John Alexander
@johnalex1.bsky.social
Presbyterian pastor, history instructor, academic, computer nerd. It’s a weird combination, but it works.
"The Church isn't respectable; the Church is eternal." — Stephen Colbert
August 29, 2025 at 1:43 AM
"The Church isn't respectable; the Church is eternal." — Stephen Colbert
Reposted by John Alexander
Oh, what the heck.
gulfof.mapquest.com?name=Alabama...
gulfof.mapquest.com?name=Alabama...
Gulf of Alabama (Roll Tide!)
Check out my custom Gulf of Alabama (Roll Tide!) map created with MapQuest!
gulfof.mapquest.com
February 18, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Oh, what the heck.
gulfof.mapquest.com?name=Alabama...
gulfof.mapquest.com?name=Alabama...
If you think multilateralism and investment in other nations is a waste of time, you may well soon get what you want — including the consequences. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/o...
Opinion | Is This the End of Pax Americana? (Gift Article)
We should aim to be a great power, not a big one.
www.nytimes.com
February 5, 2025 at 3:24 PM
If you think multilateralism and investment in other nations is a waste of time, you may well soon get what you want — including the consequences. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/o...
Reposted by John Alexander
Several students have asked about this: The Trump grant funding freeze does _not_ affect Pell grants.
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/b...
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/b...
Federal Spending Freeze Does Not Apply to Student Loans and Pell Grants
Students and parents panicked after news of the order, but the Education Department said the guidance would not stop the flow of money to students and schools.
www.nytimes.com
January 28, 2025 at 7:37 PM
Several students have asked about this: The Trump grant funding freeze does _not_ affect Pell grants.
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/b...
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/b...
"“If we invest in communities as relentlessly as we invest in prisons and police, we will get better outcomes. So that’s what I work on.”
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/m...
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/m...
What Happened When America Emptied Its Youth Prisons (Gift Article)
Lessons from a radical 20-year experiment and a quiet triumph of public policy.
www.nytimes.com
January 28, 2025 at 6:16 PM
"“If we invest in communities as relentlessly as we invest in prisons and police, we will get better outcomes. So that’s what I work on.”
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/m...
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/m...
"Because our civics depends on our ethics, we should be teaching ethics right alongside civics. Sadly, we’re failing at both tasks." — David French
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/o...
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/o...
Opinion | How a German Thinker Explains MAGA Morality (Gift Article)
Us and them is all the rage.
www.nytimes.com
January 27, 2025 at 12:30 AM
"Because our civics depends on our ethics, we should be teaching ethics right alongside civics. Sadly, we’re failing at both tasks." — David French
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/o...
www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/o...
“In Christ, there are no borders, no superior races, no earthly rulers who can claim ultimate authority over the preacher of God. … Perhaps Christians might be reminded that our savior caused all kinds of headaches for followers and powers alike.”
Because a bishop preached about the Bible while standing in pulpit of her own church there's a congressional resolution to condemn the sermon, demands she apologize, & calls for gov't to seize or shut down the church. So much for religious liberty!
publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/after-vira...
publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/after-vira...
After Viral Sermon, GOP Threatens Religious Liberty
One of President Donald Trump’s first acts on Monday (Jan.
publicwitness.wordandway.org
January 25, 2025 at 6:38 PM
“In Christ, there are no borders, no superior races, no earthly rulers who can claim ultimate authority over the preacher of God. … Perhaps Christians might be reminded that our savior caused all kinds of headaches for followers and powers alike.”
“Whether they admit it or not, it was Jesus, not an Episcopal Bishop, who offended them. It should be said that anyone who was offended by Bishop Budde’s two-minute homily will be even more offended by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.”
OPINION: What we are seeing is a tale of two Christianities. It’s why we now have T-shirts that say, “I’m a love your neighbor Christian not a storm the Capitol kind.”
Inauguration week was a collision of two Christianities
(RNS) — Between the Christianity of Trump and the Christianity of Christ, we recognize the widest possible difference.
religionnews.com
January 25, 2025 at 6:31 PM
“Whether they admit it or not, it was Jesus, not an Episcopal Bishop, who offended them. It should be said that anyone who was offended by Bishop Budde’s two-minute homily will be even more offended by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.”
Reading this reminded me that Jesus didn’t stutter when he uttered the words in chapter 25 of St. Matthew’s Gospel.
From Peterr's great reflection on the entire ceremony of which Bishop Budde's plea was just one part: "They protected a poor, vulnerable refugee-to-be from a vengeful tyrant who feared for his own power."
www.emptywheel.net/2025/01/22/h...
www.emptywheel.net/2025/01/22/h...
Herod Goes to the National Cathedral and is Disappointed - emptywheel
Trump's reaction to the National Cathedral prayer service yesterday says a lot more about him than it does about Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde.
www.emptywheel.net
January 23, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Reading this reminded me that Jesus didn’t stutter when he uttered the words in chapter 25 of St. Matthew’s Gospel.
Reposted by John Alexander
“The great majority of Americans are suspended between these opposing attitudes. They are uneasy with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it.” Martin Luther King, " Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?", quoted by @gruber.foo
January 21, 2025 at 1:42 AM
“The great majority of Americans are suspended between these opposing attitudes. They are uneasy with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it.” Martin Luther King, " Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?", quoted by @gruber.foo
“Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side…”
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side…”
I briefly turned on the news and saw Trump’s people-billionaires, felons, theocrats, grifting pastors, and con artists-gathering in the same Capitol rotunda that their MAGA followers destroyed four years ago on Jan 6, 2021.
