Month: February 2026

Dear readers,

I am going to take a couple of weeks off and will return in the second week of March. In the meantime, here is something to think about.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a game demonstrating the difficulty of reconciling self-interest with the common good. I imagine most readers are familiar with it. In brief, a prize of considerable value is offered to contestants. If they cooperate, they will win the prize and share it. Yet each is given opportunities to pretend cooperation while secretly plotting to claim the entire prize. Because every contestant knows the others face the same temptation, each has an incentive to abandon cooperation in self-defense. The probable, though not certain, outcome is that nobody wins anything.

It was a move of blatant self-interest when Texas decided to redraw its congressional districts mid-decade in order to create five additional Republican seats they likely would not otherwise have won. California responded with its own act of self-interest, creating five reasonably safe Democratic districts. Other states have begun to consider similar moves. Here in Virginia, on April 12, voters will decide whether to join the self-interest crowd and abandon the independent, nonpartisan redistricting process we worked so hard to establish.

The argument in favor of doing so can sound persuasive. It is presented as self-defense against those willing to manipulate the system for partisan gain intended to demolish democracy in favor of fascist style authoritarianism. Yet it also risks falling into the Prisoner’s Dilemma trap in which everyone ultimately loses. In this case, the prize at risk is the integrity of our democratic electoral system. Once surrendered, the will of the people becomes subject to computer-generated district lines drawn for partisan advantage whenever those in power choose to redraw them.

The cost of voting no may be real. It may mean turning the other cheek in the face of dishonesty and accepting the consequences. Yet as a priest and pastor, I cannot in good conscience vote yes in this referendum. Still, each of you, dear readers, must decide for yourselves what is right.

Fr. Steve+

Presidents’ Day 2026. I wonder how the “dear leader” will encourage us to observe it. Perhaps he will suggest that Trump be added alongside Washington and Lincoln. After all, he has claimed to be more patriotic than Washington and to have done more for Black citizens than Lincoln. That bizarre fantasy aside, how will the rest of us observe Presidents’ Day?

Perhaps this year, more than in others, it must be more than another day off.

It was said of Washington that he was “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” according to General Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee in a eulogy delivered in Philadelphia some months after Washington’s death. It is less easy to summarize Lincoln in a single poignant line. Perhaps it is the Gettysburg Address, and his appeal to the “better angels of our nature,” that best expresses the reason we set aside this day to honor him along with Washington.

Each, in his own way, worked to unify a nation fractured by violent disunity. Each sought to reconcile and heal deep wounds of enmity while strengthening the nation’s foundations so that a better future could be built—and would be built. Each was a person of his own time and condition in life. Each made errors of judgment, as all of us do, and some of those errors appear egregious in hindsight. They are historical realities not to be ignored but to be learned from. Yet it would be wrong to dwell on them, because the good they worked so hard to achieve on behalf of the future far outweighs the mistakes they made.

This Presidents’ Day would be a good time to reflect on the office itself, and on the character of those who have occupied it with courage and commitment on behalf of the people—sublimating their own considerable egos and personal interests to the general welfare of the nation. Forty-six men have held that office. Most were adequate to the task. Some were not. A few might fairly be labeled scoundrels. A very few demonstrated contempt for the office, for the people, and for the future. Until recently, Nixon was many people’s candidate for worst president in modern times. Yet even he presided over landmark environmental protections and opened diplomatic relations with communist China.

The same cannot be said for our current president. There appears to be no limit to the depths and breadth of the corruption to which he will descend in pursuit of self-aggrandizement and personal enrichment. He lies with such frequency that counting them has become futile. His visceral contempt for others is directed at anyone he considers threatening, inconvenient, or irrelevant to his own desires. That will not prevent the various lackeys and courtiers of palace intrigue from proclaiming him the greatest president in American history.

I hope this Presidents’ Day will be observed with reflection on the best of our past and hope for our future. I regret that it must also be observed with a measure of shame—for what we have allowed to happen when we elected him not once, but twice, knowing full well the damage he brings wherever he goes and in whatever he does.

Every year at this time I, along with many others, feel compelled to write about the sin of antisemitism which has soiled our Christian faith for far too long. The season of Lent is meant to be a time of self-examination and repentance. Yet it has too often been used by some Christians as an occasion to renew prejudice and persecution against their Jewish neighbors.

