A Sermon for July 4, 2020 My title comes Leviticus 25:10 “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” That text is inscribed on a large cast bronze bell in Philadelphia known as the Liberty Bell. In 1751, the Colony of Pennsylvania was building a new state house, and wanted an appropriate…
I remember when the main religious liberty concern of Adventists was the fear of what Christians do when they have political power. That’s the thread throughout Ellen G. White’s book, “The Great Controversy.” It’s about how Christianity turned to the state for protection and patronage, and was corrupted, and how it became a persecutor. It’s…
(This is an article I wrote in the year 2000, after attending the 3rd Internet and Society Conference at Harvard. Think of it as a time capsule. I was Director of Young Adult and Campus Ministry for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston at the time, so it has a Catholic focus. Still, it raised some interesting…
There was a photo today of German Chancellor Angela Merkel grocery shopping in Berlin. We have few politicians who would be seen at a grocery store. Trump once said you need an ID to use one. Or, if you were not working, the grocery store would “work with you” so you could have food. Dick…
Hospitals, spiritual care is not a luxury you can eliminate in a crisis. Now is the time you need it more than ever. And realize, too, that your chaplains are likely overwhelmed along with the rest of your staff, and they will suffer burnout, compassion fatigue, moral injury, and PTS along with them. What are…
The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists has announced that its quinquennial session will be postponed a year due to COVID-19. It will be a session reduced in size in days and participants, to focus on just getting the business done. And this, they say, will be a model for the future. It makes sense, from…
Some practical wisdom from the distinguished theologian of Wittenberg. …Use medicine; take potions which can help you; fumigate house, yard, and street; shun persons and places wherever your neighbor does not need your presence or has recovered, and act like a man who wants to help put out the burning city. What else is the…
“And there was war in heaven” (Revelation 12:7-9). What an image! In the heavenly kingdom, the kingdom of peace, there was war! A war that spread to this earth, and engulfed it in conflict, misery, and death. We refer to this war as “The Great Controversy.” That isn’t merely the title of a book by a…
What is a college chaplain? A chaplain is the senior advisor to a president on the spiritual life of a campus–a critical position for the Christian college or university. This needs to be the starting point in your search. If you think a chaplain is merely a coordinator of religious activities for students then you…
Daniel chapter 3 tells a familiar story. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, erected a golden statue on the plain of Dura and commanded all people to bow before it. Those who refused would be cast into a fiery furnace. In verse 8, the start of our reading, his advisors told Nebuchadnezzar three men he had appointed…
John 1:5–“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.” Shortly after I arrived here yesterday afternoon, I went over to the Wal-Mart to join with those reflecting and praying at the memorial which was set up to honor the 22 victims who died last Sabbath morning. I went again this morning…
The Department of Defense recently issued a new document on nuclear war, JP 3-72, Nuclear Operations. It was quickly taken offline, but not before being snagged and posted by the Federation of American Scientists. This is all it says of ethics: The law of war governs the use of nuclear weapons, just as it governs…
The year was 1569. The place, Holland, which was then under Spanish rule. That meant Catholic rule, and Protestants were treated harshly, especially those known as Anabaptists. Dirk Willems was an Anabaptist. When they came to arrest him for preaching the Gospel, he took off running, with an officer known as a “thief catcher” in…
It’s one of the shortest of the Ten Commandments. It seems clear. Desmond Doss said he got his conviction against killing because of a framed picture of the Ten Commandments that hung on a wall in his childhood home, with the sixth commandment illustrated by Cain and Abel, with a club in Cain’s hand over…
(Originally given as a devotional at SDA military chaplains training; revised and extended) Paul asked me to share with you some reflections based on an event I attended last week at the University of Notre Dame. I start with this text: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9). General Douglas…
I’m attending the Summer Institute for Faculty in Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame. My reflections center on how to promote peacebuilding within the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In our education, we need to encourage examination of the church’s heritage of noncombatancy, and its work in religious liberty, health and…
