Eric Folkerth

General Conference starts today, and I am thinking about this song and what might happen these next few weeks.

I don’t think it’s an accident that I was introduced to this song by clergywomen colleagues.
We were all sitting around…

This week, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church will begin in Charlotte, North Carolina. This will be the first “regular” General Conference since 2016. I thought I would put down a few thoughts ahead of this potentially momentous…

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Frederick Buechner once described “Prayer” in a way that leaps to my mind this week, in these days after our communal experience of the Eclipse.

Buechner wrote:

“We all pray whether we think of it as praying or not. The…

These days after a solar eclipse are probably a good time to remind ourselves of this extended quote from St. Augustine of Hippo.
(picture taken by me during “totality”)

St. Augustine was a wordy writer, so I’ve edited it down…

Increasingly, I am convinced the opposite of “faith” is not “doubt,” but “fear.” This is because the deepest level of “faith” is not “belief,” but “trust;” and the opposite of “trust/faith” is “fear/anxiety.”

Instead of faith’s opposite, doubt is a…

The greatest trick Constantine ever played on our world was to convince us that the Empire that killed Jesus should actually embrace the religion that bears his name.

Why this isn’t self-obviously shocking to us today is a symptom of…

Dear Donald Trump:

Migrants are not animals.
Migrants are not subhuman.

Using such language about them is a dangerous and fascist tactic, designed to dehumanize and create “The Other.” Real leaders don’t light these kinds of matches and stoke these…

It’s now more than a week past Tracy Chapman’s incredible performance at this year’s Grammy Awards Show. I can’t stop thinking about it. And it’s reminded me of my favorite Tracy Chapman song.

Most people’s favorite is likely the big…

This very hour might be a really good time to re-read this editorial by Paul Jones. It appeared in newspapers, one day after The Beatles first appearance on Ed Sullivan, sixty years ago tonight.

The cultural historian in me wonders…