The Gospel according to John will serve as the principal text in Sunday worship as Christians begin their six-week observance of Lent in preparation for Easter. It presents a difficult problem for Christians and their Jewish brothers and sisters. John’s Gospel uses the term “the Jews” somewhere between sixty and seventy times, depending on the translation. In the context of the narrative, it often leaves the undeniable impression “the Jews” are implacable adversaries of what God seeks to make known through Jesus Christ as the way of salvation for all humanity.

Biblical scholars and theologians have taken great pains to explain the historical context in which the Gospel was written influenced its language. They argue, rightly, the words were never intended to condemn Jews or Judaism as a whole. In some instances, the phrase refers to particular religious authorities; in others, to a small and specific group. It was never a blanket condemnation of an entire people. Scholars and theologians may make this argument persuasively, but worshipers hear the words as they are read aloud. They hear them in their plain, contemporary meaning, and the effect can be unmistakable.

Over the centuries, this language has contributed to profound suffering. Christians have cited these texts to justify persecuting their Jewish neighbors, especially during the Lenten season, often with deadly consequences. Such actions have been an abomination before the Lord, made worse by being carried out in the name of Jesus Christ, who came not to condemn the world, but to redeem it.

The pogroms of earlier centuries have largely given way to more subtle forms of prejudice. Church leaders across many traditions have worked diligently to root out antisemitism wherever it persists in belief, attitude, or behavior. Yet the problem has not disappeared. Each year the lectionary returns to John’s Gospel, and clergy once again face the difficult task of teaching against interpretations the text has historically been used to support.

Stripped of its persistent use of the phrase “the Jews,” John’s Gospel stands as one of the most profound testimonies to the boundless love of God. It proclaims God’s desire not to condemn, but to renew and redeem humanity—and indeed all creation—calling us toward a new life grounded in love for one another.

It is this love we are called to live into. It is our sins of prejudice we are called to confess, repenting and turning anew toward the way of healing, reconciliation, and peace.

In this unique year, when Christian Lent and Muslim Ramadan are observed at the same time—each calling the faithful to self-examination, repentance, and renewal—we face an added challenge: not to replace the sin of antisemitism with the sin of Islamophobia. The closing words of the Holy Eucharist send us forth “to go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” They do not send us forth to serve our fears or justify our prejudices.

The Trump administration has announced it will no longer enforce environmental laws and regulations related to greenhouse gases. It is a destructively foolish move that threatens the health and welfare of all living creatures and illustrates contempt for our sacred duty to be good stewards of creation.

With that in mind, it is worthwhile to remember that the administration, as powerful as it is, remains only a small part of the country’s economic and political fabric. Families, neighborhoods, cities, and states can continue to be good stewards, doing everything they can to protect the environment. We can collectively continue to obey the laws and follow the regulations without regard to the administration’s unwillingness to enforce them.

The same is true for corporate America. Corporations need only choose to do the right thing. Will they? It depends entirely on the moral courage of senior executives and the owners of smaller businesses. Corporations themselves are neither ethical nor moral beings. They exist within the framework of laws that enable them. Moral decisions can be made only by those who lead them. Tax laws, investor demands for higher returns at any cost, and personal desires for greater riches are powerful forces working against systemic ethics and personal morality. It takes considerable courage to resist them, and I hope we will see at least some measure of that courage among the leaders of corporate America.

It would be especially gratifying to see such moral courage exhibited by leaders in the fossil fuel industries. Who knows? It could happen. It seems unlikely, however, because industry leaders have publicly proclaimed their allegiance to expansion and the pursuit of enormous profits regardless of the greater costs imposed on people and places now and for generations to come.

It does not have to be that way. If enough public pressure is applied, if enough conscientious investors demand change, and if reputations carefully cultivated as respected leaders are exposed for what they truly are, even entrenched industries can be compelled to act with greater responsibility.

Turning Point USA sponsored an alternative halftime entertainment during the Super Bowl. One of the featured acts performed a country song lamenting how small-town values and the “all-American virtues” they supposedly embody are disrespected by urban America and the elites presumed to look down on rural people.