This article was originally prepared for the 180 Symposium sponsored by the Center for Youth Evangelism at Andrews University, May 7-9, 2019 (also posted here). All the papers will be published in a forthcoming volume by AdventSource. For the first time in U.S. history, Soldiers are deploying to a war that began before they were…
Rosa del Duca, Breaking Cadence: One Woman’s War Against the War. Portland, OR: Ooligan Press, 2019. Rosa del Duca joined the National Guard before 9-11. She was thinking about money for education, and interested in helping out in responding to disasters like wildfires. She hadn’t reflected on war or military service. She was a teenager…
Videos “Before You Enlist” https://www.afsc.org/video/you-enlist-2011 “Conscience of a Nation” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JFAN–llOE “The Conscientious Objector.” https://www.adventsource.org/store/adult-ministries/audiovisual/the-conscientious-objector-blu-ray-38916 “Field Punishment No. 1” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3124186/ “The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It: Conscientious Objectors in WWII.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0314116/ “Hacksaw Ridge.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2119532/ “A Matter of Conscience.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qSLHb0TGcQ&t=614s “Operation Whitecoat.” http://operationwhitecoatmovie.com “Out of Cordoba.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1604147/ “Pax Service: An Alternative to War.”…
Sermon preached Easter 2019 Parents, you have probably seen the bumper sticker that says, “Insanity is Hereditary: You Get It from Your Children.” Kids. What can we say about them? They have this ability to drag us through the spectrum of human emotions from one day to the next, and sometimes from one minute to the next.…
The Seventh-day Adventist Church was organized in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1863, in the middle of the US Civil War. The church membership was entirely in the northern states, and decidedly abolitionist, and yet was opposed to war and the bearing of arms. The passing of the first US draft law spurred the organization effort.…
During her lifetime, Ellen White wrote and spoke much on the topic of health. I think her best book is The Ministry of Healing. After her death, many snippets of her counsels to individuals were collected and published without giving the context in compilations such as Counsels on Diet and Food. In July 1919 Adventist religion teachers…
Luke 6:17-49 English Standard Version (ESV) 17 And he came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, 18 who came to hear him and to be healed…
There’s a human tendency to want to be considered part of a special group. To be seen as set apart. To be part of a group that’s better or holier than another group. Paul faced that in Corinth, arguing in his first letter to the Corinthians against those who thought they were better because they…
It’s common among Christians to quibble over supposed distinctions between Hebrew words meaning “killing” as opposed to “murder.” Thus, they say, the commandment prohibits “murder,” but not other forms of killing. Rabbi Marty Lockshin says, no. All the words are used in multiple senses, “to teach us to abhor all killing of human beings.” Wilma…
The Torah is the story of God liberating his people from bondage, and then telling them not to forget. They are to remember they were slaves freed by God, and so are to do justice to the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger. Later, the prophets spend their time reminding the people to remember…
I am troubled by the fact that some Seventh-day Adventists are turning their back on the doctrine of the Trinity–that is, the confession that we believe in one God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is fundamental to Christianity. We are baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And the…
My military career ended last week. I completed twenty years (broken into two periods, the first of which started in 1986). Because of the rules for Reserve and Guard members, I will get no pension, because I had some years in which I didn’t get enough “points” to have a “good year”–I thought my family…
Over the last year I’ve been re-reading the responses of “confessing Christians” like Barth, Bonhöffer, and Niemöller to the Nazi threat. Now I’m turning my attention to Paul Tillich. He had been an Army chaplain in World War 1, and he was an early and vocal critic of Nazi power and antisemitism. I came across…
“Okay, campers, rise and shine and don’t forget your booties ’cause it’s cold out there today!” In the movie, “Groundhog Day,” that’s what weatherman Phil Connor wakes up to in his hotel room in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. It happens again the next day, and he feels a sense of deja vu. And it continues the next…
