Faith Works 8-29-2025

Faith Works 8-29-2025
Jeff Gill

Do you have a calling?
___


With Labor Day weekend, it's common for preachers to talk about vocation, which from the Latin is literally "calling," or how God speaks to us about what it is we are to do.

Some of us are still working on that one.

I'll be honest: I worry about how to talk to younger people about callings and vocations and God's best counsel for how to live your life. Believe it or not, my own vocation is not to be a contrarian, but often I feel like one. Or at least I wonder how what I want to say is being heard when there's loud voices speaking up for a different view, one I know anyone I'm speaking to or corresponding with is going to hear.

Writing is certainly one vocation that's spoken to me, but I've had many people ask me how to make a living at it, and my most common opening response is "you likely will not."

Quickly I would add: can you find outlets for your writing? Yes. Can you get paid for writing? Yes, for certain kinds in certain circumstances (and we will NOT be talking about how AI writes workaday prose at the drop of a return key, not today, but let that rest as a place marker for later).

Can writing be your calling? Oh, yes. Absolutely. Oh, so you can make a living at writing? This is where it gets sticky.

Karen Swallow Prior is a writer I've respected for years; she would probably like to note she's made her living as a professor. Keep that in mind, for sure. She has just come out with a book titled "You Have a Calling" which is short, small, pocketable, and a good gift to anyone of I would say any age wrestling with God and the question "what should I do when I grow up?" Full disclosure: I bought my own copy of the book, have given it away twice even before I got around to writing this review-ish column.

Karen points out that much of our contemporary love of saying things like "do what you love, the money will follow" or "follow your passion" has the awkward side effect of dismissing the experiences of centuries of faithful Christians — she writes, as do I, from that perspective — who none of them had the chance to look for work that was personally rewarding. They had to weed the rutabagas, churn the butter, and chase goats around the farmstead.

I feel a similar concern with the wider tone taken towards people looking at the workplace who hear advice to "do what you love." That's just not always possible, and it can feel denigrating to people who really don't have any choice. Maybe the clerk at checkout loves their view from the register and interacting with people all day, but many of them are paying the bills as best they can.

What you CAN do, though, is work hard to make space for doing, well, what you love. It may not be all that you do, it is very likely not to pay all the household bills, but you can almost certainly find a place in your life to do what you love even if in part, as a volunteer, as an amateur.

We live in an era of increasing professionalization of full time jobs, which I think exists even more awkwardly with "follow your passion." But you can ask yourself to be honest about your calling, where you feel most strongly led, and how you are making a life, which is the calling to which we all are led.

"You Have a Calling" opens this question up well in about 130 pages; if you try the book and have thoughts on this, I'd love to hear from you.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still growing up, too. Tell him what you wanted to be when you grew up, and how that's changed, at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Notes from my Knapsack 8-28-2025

Notes from my Knapsack 8-28-2025
Jeff Gill

Summer's end, and new beginnings
___


Summer is over.

Many cultures, including indigenous ones to North America, consider the crossquarter -- midway between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox -- to be the marker for the seasons. It was August 7th this year. Harvest time is already beginning, and will continue through the end of October.

Summer, to me, is a necklace with a string of occasional beads: there's the end of school & commencements, Memorial Day, Newark's Strawberry Festival, Cub Scout Day Camp, Granville's Fourth of July Street Fair, usually a quick vacation wedged in, either way trips to the Ohio State Fair and in the last five years the Indiana State Fair, all closing with the Hartford Fair.

With the last day of the fair, and the harness races which have been part of the state and county fairs since the mid-1800s, summer concludes. Some school districts have already started; high school band camps and athletic workouts ratcheted up to full practice weeks with Aug. 1, and the high school and college football seasons start before this month ends.

Summer is over, and a few moments of reflection around where we didn't go, what didn't get done, what needs to happen next spring before summer comes again. Many memories to sift, some muddled with similar summer events that occur and reoccur, like those harness races, all different, all the same.

