(Evangelical trigger warning: heresy, blasphemy.) I remember the precise moment I stopped believing in hell. Over a decade ago I was at a Christmas dinner party in the home of a gay

Hell hath no fury like religious people getting religion horribly wrong, and what’s worse, we usually don’t have a clue that we’ve lost the plot when we have. There are lots of

There are three words guaranteed to strike fear in the hearts of most Conservative Christians—especially the men: Sex, Sexuality, Gender. Any one of these subjects, whether spoken of explicitly or peripherally, is

Dear Friend, There’s a good chance you won’t see this, as at some point over the past year you either unfriended, unfollowed, or physically disconnected from me—or I from you. There

“If Jesus came back and saw what was being done in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.” – Hannah and Her Sisters For the past few decades the GOP

My father died four years ago. He was on a cruise for his 70th birthday with my mother and other members of our family. We managed to catch him on

“Nobody said it would be easy.” My father always used to say this to me whenever we’d be talking on the phone about the difficult stuff of life; the obstacles

This week Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, and the rest of this Administration reminded us of an important lesson, one that transcends politics: saying “no” is a really easy trap to fall into—and

I just heard a beautiful sound. It was the sound of 24 million people exhaling. 24 million people of every political affiliation, from every blue and red state, from every religious tradition,

10 black girls have reportedly gone missing in the past week in Washington, DC, with 38 open cases in the area involving young women of color—but it’s only now through

I’ve had the honor of officiating many weddings over the past two decades. They’ve all been beautiful in their way, but more often than not the vows exchanged have been—naive, to say

“I feel betrayed.” These were the words that a friend of Mexican descent recently shared with me, about the Bible Belt suburban neighbors she once thought she knew and felt at

Dear Evangelicals in America, I’ve seen what’s been going on there lately. Actually, I’ve been watching you all along, and I felt I needed to reach out because something seems to have

Christian, You may likely find yourself in a church this Sunday. That’s potentially a fine, noble, and beautiful thing. There’s nothing at all wrong with gathering in a building with

They say a budget is a moral document. I agree. The President’s proposed budget and the GOP’s recent maneuvers around it, seeking to drastically reduce or eliminate funding for programs

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll have LGBTQ children. I’m not sure if other parents think about this, but I often do. Maybe it’s because I have many people in my

  The first time I heard the term white privilege, I did what many white people do. I leapt immediately to defending myself from whatever accusations those words generated in my mind,

I confess that I was dead wrong about this. I have to hand it to the Christian Right, they knew what the heck they were talking about all this time. They

Some people tell me that I’ve changed; that I’ve become more confrontational and irritable, that I am less tolerant of disagreement now. They say that I seem angrier, that I’m more

Yesterday a stranger left a very sweet comment on a piece I’d written, saying, “I wish I was half as good a person as you seem to be.” My reply

I’m tired. I’m tired of professed Christians preaching a Jesus that they seem to have no interest at all in emulating; of religious people being a loud, loveless noise in

Are we great yet, America? I’ve been wondering if we’re here; if this is the supposed greatness he was talking about, the kind his supporters were forecasting, the kind their

I am a Christian. I am a Christian and I am not a Republican. Contrary to some reports, I am not a mythical creature relegated to story books and fanciful campfire

Every day I pass a cemetery driving to and from our house, often several times in an afternoon. Some days I notice it, but most days it’s part of the great