My Story
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Celebrities for Jesus and Fred Rogers
In a time when large swaths of the America church have merely mimicked worldly concepts of power, going for bigger, louder, glitzier, we have to return to the small, the quiet, the uncool, and the ordinary. Obscurity may very well be the spiritual discipline the American church needs to practice the most in the coming century. Katelyn Beaty, Celebrities for Jesus My husband and I finally watched It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the Tom Hanks movie from 2019 about Fred Rogers. Wow. I had instant childhood flashbacks–sitting in my grandma’s den on her little couch, drinking my glass of orange juice, and watching Mr. Rogers calmly explain things…
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Shaking Up Tradition and Religion
I have a new theme song! Have you ever had a song resonate so deeply that it feels like the theme of your life? This one has been out since 2021, but I just heard it for the first time at the writers conference I was attending last weekend. Yes, writers conference! We will get to that. Also, hello there! It’s been a while. 🙂 “Shake up the ground of all my tradition. Breakdown the walls of all my religion. Your way is better. Your way is better.” Joshua Neil Farro / Rebekah Erin White / Lucas Salles Cortazio / Evelyn Braun Heideriqui This bridge is the heart of everything…
- An Impostor Jesus, And Then I Met Jesus, Exposing Legalism, God Ponderings, Looking for the Real God, My Story
Defining Deconstruction
There was an incredible Lego set but over the years people added pieces to it and took some away Most of them had good intentions They were trying to make it look better or more creative maybe more fun and even more defined But after a while you couldn’t tell what it used to look like It was just a pile of Lego blocks stuck together 🪴 I took the blocks apart and found the original instructions which were kind of crumpled and hard to read Then I separated the pieces choosing the ones that belonged to the oirginal set I did my best to follow the directions even though…
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The Flawed Theology of Christian Nationalism
Families traveled to the nondescript hall each week from across Michigan and even Ontario. Some drove up to two and a half hours one way — my family drove an hour and twenty minutes — to gather on Sunday with like-minded believers. The hall was split into two areas: one lined with tables where families set up their lunch spot, and the other with rows of old metal folding chairs gathered in a semi circle around an electric piano and a black, collapsible podium. In the back of the room near the kitchen, they set up PVC pipes with curtains as a space for the nursing mothers and babies. There…
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Social Media and a Polarized World
I just finished the Netflix documentary called “the social dilemma” this morning. It feels fitting considering that we are all waiting the results of a very polarized and passionate election. Have you every wondered, “What happened to our world? When did it get so crazy?” I have. Often. And thanks to this documentary now I have some insight. I’d encourage all of you to watch it. Unless you cancelled your Netflix account because of the online drama over the “Cuties” movie. (Which ironically is a perfect example of what the documentary is talking about.) Did you know that fake news travels six times as fast on social media as real…