There is a marvelous old engraving of the Great Circle Earthwork, on the boundary of Newark and Heath, which was from 1853 to 1933 the Licking County Agricultural Society's fairgrounds. The LCAS going bankrupt with the Great Depression is part of how that property stopped being a fairground, and turned into a park, now operated by the Ohio History Connection.

But for some eighty years it was a fairground and also within that period, an amusement park. In all seasons, there was also a racetrack within the ancient enclosure, mostly for harness racing, which you see in the Nineteenth Century engraving.

Then you go out to the Hartford Independent Fair and see horses and one-rider contraptions that could be riding right out of that old picture. In the midst of great change, there are things that have not. We still have a fair, we just share it with Knox and part of Delaware Counties; the horses have their lineages that race fans follow avidly, with today's trotters carrying the tradition on around the track. It's something I've never bet on, but I wouldn't miss it. Plus, I like to go to the last day of the Hartford Fair, because it brings the summer, for me, to a close.

We see there people we haven't run into for a year, unique to that setting; I also encounter there people I mostly know from other locations, but fairs and activities bring us together for that moment of "oh, right, you — hello!" We eat foods we may not consume again for another eleven months or so, but we'll pursue sweet corn as long as we can into August.

Summer's end, and fall's beginning. This, to me, is the true new year season, the time in August & September when the world truly seems to re-set. January? Eh. Champagne if you must. But as the last bugle "call to post" plays, I'm ready for a fresh start, as the crops come in, and the leaves turn.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's ready for autumn, if not the autumnal equinox. Tell him how you prepare for September at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 8-22-2025

Faith Works 8-22-2025
Jeff Gill

A journey with few familiar landmarks
___


My sister and I spent some good time with our mother this past week. I was in and out a couple of times during the day, tending to some of the practical matters of having a family member in a memory care facility.

We are past the point where I worry about her seeing me walk past and recognizing me. Unless I walk directly up to her and announce who I am, she's not going to see me.

Mom is one of the more verbal, and social individuals among the forty or so residents of the place where she now lives. Verbal as in she talks, but even when you own a copy of the guidebook, what she says doesn't track well. There are broken signposts of familiar stories which still stick up from her monologues, but we're past the point where you can gently nudge or fill in a story to get her back onto solid ground.

When we come in and address her, she will still recognize us with a clear prompt as to who we are, up to a point. She will launch into a story whose fragments are related to one of us, and if we point that out, she laughs and says "no, no, not you, one of the original boys." Free gift: if you need a band name, "The Original Boys" is available.

She used to like it when one of us would get out a phone to take a picture; now, she just can't make sense of what we're doing, so it's catch as catch can if we get her looking. And the incomprehension continues to spread in weird & sometimes awful ways… but she is consistently, almost always, unreservedly happy. Griefs & grudges that used to consume her are gone. This is a blessing.

I'm not making the best of a bad situation here, I'm quite serious. To see my mother as happy as she's been over the last few months has been a surprise I did not expect, as much as I've been familiar as a minister over the years with convalescent homes and memory units and Alzheimer's as it erodes away memory and personality.

Memory loss means she generally doesn't know who I am, but she's if anything even happier to see me. There are things she used to talk about to our frustration, burdens and sorrows which I would have loved to have taken from her, but she had a long-standing tendency to pick back up whenever she could one of those jagged rocks, and would pitch it into whatever conversation we were having.

They're gone. She's not bothered by them anymore. They've been left behind. There's still a shadow of those past events that shows up at times, because they're such a part of her life that as long as there's still anything left of her, we'll hear a mention of them, but they don't dominate the conversation.

She's happy to tell you her stories, and her pleasure in doing so is more obvious for the shadows that are gone. The fact that her stories don't make much sense anymore? That's a trade I'm surprised to be happy to make. What have we wanted for her, after all, except that she could be happy: and now she is. It doesn't quite look like what we might have imagined, but that's where she's still a unique individual, even if without some of the memories we assumed had to be there for her to be her.

