Month: September 2019

I hate to say it, but if I want banal political or social analysis, I know I can always count on the clergy.

Our local newspaper is often a good source. It runs the occasional guest column where local clergy comment on whatever they choose. I’ve even written a couple myself.

Generally, what’s remarkable about these offerings is how utterly predicable they are. Without a hint of irony, they almost always betray conventional wisdom (which, by definition, is noncontroversial) while simultaneously aiming to be provocative and countercultural. Most articles fall safely within the parameters of socially accepted political correctness.

Most recently, a local pastor wrote of the time she was foreman of a jury asked to adjudicate the guilt or innocence of a young black man indicted on a variety of counts. She points to how easy it is to judge another, especially a stranger, based on little more than superficial evidence and observation.  

Continue reading “In the Clerisy but Not of It”

My father used to love reading the newspaper. Every day, in fact, he’d read all three New York dailies, cover-to-cover.

He especially got a kick out of the letters-to-the-editor. He’d chuckle at all the hysterical, over-the-top outrage frequently fomented in its pages. So I’m not sure what he’d think about my own letter-to-the-editor a few weeks ago in the Cape Cod Chronicle.

In it, I commented on the fact that the week before the paper had published a detailed map showing the exact path of the tornado that first touched down in Harwich Center. Since I’d worked there for over a decade, I was curious.

Naturally enough, to orient myself, I looked for the First Congregational Church, only to discover it wasn’t there. The high school was identified, as was Brooks Park. Yet the church, arguably the most recognizable and historic landmark in town, had effectively been scrubbed out of existence.  

Continue reading “The Caboose at the End of the Cultural Train?”