It is a theme that resonates deeply within MAGA and Christian nationalist circles because it asserts that they — and they alone — remain faithful to what is good and virtuous about the United States. But what, exactly, are these virtues? Beyond the refrain about wanting to be left alone to love one’s family, drive a truck, and drink a beer, they appear to include marriage, family life, neighbors looking out for one another, hard work, honesty, and the like.

It takes a considerable measure of self-pitying arrogance to claim sole possession of values that are widely shared by Americans regardless of where they live or how they vote.

Small towns and smaller cities are often less diverse than major metropolitan areas. Commutes are shorter. Business may still be done with a handshake. Daily encounters bring people together in familiar ways that are harder to sustain in large cities. I have lived in some of the largest cities in the country, in a small city in the far West, and in the densely packed East Coast corridor. I prefer smaller cities and believe the nation would benefit from a broader distribution of its population among them — for historical and practical reasons that need not detain us here.

But the central point remains: the people who live in major urban areas hold the same core values the song claims for a mythical small-town America. They simply express them differently. In cities, neighborhoods function as communities. Care for one another is a cherished value. The welfare of families and children is a shared concern even among those who are single or childless. Anonymity may be greater, but no one entirely escapes being known by neighbors, friends, and coworkers. Commutes may fragment community, separating work from home, yet the values remain intact. All those virtues piled high in the back of the pickup truck are present in apartment buildings, row houses, and suburban streets as well.

Urban and rural life differ in texture and rhythm, but not in their moral foundations. The differences are cultural, not ethical.

With that in mind, I am willing to venture that most supporters of MAGA and Christian nationalism are not rural holdouts in forgotten towns. They are widely distributed throughout modern metropolitan communities. The appeal of songs that belittle urban sophistication while indulging in self-congratulatory grievance expresses resentment toward an imagined slight — a caricature carefully cultivated and then paraded as reality.

Repeat a caricature often enough and it begins to feel true. But it remains a distortion — and a self-fulfilling one. If we convince ourselves that our neighbors despise our values, we will soon treat them as if they do. That is not cultural pride. It is a corrosive fiction, and a self-destructive one.

Christians begin their annual six-week season of preparation for Easter on Wednesday, February 18, Ash Wednesday. It is a time for self-examination and reflection on following Jesus in the way of his commandment: to love one another as he has loved us, and to be agents of godly justice who confront every form of oppression and injustice with the light that brings a greater measure of the kingdom of God into every dark corner.

Receiving a cross of ashes on one’s forehead on Ash Wednesday has become a widely recognized sign of repentance and renewed life. Yet the ashes are applied with the words, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” They are a reminder of our mortality and of the limited time we have to do God’s work as faithfully as we can according to the gifts we have been given.

For many people Lent becomes a time for giving up something—chocolate, alcohol, or certain foods. While such fasting may have personal benefits, Scripture calls us to a deeper and more demanding fast. Speaking through the prophet Isaiah, God says:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.”

William Shakespeare’s Richard III opens with the king speaking of “the winter of our discontent.” His discontent—born of ambition, resentment, and grievance—ultimately brings suffering to the entire nation. History repeatedly shows that leaders who are discontented with their place in life, regardless of their wealth or power, can inflict similar suffering on their people. We see troubling examples of this dynamic in our own time, particularly in the harsh treatment of many resident aliens living among us.

A worthy Lenten self-examination might ask what God’s word in Holy Scripture has to say about the treatment of foreigners and resident aliens. They are mentioned well over a hundred times in the Bible. At times the Scriptures tell the story of God’s own people living as resident aliens, dependent on the hospitality of others. More often the texts repeat God’s command: treat the foreigner as one of your own, “for you were once aliens in a strange land.” The failure to extend hospitality—most dramatically illustrated in the story of Sodom—invites severe judgment. The New Testament continues the same theme as the gospel moves outward into a foreign world, taking root wherever it is received with hospitality. In spite of widespread persecution it became the world largest religion but one too often observed superficially.

One of the great sins of Christian history has been the repeated failure of those who bear the name of Christ to extend the hospitality of God’s grace to strangers and outsiders. For centuries, minorities and marginalized peoples have often suffered persecution at the hands of those claiming to act in the name of Christianity while many others stood by in silence. In our own nation we again face a moment that calls Christians to raise the banner of God’s love and to confront injustice by every nonviolent means available.

