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The Complicity of Silence
Read more: The Complicity of SilenceIn light of the Walter Scott and Eric Harris killings, along with the #ShutdownA14 protests against police brutality this past week, I’d like to share an excerpt from my essay entitled, “To Establish Justice at The Gates”, which was published in the Los Angeles Review of Books earlier this month. How can I be well, when my sister…
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There Are Some Things I Just Can’t Tell You About
Read more: There Are Some Things I Just Can’t Tell You AboutThis piece can now be found on The Los Angeles Review of Books. Click here to go to a new, updated version of the article. Thanks for your support of The Two Cities.
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How I Met God
Read more: How I Met GodFor Lacan, the Real [or God] is that which breaks into our Imaginary and Symbolic constellations. The Real is a rupture. The Real cannot be imagined or symbolized, it does not occupy a place, and yet it takes place. The Real is a crack within our existing political, religious and cultural configurations, a resistance that…
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Christianity: A Way-Of-Being-In-The-World
Read more: Christianity: A Way-Of-Being-In-The-WorldFor the majority of my American Evangelical upbringing , I feel as though I was told that there were two main criteria for what religious leaders around me called “being a believer”: 1) one must have the right beliefs (orthodoxy) and 2) one must live an upstanding moral life (orthopraxy). This understanding of Christianity that…
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If Only…
Read more: If Only…I’ve always thought of Lust as only having to do with sex. It was always held up for me as the opposite of purity, chastity, virginity. When I think about it now, I realize that this narrow definition has actually become quite a convenient for me as a 21st Century American Christian. In limiting the…
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The Oppressor Within Us All
Read more: The Oppressor Within Us AllEdward Said’s, Orientalism (1978), was a masterpiece for its time because in it, he was able to give frame and structure to a period of history that could be referred to now as “The Age of European Imperialism”. These 500 years birthed the west as we know it, and so it makes sense why Said’s…
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To My Church, On The Eve Of a Decision
Read more: To My Church, On The Eve Of a DecisionDuring the summer of 1957, a mixed race family immigrated from Holland into the small town of Terra Ceia, North Carolina. The father was Dutch, the mother Indonesian. As they attempted to send their two children to the local Reformed Church school, they were met at the door by local segregationist leaders who considered the…
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Me, Myself, and I
Read more: Me, Myself, and II’m fortunate enough to be doing my graduate work at a small, liberal arts college in Southern California, where, in the middle of January, I get to walk to and from class in temperatures ranging from sixty-five to eighty degrees. In all honesty, if you’re running late or forget a book, this walk can seem…
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An Open Letter to Phil Robertson
Read more: An Open Letter to Phil RobertsonHave the men of our time still a feeling of the meaning of sin? Do they, and do we, still realize that sin does not mean an immoral act, that “sin” should never be used in the plural, and that not our sins, but rather our sin is the great, all-pervading problem of our life? Do we still know that it…
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Boys, It Is All Hell
Read more: Boys, It Is All Hell“This f-ckin’ sucks.” This is the phrase uttered over and over again by the four Navy SEALs pinned down in heavy enemy fire in Afghanistan during the firefight scenes in Peter Berg’s latest film Lone Survivor and it epitomizes the underlying thematic focus of the film. I’m not going to get into what the plot…