The South may be the one part of the country where ‘evangelicals’ actually have some cultural dominance. But ‘evangelicalism’ has had its power centers all around the country. This is especially so in the Philadelphia-Princeton belt, the halo around Lake […]
Many have suggested that it’s time to do away with the Electoral College. I’m concerned, however, about how that will work. So, I have some suggestions for making it more ‘democratic’. Since the problems of the year 2000, I have […]
Some say that one of the solutions to our housing problem [indeed, their favorite solution] is building on land that has not been built on before. There are a lot of issues surrounding this, however. There are two ways of […]
Large parts of the African American and Latino elements within the Democratic Party are the most moderate elements within the party, playing the same role as the mostly white Religious Right played within the Republicans. A surprising new force has […]
A story in which my own experience in a black neighborhood convinced me that the hope for reconciliation is not dead It was late February, and I was on my way to a men’s retreat in Malibu, California. And I […]
One of the classic books on the history of suburbia is Kenneth Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier. It came out in 1985, two years before my personal favorite, Bourgeois Utopias, by Robert Fishman. This book notice discusses Crabgrass Frontier in view of […]
Many of us are trying to figure out what God is trying to do by allowing this Coronavirus plague to circulate around the world so dramatically. As I thought about this, I was reminded of a passage in Luke’s Gospel […]
Recently in an airport, I saw and bought a rather provocative issue of Scientific American. The cover declared that humans ‘evolved’ to exercise, while the most similar forms of life – chimpanzees and bonobos – function very well as couch potatoes, according to […]
I always thought of Dick Dale as a local phenomenon, but his recent death got national coverage. The most thorough and best article was one in The New Yorker, a magazine which might well have turned up its nose during […]
Sometimes we are inclined to overlook the economically homeless who actually have, or could have, jobs. We may not be able to afford to get them all under a roof, but I think at the very least they deserve encampments […]