There are blessings on this journey, you just have to make sure to look closely for them. They can be hard to miss, but they're there. And those blessings make me wonder what I need to be forgetting, of my own free will. It might be a good thing to remember, this forgetting.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's aware that forgetting might be a better way to remember some things. Tell him what you've forgotten at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky. 

Faith Works 8-15-2025

Faith Works 8-15-2025
Jeff Gill

How to see beyond your horizon
___


What do we see when we look at the horizon from a comfortable place?

It's a distant spot that we may visit, but it can remain just barely in sight for quite a while if we aren't moving. Especially if we have no reason to move.

That point looks a little different if we're already in motion. It might be the perspective focus up ahead where the sides of the road and the telephone poles alongside all come together and meet where earth and sky converge. We watch it, because we'll be there soon.

Off to the sides, we might look around, especially if we're coming up to an intersection; our driver's ed teacher is in our heads reminding us to check the mirrors to look back, and see who's coming up behind.

But if we're on a pleasant porch, with a wide view around, and heat shimmering up the hills, the horizon is something that's just part of the surroundings.

One of the things Rev. Dr. Lee H. Butler Jr. made me think about at a conference I recently attended was how getting too comfortable in a particular spot can be a form of narcissism.

There could be discomfort or sorrow or tragedy over the horizon, or even around the corner from us, but if we can't see it, there's a human tendency (dare we call it sin?) to assume if we're fine, so is everyone else. And that if we're satisfied in a particular place, then that's where we're supposed to be.

For churches, the comfort and security of our faith perspective is something that can be very appealing. Folks come to worship to draw on those reserves of settledness, to borrow a cup of confidence, to find a solid rock on which to stand. That's true for individuals and families looking to a future that's coming at them fast, hoping a faith community perspective can help them know they're in the right place, or moving in the right direction.

Theological narcissism is a warning Dr. Butler offered to us as church leaders. He was talking about our assumptions about ourselves as being on the right path when a quick look around would tell us we might be on the wrong path. His cautions reminded me of my own religious tradition's Preston Taylor, an African American preacher and leader in the late 1800s & early 1900s who said in 1917 "…if the white brother can include in his religious theory and practice the colored people as real brothers, he will have avoided the heresy of all heresies."

You might say you can think of worse heresies, and that would be an interesting discussion for us to have. But increasingly I see his point, focused through the warnings of "theological narcissism" Dr. Butler shared: when we see other people as lesser in God's sight, or of lesser value among humanity, based on any external or incidental quality you can think of, skin color included, you've bent the needle on the compass of your theology to where it won't get you anywhere accurately.

Much of the church in America today has been sitting in a comfortable place, not really noticing where we're going, and we've been in a moving vehicle, not on a pleasant veranda. Suddenly, we look up and the neighborhood looks different, the people are unfamiliar, and we're not sure where we go from here.

The next step is to get off the wagon and look honestly at ourselves and where we are. And realize, for most of us, we're right where God wants us to be. Now what? Maybe the direction we need to go is to be more fully where we are, as life is, to the people we can reach right here.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's on a journey himself. Tell him where you're going at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Notes from my Knapsack 8-14-2025

Notes from my Knapsack 8-14-2025
Jeff Gill

Shifting silt and scenes sliding astray
___


If you haven't heard of the Sultana, it's not because Doug Stout, and Dan Fleming, and Chris Evans, and a number of us local historians haven't tried to let you know about it.

On April 27, 1865, after the Civil War was generally over, and as the nation's attention was focused on the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and his funeral procession heading for Springfield, Illinois had only made it to Cleveland, Ohio — on that date, a side-wheel steamboat on the Mississippi River, built for a maximum 376 passengers, was carrying at least 2,100 soldiers, most of them recently released from Confederate captivity. 

Seven miles north of Memphis its steam boilers exploded, ultimately killing over 1,800 passengers, by either searing steam in the initial blast, or by way of the still frigid springtime waters of the mighty river, to this day the worst maritime disaster in the United States.

