December twenty-first is winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. That makes the 22nd the first day of more sun! Let me spell that out. Beginning this week we're on a path toward "sun breaks" and dry sidewalks, a time when people will take their fleeces off for long...

I married a Canadian, which got me, among other things, some pretty awesome Canadian in-laws, a bunch of friends who think hockey is actually worth watching (not for the same reason I do, which is to nerd out on the fascinating phenomenon of mob psychosis), and two kids who are...

Since I've been told this is the season of doggerel . . .

The Party of No
had nowhere to go
but backwards
to get to the future.
"Uh, that doesn't work,"
said a brazen Young Turk.
"Someone please shut them up
...

Seattle was still reeling from the cold blooded execution of a police officer on Halloween, when the news hit on Sunday that four more officers were dead.  Monday, as I was trying to weave my way through a city swarming with blue cars and uniforms, and drenched with anxiety...

On November 5,  a Muslim US army psychiatrist, Nidal Malik Hasan,  shot and killed thirteen of his fellow soldiers on the Fort Hood military base, injuring another thirty.  In response to the Fort Hood shootings, some people blamed Islam.  Others said Islam had nothing to do with it, that the problem...

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. – Charles Darwin

Last week, as I was driving a carload of middle-schoolers to a movie, the kids started talking about their teachers.  I couldn’t help overhearing, “ ....

Dear Bishops –

In our struggle to get health care for all, you saw an opportunity to make sure that American women can’t afford abortions, a way to be the deciders for all of us.  You look at someone like me who has had an abortion, and you see a...

"I had no need of that hypothesis."

Over the course of the summer I wrote a series of articles about brain science and Christianity, and I promised a final installment that never came.  This is it. The series asked and--within the limits of present knowledge--answered a set of questions that...

As the Right Wing base sinks to new levels of insanity taking the Republican brand with it, “going stealth”  has become the campaign strategy of choice in districts where an all-out, Teabagger Town Hall, Palin-Beck, froth-mouthed feeding frenzy would just turn stomachs.  The Right’s agenda isn’t evolving, just its tactics. ...

Advice for candidates from a former fundie.

One thing I learned not long after finishing my Spanish degree was -- never volunteer to translate anything into a language you don't dream in. I was visiting Flores, Guatemala, and offered to help a small art collective. In response, they handed me...

The most controversial check I write each year is the one that goes to a small nonprofit called Project Prevention. Project Prevention pays drug addicts and chronic alcoholics to get permanent or long term birth control. Director Barbara Harris founded the program after adopting not one or two but...

Next week in King County, Washington, "nonpartisan" Susan Hutchison will be vying with Democrat Dow Constantine for the role of County Executive. The seat controls significant resources in a region that often plays a leadership role in future oriented public policy. If King County were a state, its budget...

"I don't know if it's real," my friend Laura said, "but some conservatives have decided to edit the Bible. I sent you the link." She started laughing, and I laughed too. Over the next few days more friends sent articles about the Conservative Bible Project. All asked the...

A couple of years back, I dragged my agnostic husband, Brian, to a Calvinist megachurch. Calvinist means God preselected a few humans for salvation and the rest for eternal torture. We sat there for an hour, goats among the sheep. Brian's reaction? "That was the best indie rock I've heard...

On October 2nd, The Seattle Times featured an AP article about the recent quake in Sumatra, along with a "how to help" list. At the top of that list was World Vision International.

What the article failed to mention, and many donors fail to realize, is that World Vision...

In case you missed the announcement, ShipofFools.com has published an "authoritative" list of the ten worst verses in the Bible. At a time when atheists are posting ads on billboards and busses around the world, you might assume that the Ship is an anti-religious site. But no. Ship...

Change Happens

The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue. -Antisthenes

My parents, as I've said before, were three for six in terms of producing believing children. All of us accepted Jesus as our personal savior. We all entered the...

Republicans say that Democrats fail to encourage personal responsibility. A battle in Seattle Washington over plastic bag fees provides a perfect, if minor, example. After the city council voted to require a twenty cent per bag fee for disposable grocery bags, CAMP, the Central Area Motivation Program joined the...

How Beliefs Resist Change

The Jesuits have a saying sometimes attributed to Francis Xavier, "Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man." The Jesuits were a tad optimistic, but ample research on identity formation shows that religious, cultural, and political identity...

(This article is adapted from an interview conducted by Valerie Tarico on Moral Politics Television, Seattle, June 12, 2009. Guest Reverend Rich Lang has been preaching his way through the book of Revelation this summer. Sermons on Chapters 1-12 can be found here. Special thanks to Producer Bill Alford.)