Mark's Blog
The Supreme Court Decision: A Misguided Attempt to Build the World As It Should Be
On April 29th, 2026, the Supreme Court essentially gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The impact was immediate, and jarring. Several states took the Louisiana v. Callas decision as justification to gerrymander their districts to give significant electoral advantage...
American Religious Pluralism Has Deep Roots
“Pains were taken to connect Ministers of the most dissimilar religious principles together”. So wrote founding father Benjamin Rush in his account of the July 4th, 1788 Grand Procession in Philadelphia. The Constitution had just been ratified by nine of the 13...
Deep Canvassing
It’s called deep canvassing, a community exercise that is different from standard canvassing. Standard canvassing involves knocking on doors for the purpose of persuading the household residents to support a cause or a candidate. Deep canvassing also involves knocking...
Correctives to Blasphemy
At a gathering in the White House just before Easter, President Trump was lauded, if not anointed, with the words, “you are the greatest champion of the faith that we have ever seen in a President.” So spoke Paula White-Cain, the President’s chief spiritual advisor,...
The Limits of Deal Making
“Let’s Make a Deal” is a day-time game show that has been running on TV off and on since 1963. “The Art of the Deal”, a book ghost written by Tony Schwartz for Donald Trump in 1987, immediately landed on the best seller list, where it remained for nearly a year, and...
Easter and Love: A Response to Epic Fury
“We’re going to bring them back to the Stone Age where they belong”. “All Hell will reign down”. So President Trump has said and written in the last few days as the bombardment of Iran continues. Many of us viscerally recoil at the wanton illegality, the unbridled...
Does Love Die on the Cross?
Fifteen years ago, I was on a tour of Robben Island in South Africa, the prison where Nelson Mandela was jailed for most of his 27 years in captivity. The tour guide was a former prisoner who had been locked up for writing a letter to his local newspaper questioning...
The Barbarity of Deus Vult
Deus Vult. God wills it, in Latin. That was a rallying cry in 1095 when Pope Urban made plans to dispatch a Christian army to expel Muslims from Jerusalem. It was the first Crusade.There were seven Crusades in all over the next 200 years, most of them failures. But...
The Dangers of Epic Fury
It was a moment of epic furry. I was with a group of my college freshmen classmates at the fraternity where we had just been accepted as pledges. I was invited upstairs into a member’s room, and as soon as I entered, I was set upon by three fraternity...