I cried. I confess: I’m still crying.
open.substack.com/pub/dianabut...
I cried. I confess: I’m still crying.
open.substack.com/pub/dianabut...
January 20: A Poem for This Day
Shock and awe can be overcome by surprise and wonder. We must choose.
open.substack.com
January 20, 2025 at 6:40 PM
“Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side…”
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side…”
“All I can promise is that those who continue to tell the truth as they see it will find it easier to live with themselves than those who don’t.” — @pkrugman.bsky.social
January 20, 2025 at 3:56 PM
“All I can promise is that those who continue to tell the truth as they see it will find it easier to live with themselves than those who don’t.” — @pkrugman.bsky.social
I've asked myself this question many times. History shows that godly rulers bless a nation, but few of those rulers governed justly without serious battle scars to show for it.
OPINION: The seeds for today’s GOP — complete with a tough-talking celebrity who sprinkles some evangelical vocabulary over an endless invective of victimization — were sown by Reagan’s hijacking of Carter’s evangelical voting bloc in 1980.
Can a good man be president?
(RNS) — Maybe this is a lesson of the Carter administration, that true Christianity often finds itself drawn away from places of power and down in the muck.
religionnews.com
January 14, 2025 at 6:16 PM
I've asked myself this question many times. History shows that godly rulers bless a nation, but few of those rulers governed justly without serious battle scars to show for it.
Reposted by John Alexander
Medicare is more than half privatized, and it's costing taxpayers a lot of money open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
Medicare Versus the Insurance Industry: A Privatization-Driven Arms Race
Forty years of gaming the system
open.substack.com
January 7, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Medicare is more than half privatized, and it's costing taxpayers a lot of money open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
“Faith in God is, in the deepest sense, faith in life—… even the staunchest life of faith is a life of great change. It follows that if you believe at 50 what you believed at 15, then you have not lived—or have denied the reality of your life.”
theamericanscholar.org/my-bright-ab...
theamericanscholar.org/my-bright-ab...
My Bright Abyss - The American Scholar
I never felt the pain of unbelief until I believed. But belief itself is hardly painless.
theamericanscholar.org
January 4, 2025 at 11:49 PM
“Faith in God is, in the deepest sense, faith in life—… even the staunchest life of faith is a life of great change. It follows that if you believe at 50 what you believed at 15, then you have not lived—or have denied the reality of your life.”
theamericanscholar.org/my-bright-ab...
theamericanscholar.org/my-bright-ab...
As bad as I hate to post anything negative here, the #CrimsonTide owes us an apology for the catastrophic offense we watched today. #RollTideAnyway
December 31, 2024 at 8:56 PM
As bad as I hate to post anything negative here, the #CrimsonTide owes us an apology for the catastrophic offense we watched today. #RollTideAnyway
Jimmy Carter was by far the most godly president of my lifetime. I don't like what it says that such a godly man failed so badly in our system of government.
December 29, 2024 at 11:22 PM
Jimmy Carter was by far the most godly president of my lifetime. I don't like what it says that such a godly man failed so badly in our system of government.
Reposted by John Alexander
We are pursuing the wrong applications for AI.
December 22, 2024 at 2:36 PM
We are pursuing the wrong applications for AI.
Somehow, "trimming the government" always affects someone else. This is Exhibit 1 why everyone should take a civics course in school.
wapo.st/41Soli2
wapo.st/41Soli2
After backing Trump, low-income voters hope he doesn’t slash their benefits
Voters in the struggling Pennsylvania city of New Castle backed Donald Trump hoping he’d curb inflation. But he’ll be under pressure to cut federal spending.
wapo.st
December 27, 2024 at 10:24 PM
Somehow, "trimming the government" always affects someone else. This is Exhibit 1 why everyone should take a civics course in school.
wapo.st/41Soli2
wapo.st/41Soli2
I've lived in the Church my entire life and never realized the power of pure joy to draw people to faith until the past few years. C.S. Lewis rightly called it "Surprised by Joy.
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/o...
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/o...
Opinion | The Shock of Faith: It’s Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be (Gift Article)
The word “faith” implies the possession of something, whereas I experience faith as a yearning for something beautiful that I can sense but not fully grasp.
www.nytimes.com
December 24, 2024 at 6:04 PM
I've lived in the Church my entire life and never realized the power of pure joy to draw people to faith until the past few years. C.S. Lewis rightly called it "Surprised by Joy.
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/o...
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/o...
"Jesus’ awareness of broken lives wasn’t restricted to his family tree; it defined his ministry." I pray it will define mine as well.
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/24/o...
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/24/o...
Opinion | Why It Matters That Jesus Came From a Dysfunctional Family (Gift Article)
He identified with the least and the lowliest, not just those in his lineage but those in his life.
www.nytimes.com
December 24, 2024 at 5:35 PM
"Jesus’ awareness of broken lives wasn’t restricted to his family tree; it defined his ministry." I pray it will define mine as well.
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/24/o...
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/24/o...
Reposted by John Alexander
THIS is to be committed to Memory and shared widely
December 22, 2024 at 7:44 PM
THIS is to be committed to Memory and shared widely