In a striking coincidence this year, the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan begins on February 18, the same day Christians begin the Lenten fast. Each tradition observes fasting differently, yet both are intended to deepen repentance, self-examination, and renewed commitment to justice, mercy, and compassion. That shared moment alone may be worth reflection as we enter this season together.

News and social media are filled with commentary about Christians, Christianity, and what it all stands for. Particularly notorious are certain self-described conservative Evangelical movements claiming to be Christian nationalists, aligned more or less with the current administration and its MAGA core supporters. They seem able to attract large crowds of adherents while giving Christianity a bad name at the same time.

When Jesus found himself surrounded by crowds—people in addition to those he called disciples—he explained the marks of a true follower, believer, and disciple in ways that identified them with greater clarity. Faithful followers of the Way are not better human beings than others. They remain the same complicated, sometimes doubting people that we all are. The difference is a rule of life that guides and corrects them toward following, in ever greater measure, the way of Jesus Christ.

They can be identified by their commitment to mercy over judgment, and by their recognition that they are, after all, not very good judges of others. They understand that they themselves are often poorly judged as well. They desire to be peacemakers—not only by de-escalating violence, but even more by healing and reconciling relationships, including their own. Even the most humble among them exhibit strength and courage in the face of injustice affecting the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized.

While deeply religious, they are unlikely to parade their piety in public. There is a kind of religiosity that is acted out as public performance art, using God as a stage prop. It is not the Christian way. Faithful followers of Jesus tend to keep their prayers simple and direct. When they offer prayer in public, they seek to invoke God’s presence rather than entertain listeners with elaborate promises or vindictive condemnations.

They have a curious relationship with money and the competitive struggle to climb social and economic ladders. They may acquire great wealth. They may find themselves among society’s elite. Oddly enough, neither of those will be very important to them. Their greatest desire is to do what is good and right—and to do it well—in whatever work engages them. They experience the same pressures and anxieties about daily life as everyone else and, like most people, desire success in their professions and trades. They make the same mistakes and errors that we all do, but somehow the way of Jesus remains at the center of all they do, the compass that brings them back when they lose their bearings.

Their faith is a sacred treasure. It is to be treated with reverence. No authority in heaven or on earth can hold a higher place.

These Christians are not more perfect than anyone else, nor do they consider themselves more righteous. They are not naïve about who they are as human beings. Indeed, they recognize all persons everywhere—regardless of place or condition of life—as being made in the image of God, loved by God, and desired by God to be blessed in abundance.

Christians who follow in the way of Jesus do not claim to have all the answers or to understand everything that Scripture and tradition have offered them. They are willing to knock, seek, and ask, fully expecting God’s Holy Spirit to open doors, help them find what they seek, and respond to their deepest questions. Nevertheless, they remain aware that they understand only in part, knowing that God is still speaking and still creating.

Not every voice that claims to be Christian follows in the way of Jesus, and not every person who claims to speak for God can be trusted. Jesus warned that there would be many false prophets using his name. Faithful Christians test every voice. Is it consistent with what Jesus did and taught? Does it proclaim love of God and love of neighbor—especially the stranger, the alien, the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, and even those whom we may dislike or distrust?

 Christians have no illusions about the changes and chances of life. Good times and hard times fall on everyone alike. What they hold with certainty is a faith grounded in the way of the cross, a faith able to endure whatever comes and to lead through the gates of death into new and better life in God’s presence. In the meantime, they are compelled and commanded to do what they can to bring some measure of the kingdom of God into the places where they live and among the people they encounter.

Politics has become a dirty word. “It’s all politics” is often declared as though the phrase itself explains—and excuses—something ethically deplorable. To say “it’s just politics” is to trivialize what is happening,  dismissing it as something relatively useless when compared with real people doing real work. To politicize an issue is commonly understood as turning something important into a partisan tool, shaped by special pleading in service of a narrow purpose. Electoral politics, in particular, conjures images of back-room deals, campaign promises no one believes, advertising that demonizes opponents, conspiracy theories about stolen elections, and all the rest.

Taken together, politics has earned a bad name: a grimy process associated with manipulative professionals feeding at the trough of democracy. That, at least, is the image one often hears in casual conversation among friends. Whatever truth that perception may hold, there is another understanding of politics that is more important—and far more virtuous.

