About This Shelf
This shelf gathers essays that engage public life, moral judgment, institutional meaning, and the questions that arise when personal conviction meets our common world.
A Beginning Again
A Case - and a Place - for the Ministry of Endorsement
An essay to prompt a consideration of the role of the ministry of ecclesiastical endorsement and its place within the structures of The United Methodist Church.
A Voice and a Wilderness
A reflection on vocation, place, and the life of writing
A reflection on Isaiah 40:3, chaplaincy, and writing as pastoral presence
Codes Matter
Clarity, Representation, and Consequences
A policy analysis examining proposed changes to religious affiliation codes and their implications for clarity, representation, and institutional understanding.
Is This Really Who We Are?
When Old Fault Lines Begin Reappearing
A memory from inside the Pentagon becomes the starting point for a reflection on race, citizenship, voting rights, and the uneasy sense that old American fault lines may be re-emerging in new forms. Moving from Reconstruction to modern redistricting battles, this essay considers what it means for a democracy to widen — or narrow — its understanding of belonging.
Ministry of Ecclesiastical Endorsement: Compilation
Book of Discipline Excerpts
This compilation gathers the relevant disciplinary paragraphs related to chaplaincy, ecclesiastical endorsement, extension ministry, and related organizational structures from successive editions of The Book of Discipline from 1964 through 2024. Presented in chronological order and rendered verbatim from the cited editions, these excerpts allow readers to trace the evolving language, structure, location, and institutional treatment of endorsement ministry across six decades of Methodist and United Methodist history. Originally assembled as a companion reference for the “Location and Language” essays, the compilation also stands as an independent documentary resource for readers interested in polity, institutional development, chaplaincy, and ecclesiastical endorsement.
Rank Matters
Rank, Representation, and Constitutional Balance in the Military Chaplaincy
A policy paper prepared for Congressional review examining proposed changes to chaplain insignia and religious classification systems.
The Disappearing Nouns
On the Quiet Erosion of Public Memory
After an unusual conversation with an AI system in which historically significant words repeatedly vanished from completed sentences, this essay explores the relationship between language, memory, technology, and civic belonging. Part moral fable and part meditation on public discourse, it reflects on how meaning can erode not only through censorship, but through abstraction, omission, and the quiet disappearance of names.
Location and Language Series
The Work of Being American
Democracy is not an inheritance. It is a practice we must choose—again and again.
A essay on the requirements of citizenship in American democracy.
“A Mighty Valuable Asset”
On National Good Faith and the Cost of Its Erosion
This essay was inspired by a chance encounter with a framed 1907 letter from Theodore Roosevelt containing a warning that feels unexpectedly contemporary: “The good faith of the United States is a mighty valuable asset and must not be impaired.” It explores the strategic and moral cost of eroding national credibility through unstable alliances, coercive rhetoric, institutional disruption, and the weakening of long-standing international commitments.