David Swanson, author of War Is a Lie, put it: “The search for a good war is beginning to look as futile as the search for the mythical city of El Dorado. And yet that search remains our top public … — Robert C. Koehler
by Ken Sehested
Introduction
Many years ago a friend wrote to ask about how to handle anger, naming a specific incident regarding
her congregation’s skewed budget habits. Of course, the incident is not unique, and the question
of what to do with anger stretches across a wide range of personal and public contexts.
Below is her question and commentary, then my response.
by Ken Sehested
It was the third of July on a cool cloudy sky
I set in for a storm in the makin'. . . .
I believe that a thought has just gotten caught
In a place where words can't surround it
It concerns the years past and the shadows they cast
And my path as I walk around it.
—John Prine, “The Third of July”
Some years ago, on a visit to the Maritime provinces of Canada, we took a history tour of St. John, New Brunswick, and learned details of a narrative I vaguely recalled. St. John’s story is uniquely tied to U.S. history.
Read more ›by Ken Sehested
U.S. President Donald Trump is a self-obsessed, infantile, demagogic and malicious huckster without a shred of moral capacity other than self-promotion.
There. Say it out loud.
Read more ›by Ken Sehested, slightly adapted from a Feasting on the Word article
A traditionalist, a modernist, and a post-modernist walk into a bar. Over shots of bourbon, the three friends discuss the prologue (1:3-14) to the epistle to the Ephesians.
[The following exchange is fictitious—though quite plausible—imagining the voices and perspectives of three particular friends.]
Read more ›by Ken Sehested
One important thing that hasn’t been said this week [about the savagery of separating of children from parents at the US-Mexican border] is that this Department of Justice policy change is in fact a form of terrorism.
The point of terrorism isn’t killing people. Terrorists make strategic use of aggressive trauma to spread fear for the purpose of affecting social or political objectives. Look up the FBI’s definition.*
Read more ›
§ “Christ, in disarming Peter, disarmed every soldier.”
§ “Shall we carry a flag? It is a rival to Christ.”
§ “It is absolutely forbidden to repay evil with evil.”
Read more ›by Ken Sehested
This material was delivered in 2010 to a North Carolina Council of Churches-sponsored series of clergy gatherings in various cities.
My assignment is to do a Bible study relevant to the intense conversation underway in our nation over the question of immigration. Others will offer social analysis and practical strategies. But I should mention three presumptions I bring.
Read more ›by Ken Sehested
Imagination is one of our age’s feel-good words, and if you use it (and I do, a lot), first pause to consider the term’s shadow side.
Imaginary, a linguistic cousin, can be used to describe a life removed from the vicissitudes of history, e.g., pipe 
dreams sprinkled with pixie dust, also known as magical thinking. To call such living childish is an insult to children. Imagination is not escapism. Spiritual life is not evacuation to another world.
by Ken Sehested
15 May is the anniversary of what Palestinians call al-Nakba, translated as “the Catastrophe” in reference to the day following Israel’s formation as a state in 1948. Some three-quarters of a million Palestinians were forced from their homes. Four hundred Palestinian villages cease to exist. The heirs of the expelled now number five million, most living in refugee camps on the West Bank, Gaza, and surrounding countries.
I was in my 30s when I first heard the word Nakba, and the historical moment it represents, well into a career requiring broad knowledge of global affairs. In my experience, few here in North America know the word.
Read more ›Memorial Day preparation materials
• “Memorial Day: A historical summary”
• “Conflicting memorials: The Lord’s Table of remembrance vs. the nation’s vow of preeminence,” an essay
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