“Fascists always have Clergy somewhere in attendance.” That sentence should be on a continuous loop.

I'm awaiting the Sean Hannity Institute of Theology. (Snappy acronym.) Founding faculty: The Rev. Drs. J.D. Vance and Pete Hegseth.

What will it take?

Some people look to bold, visionary leaders. Others value technocratic expertise. But David Brooks suggests a third way for better decision making:

John Alexander Dowie (an early Pentecostal, founder of Zion, IL) prescribed racial miscegenation to restore "primitive man." A New Adam for a New Israel/New Eden. Immigration fundamental to Manifest Destiny. Just reporting.

If you're really fed up with Boomers and such, don't make us one of the last generations who can go back and read stuff we published 30+ years ago and say, with satisfaction, "Yeah, that was pretty good." Whereas you might end up saying, "Well, I really foxed 'em with that AI balderdash, didn't I?"

Psalm 73 comes up in the morning prayer rota. Oh, and perhaps you have know idea how relevant it is: Its description of Trump and the oligarchy is spot-on.

It's August 1975, outside Philadelphia. Police follow up a tip and investigate whether I have the body of Jimmy Hoffa. Srsly.

And the chapter after this is titled "Chasing Sunk Costs."

Lately I find myself turning to Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society. Frequently. It's a realist's reset of expectations.

Two things were publicly undressed yesterday: crypto currency and Trumpian Christianity. One in the markets and one in the so-called National Prayer Breakfast. Mene Mene Tekel Parsin.

With this, it seems to me, Trump-Miller-Noem have lost their narrative.

Collecting myself with a walk along the Deschutes.

Is the GOP calliope of sycophants playing the full keyboard today or is it missing a few pipes?

The videos don't lie. A man is dead, killed in cold blood. There is no conceivable justification for this intentional homicide. And make no mistake, that intentional, unjustified homicide was committed on behalf of Donald J. Trump.

There is no strategy www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

When you think about it, we shouldn't even have elected him.

Despite everything that's wrong in this country, grandma is still in the kitchen baking cookies with her granddaughters. And that's not nothing.

Padilla: What they're doing is not law enforcement. It's intimidation. What they're doing isn't about safety. It's about scaring communities

And here we are: the entire transatlantic alliance is now talking about Greenland, instead of talking about ending the war in Ukraine.

For this administration, the value of one person's life is the current exchange rate of a political point.

With David Frum on Venezuela, spheres of influence, and the deeper implications of Trump's foreign policy www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oSR...

The most disturbing presidential press conference I have ever seen. fallows.substack.com/p/blind-into... (First 3/4ths before paywall.)

My yearly winter public service announcement: You will not freeze to death. You will die of hypothermia and then freeze. (Journalists: Please take note.)

We never had a Christmas tree as I was growing up. My mother thought it was a pagan symbol. But she liked to talk about our ancestor St George Tucker of Williamsburg, Virginia. Then I learned that Tucker introduced the Christmas tree to America. I apostatized and returned to ancestral tradition.

I capped my Advent by lying in a clinically white tube with industrial-strength noise all around me while I meditated on Colossians 3:3 ("hidden with Christ in God"). You won't find this in your Advent devotional. It's more a Desert Father thing.

These are good moments to remember that the CEOs of all the biggest companies in America are happy to go to White House dinners and slap this guy’s back. They do not care about this. Remember this, years from now, when they want you to forget.

Current project has led me to revisit a 1,300-page reference work I edited over 35 years ago. Gratifying to realize that, while very much outdated, in its historical coverage it still holds up remarkably well: Dictionary of Christianity in America.

The President of the United States just called for Democratic members of Congress to be executed. "HANG THEM", he posted. If you're a person of influence in this country and you haven't picked a side, maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side.

The trouble with downsizing one's library is regret. Followed by the inevitable reacquisition of volumes that you reached for but weren't there. Yesterday at Powell's in Portland, Bruce Kuklick's Churchmen and Philosophers was waiting for me, as if by divine appointment. ("Was it yours?" she asked.)

We turn from a range of historical and interpretive questions to the atonement -- and, first, to questions regarding penal substitutionary atonement...

Donald, what do you mean by crushing and grinding the face of the poor?

“It’s when you step back and take in the full list, with all of the extortionate details, that it becomes clear that Trump is moving toward something like China’s command economy.” open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and then retreated back into their money and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

A landmark book updated!

It needs to be said, for the record, that one can go to their evangelical church on October 19 and talk to several friends who were at the "No Kings" protest on October 18. This too is evangelicalism in the USA.

Surely several thousand this afternoon in downtown Bend, Oregon, No Kings demonstration today. Peaceful crowd, with our US congresswoman Janelle Bynum and others speaking. Cue the Republican denials and windbaggery tomorrow.

Indoor, outdoor high-desert states of mind.

Wasn't there something from the administration about opposing Christianity... or something like that? Was it Steven Miller? Maybe it was just a particular sort of branded Christianity?

The following is REAL footage from Portland, 2025. Viewer discretion is advised.

My speed hike up my fav mountain trail this morning was in the company of some twenty women trail runners. A happy, friendly gang, very fit, mutually supportive. Interesting to observe how the ethos is so different from men.

Render to Caesar what is Caesar's.... (But pardon me, Who is that god in whom we trust?)

After Donald Trump's address to military leaders today, "senior U.S. officers have to wonder who will shield them from the impulses of the person they just saw onstage," Tom Nichols argues in The Atlantic Daily. https://theatln.tc/0WI2Lqm9

Fall weather & the vegetable garden & backyard orchard are starting to close down. Concerned that our little granddaughters are going to think tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, and beans just come from plants. And apples and pears from trees. And cookies made with grandma. Not ready for the "real" world!

I have a recurring temptation to comment here on evangelicalism and Charlie Kirk. But I'll just say this: I spent last weekend at an annual evangelical church family retreat in the mountains. There were about 170 people, of all ages. And I did not hear Charlie Kirk mentioned once. Not once.

If you know about Korea, you know that people will tell this story for generations. Given the scale, tech savvy, cultural sway, strategic importance, and national pride of ROK, this might be *the* most lastingly damaging, idiotic move team MAGA has made. Blessed by SecState Marco.

This whole Thiel Anti-Christ thing sounds so very weird. But if the Greek term "katechon" is now rising to the surface, I'm intrigued. I'm sure there will be a flourishing of expertise on 2 Thessalonians 2:6. (I was hoping the katechon would be the SCOTUS. But not so.)