Recently I learned of Ron Sider’s death at 82 from sudden cardiac arrest. Fifteen years ago I had him speak at our church and took him and his wife Arbutus to dinner after the Saturday night service. Their gentle demeanor reflected their Mennonite tradition, but underneath you could intuit a fierce sense of justice. Many years earlier I had read his seminal book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (1977). I wasn’t sure at the time if I should like it. It felt subversive. The

I love parameters. Seriously. As someone with an artist’s temperament, that sounds contrary, but I actually love when resources or boundaries appear to inhibit creativity and innovation. Matter-of-fact, I think it forces imaginative thinking. Consider a painter: though it may seem they have an endless palette of color to play with, they all come from only a handful of primary colors. Plus, they have the boundaries of the size of the canvas. They may even have been commissione

The phrase “Perception is reality” is generally attributed to a controversial political consultant back in the 1980s. That alone sheds some light on the sentiment! And while not true in an objective sense, to the person who sees something in a particular way, that is their reality. Remember the black-and-blue or white-and-gold dress meme? So while the Wall Street Journal recently published an op-ed saying that religion is not in dire straits as much as we might think, a graph