Dear People of The Table,
We find ourselves in another season of transition as we move our local gathering from the Chapel at Broadway UMC (where we’ve been since March 2022) to our new building at 4601 Emerson Ave! We enjoyed a wonderful Sunday potluck lunch this past week at our new home where many of you were able to tour our new building, explore the new grounds, and a rousing game of kickball on our new athletic fields.
We have our first of two workdays coming up this Saturday, Sept 14th, 9am-1pm; if you’re available and interested in helping out (there are a variety of jobs requiring varying levels of physical labor – some not at all!) it’s not too late to let us know. Please use this link to sign up!
Also, as a follow up to our Faith & Politics class, I read an excerpt from a book called Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right by Randy Balmer, one of the preeminent scholars of religious and evangelical history in the U.S. The except was quoting the people who orchestrated the Religious Right saying their concern was not abortion at the beginning, but rather federal threats of revoking tax exempt status due to segregated Christian academies violating Supreme Court rulings.
Balmer wrote two articles that lay out the primary source quotes for this that I think are worth reading:
Our class will continue this Sunday at 9am in the Parlor with Fr. Ben leading a discussion of how our responses to Christian Nationalism are often theologically lacking and ultimately ineffective.
So much going on right now in the life of our church. What a blessing it is to serve as your Priest, for Christ’s sake, in the midst of all the richness and beauty and desperate need our world has for Christ and his Kingdom.
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Matt
