general idea of who Bonhoeffer was. It shows the plasticity of Bonhoeffer in the hands of popular American writers and public figures. Much like Jesus or God is good to pull in to justify/rationalize what power wanted to do anyway. Actually, Bonhoeffer is an even better cloak because most people don’t know who Bonhoeffer is anyway so when they hear bi...

I have no doubt that as we go forward trying to understand our country and make it better we are going to have to find new language, new maps, new models to understand. I have come across one that isn't perfect, but worth considering.  First, why do we need new models? No model explains everything, they are shorthand to allow collaboration and passing torches for giant projects like cultures and nations. The reason to change out your model is if another one comes along that explains more of the problems with the model ... the ways in which the model doesn't apply or work.  Ok, so our current model/large-scale narrative is that our society is not perfect, but it is built on equality and freedom. People come to America for this opportunity. Immanuel Wallerstein calls this universalism: jobs assigned/granted by merit school acceptance by merit marriage for love (not wealth or ethic group) equal vote equal before the law This is the "official gospel of modernity."  The op...

On white facebook (I say that in humility and to acknowledge that as a white person I inhabit mostly white spaces on facebook) I see a lot of arguments about looting and assumption that MLK would not like what is going on, even sometimes white people trying to shame the current situation using MLK as an example. To those people, I say -- Read some Martin Luther King. (I also like what Ezra Klein said that maybe the police and government leaders should read Dr. King too). The behavior they are talking about when they call for nonviolence is at most a small element of a much much larger crowd of nonviolent protesters and regular people who are mad as hell, sad as hell, tired as hell. If you want these protests to be organized then you should stop allowing people like the Minneanapolis police chief Bob Kroll to call groups like BLM a terrorist group. Wake up dummies, the biggest domestic terror groups are white supremacist! What I don't think our nostalgia brain(washing) with it...

I love John Coltraine's music, especially with a good book and a cup of coffee while my wife and two children are taking a Saturday afternoon nap and the weather is wonderful like it has been the last week or so and the sky is so blue that makes you happy. . . and all along inside my ears I hear the talking horn of John Coltraine and the wonderful jazz drumming of Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner on piano and if you listen in you realize that all of it is grounded by some bass player allowing the music to sound wild and free, but still tied to rhythm, still grounded by something you could almost do by tapping your fingers, something you can understand with your mind. . . but the part that I love is the emotions that fill the other things (it doesn't have to just be the bass keeping everyone in the same musical language), these jazz musicians seem to take turns on who remains orthodox and dogmatic, usually the majority will remain fixed to the song itself, while in turn they try t...

At first I thought this book was almost a blog made book, as I know that Glennon has kept up a longstanding and beloved blog. But that's not right. The pacing and the structure in the book is excellent. Her prose writing style is poetic and chapters feel like prose poems. I love the titles and how the title is additive to the whole chapter. Glennon mixes personal narrative with mini sermons. She is a preacher and her message is powerful. This is her third memoir and who better to explore and explain (and explode) the way we live through story, than someone who literally makes her living writing her own story. Stories direct our lives toward happiness or rightness or safety. And as much as we would all like to step out into a blank room--a “non-construct”--to examine our story and make changes, this is not a luxury offered to flesh and blood human beings. We are always changing the tire while flying down the mountain taking a turn and narrowly avoiding a baby goat. Insert “sto...