Politics, at its best, is the art of deciding how people are to live together in a condition of predictable equilibrium. It is an art because it is creative and imaginative, establishing permeable standards and shared expectations rather than rigid barriers and fixed boundaries.

The art of politics is practiced at every level of human community: families, social groups, workplaces, neighborhoods, congregations. For our purposes here, politics refers to the art of managing communities of people, and particularly to the power of the people’s voice to influence decisions m what happenedade by those who hold high public office.

The general welfare of a people has always mattered to their rulers; what the people themselves might have to say usually did not. It was assumed that ordinary people had a hard enough time simply surviving, and that rulers therefore knew best what should be done for them and for the nation. The Code of Ur-Nammu, dating to around 2100 BCE, is the earliest known written law code governing a people. It was not a bad beginning. Its authors showed a genuine concern for making daily life reasonably fair and predictable.

That pattern—rule of and for the people without rule by the people—held for thousands of years. Disturbingly, there are some in our own government today who seem to think that pattern should replace American democracy. It is not acceptable to a free people. And yet, I hear too many citizens say, “What can we do? We have no voice. We have no power.” Others wonder whether demonstrations and protests have any value at all. What do they actually accomplish?

The answer is simple and demanding: the voice of the people is the heart and soul of modern democracy. It has a long and well-established pedigree proving that it can bring down tyrants and open the way toward societies more fully committed to democracy, prosperity, and freedom secured by the rule of law for all, without distinction.

English peasants revolted in 1381 amid social unrest following the Black Death, during the Hundred Years’ War with France, and the rule of a fourteen-year-old king, Richard II. The revolt was brutally suppressed, but it shook the foundations of the political establishment and helped open the path beyond Magna Carta toward parliamentary government. Peasants revolted again across continental Europe in the mid-sixteenth century. Those uprisings, too, were crushed—but they helped demolish the foundations of medieval feudalism.

America’s War of Independence arose from the demand that the people be heard and have a say in how they were governed. As expected, those tasked with writing the Constitution were reluctant to extend suffrage broadly; their conservative instincts led them to question the rights of women, people of color, enslaved persons, and even men without property. Nevertheless, the people’s voice persisted. Over the past 250 years, suffrage has been expanded, civil rights secured for more citizens, and the sanctity of democratic elections enshrined as a core national value.

The abolitionist movement, the suffrage movement, the Social Gospel movement, and the civil rights movement all stand as testimony to the power of the people’s voice to change the direction of the slow-turning ship of state.

That voice, however, is not always virtuous. When fueled by anger and resentment—when enough people are persuaded that women, people of color, immigrants, or intellectual elites are prospering at their expense—it can be manipulated. That distorted voice was powerful enough to elect Donald Trump to his first term, buoyed by expectations that he would “drain the swamp” and restore a lost social order. He did neither. Instead, he proved chaotic, incompetent, and consumed by his own interests. He lost reelection in disgrace.

For reasons that will be debated and lamented for years to come, Trump was elected again after four years of the Biden administration—no longer chaotic in quite the same way, but just as destructive, now surrounded by loyalists intent on dismantling American democracy in favor of a revival of twentieth-century authoritarianism.

On the cusp of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we face the possible loss of much for which that earlier generation struggled and died.

Is it too late? Can the voice of the people still be heard? Has it lost its power? Do demonstrations and protests matter? Do hundreds of thousands gathering in “No Kings” rallies make any difference? Will today’s turmoil be forgotten as quickly as yesterday’s headlines?

The answer remains yes: the voice of the people, actively engaged in the art of politics—insisting on being heard in decisions about how we are governed—is a greater power than many can imagine. No regime, however strong it appears, can long withstand a people who refuse to be made slaves again. Demonstrations and protests make the people’s voice audible. Just as importantly, they awaken citizens to sustained engagement: learning the issues, voting, and holding leaders accountable to the general welfare.

Only two forces can defeat the people’s voice once it has been raised. The first is the complacency of those who believe that attending a rally is sufficient. The second is the complacency of those who see, hear, and then go about their business as though nothing has happened.

Democracy dies in darkness claims a major newspaper. It is wrong.Complacency of the people is the death of democracy.