In honor of Veteran Federal Workers Everywhere.
Coming Soon…
If a billionaire wants to remake our world in his image, is that a world we want to live in?
The Ballad of the Billionaire Who Sacked Sergeant Buck … and “Banjo”
Tag: diversity
Danger: Libraries Cause Literacy
Schools and libraries under assault in the name of ideology.
Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Hoo, they’re red, white and blue
And when the band plays “Hail to the chief”
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, LordIt ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no senator’s son, son
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no fortunate one, no-“Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival
PEN America has documented nearly 16,000 book bans in public schools nationwide since 2021, a number not seen since the Red Scare McCarthy era of the 1950s. This censorship is being mobilized by conservative groups— and has spread to nearly every state— and predominantly targets books about race and racism or individuals of color and also books on LGBTQ+ topics as well those for older readers that have sexual references or discuss sexual violence.
In the 2023-2024 school year, PEN America found more than 10,000 book bans affecting more than 4,000 unique titles, with about 45% of the bans occurring in Florida and 36% in Iowa. The most banned books in the 2023-2024 school year, according to the PEN America Index of School Book Bans, include bestselling novelist Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes, about the moments leading up to a school shooting, and John Green’s Looking for Alaska. The list also includes The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, and The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini.
-From Banned Books List 2025 by Lisa Tolin
Fly Your Kite!,
Pastor Jim
Up Next “DOGE Audit: Day One”
“Move Fast … and Break Things:” The Game Played in the Devil’s Basement
While a sitting President’s adoption of “Move Fast and Break Things” might work for teenage savants in Silicon Valley, this process does not work for a Nation which lacks the shelter of a parent’s basement. Bulldozing government agencies and enterprises, citing that Advanced AI will save us, actually forces us into the servitude of AI.
“Move Fast and Break Things … Before You Get Caught”
“Service Animal Delay“
“Dog Inefficient.”
We Salute The U.S. Marine Band! Courage is gender and color blind. The United States is not the President’s play thing to break like some rich brat whose Daddy will buy another … unless it’s Greenland.
While “Move Fast and Break Things” may work for 20 year-old’s who can hide in their parents’ basements upon failure, the real world requires care and due diligence. Due diligence does not mean unnecessary delay but proceeding circumspectly when addressing critical infrastructure. A brain surgeon removing a tumor entwining speech and higher reasoning would likely not run the ad, “We Move Fast and Break Things.”
Follow All Rules While We Break Them
“Follow All Rules While We Break Them”
The inspiration for this post was the following 60 Minutes Story :
“We are suppressing the very essence of what makes us human…”
Unbroken,
Pastor Jim
See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Ephesians 5:15-16
Up Next “Missouri Seeks to Add Pregnant Women Fair Game”
The Pentagon Gets “One Tin Soldier”
Suggested Music is “One Tin Soldier.”
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God (Matthew 5:9).
Pastor Jim
Up Next: “Separate Church and Hate”
RESPECT: In a Land of Daddy Warbucks, Be a Rosa Parks
The Spirit of Rosa Parks
Aretha Franklin’s 1967 song Respect captured both the rights of women and civil rights.
Last week my wife and I visited both Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama. We saw where the local Birmingham Fire Department turned fire hoses, and the local police released their German Shepherds and batons on black children. The person in the image is the “Spirit of Rosa Parks” who faces the same forces today ordering her to “Step to the back of the bus or step off!”
As I stood in the same pulpit where Rev. Martin Luther King addressed 5,000 to launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It was this pulpit that introduced the world to Rev. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. This was the start of the “Freedom Riders,” who road buses across the U.S. to express their right to peaceful enjoyment of the United States.
At the 16th Street Baptist Church, we gathered around the black stone memorial where a Ku Klux Klan member, who was also a city employee, remotely detonated dynamite under the church steps and killed four little black girls. This was the same church where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream!” speech before he gave it at the Lincoln Memorial that resonates through our years.
This Little Light of Mine,
Pastor Jim
Up Next: “Neobigotry: A Genteel Racism”
Sunday School Party Animals
My Texan Sunday School teacher was a Democrat who managed to work the Party’s platform into of every lesson to captive Baptist seminarians. Democrats ruled Texas for 100 years, voting last for Jimmy Carter in 1976. After all, “Jesus rode into Jerusalem, not on an elephant, but a donkey!” Another ancient and frequent visitor was an old geezer member of the “Temperance Movement,” spouting the evils of any alcohol. Looking back, I wish I would have listened more to the geezer but found a another Sunday class. You may say, “Jim, God could still use that teacher.” Yes, God even used the jawbone of an ass to slay the Philistines. Ergo, I know, Samson was a proto-Democrat? Don’t get me started.
I arrived in seminary in January of 1981, with the Democrats stinging from their defeat to Ronald Reagan. As I consider separation of church and state, I remember my old teacher and his taking liberty to mold young seminarians in the ideal that God was a Southern Democrat.
Republicans and Democrats need not worship together like the feuding Hatfields and the McCoys. Let us beat our political swords into bowls to catch the new rain of God’s Spirit to a thirsty world. In this we can find common ground.
-Pastor Jim