The Titanic sinking in 1912, some 47 years later, killed about 1,500. The steamboat Sultana's sinking killed 20% more people, but it was a footnote at the end of the Civil War's carnage. With something at or over 620,000 deaths North and South, about 2% of the nation's population, another 1,800 dead in the wake of Lincoln's death just didn't get too many headlines.

The released prisoners who filled the Sultana's decks were mostly Midwesterners, a majority of them from Ohio. They had been held in Cahaba prison outside of Selma, Alabama, and the even more notorious Andersonville prison camp near Atlanta, Georgia. These Union prisoners had been brought to a transfer camp outside of Vicksburg, Mississippi for release to their homes. The federal government was offering $2.75 per enlisted man and $8 per officer to steamboats who would take them north, so steamboats were interested in loading up as many released prisoners as possible.

We're sure of William Albert Norris in Granville's Maple Grove Cemetery, and of Daniel Lugenbeal in Perryton Cemetery, as Licking County survivors of the Sultana disaster. How many Licking Countians died in the waters of the Mississippi on the dark night of April 27, 1865?

Mansfield, Ohio has a Sultana marker saluting some 73 residents of that city who died on the Sultana, and Richland County claims 101 citizens who did not make it home due to the disaster. Licking County is not so clear, but even if behind the Mansfield area, it probably wasn't too far off.

Marion, Arkansas has a new Sultana Disaster Museum. East of that town, you can meander down gravel roads to the levee today, alongside of the Mississippi. Even now, the site of where the burnt wreckage of the Sultana came to rest is in a backwater, a bayou, an oxbow of the Mississippi River far to the east. The channel of the Mississippi River in 1865 is today a side stream, a western addition to the larger main channel. The site of the explosion of the over-loaded boilers was miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, and the last resting place of the wreckage is now on the Arkansas side of the river, located in 1982 near the complex historic location of Mound City, Arkansas.

Not all history can be solidly located. But it is interesting to look to curving streams and bent bottomlands, and think about the impact in history of those deaths, and that ending atop the Civil War's ending, as we continue to seek that elusive thing called closure.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's glad he went to the Sultana wreck site, even if he couldn't really see it. Tell him about obscure successes you've known at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 8-8-2025

Faith Works 8-8-2025
Jeff Gill

When the Bible Belt comes unbuckled
___


"Is this a no-sin zone?"

That was the question Rev. Dr. Lee H. Butler Jr. asked at a conference I just attended in Memphis, in the shadow of the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid, next to the American Nile.

Dr. Butler is a seminary president, recently dean, with wide ranging ecumenical credentials as well as his academic work in history, psychology, and pastoral theology. With all of that background, he was asking us on a hot July day alongside the Mississippi River to consider the images of ancient empires, such as Egypt, and the social context we are called to preach to and minister in today.

"We are in the heart of the Bible Belt here, almost at the very buckle of its embrace," Dr. Butler said. Especially in the early years of Memphis and the Mississippi valley, across the legendary Delta bottomlands extending south from here towards New Orleans, Christianity was pre-eminent. Christian teaching was dominant, the (Protestant) Bible at the center of the culture, ministers and congregations the heart of civil affairs, and well past the Civil War into the modern era it has been Christian teachings which stood to the fore of the schoolhouse, the courthouse, even in the storehouse and into the jail house.

Yet it is also an area where infidelity and illegitimate birth, abortion and poverty, robbery and murder along with illiteracy and illness are present at record levels. What's wrong here, asked Dr. Butler? If the Christian church is allowed to be a dominant influence, as it has been in so many ways over the last two centuries, shouldn't this be a no-sin zone? "Is this a no-sin zone?" he asked, piercingly?

So what went wrong? Dr. Butler suggested there was a flaw in our theology. It could be, he allowed, that Christianity if practiced might not reduce sin, but he did not believe that was true. Faith in God and trust in Christ should reduce, if not completely eliminate sin. If the church was largely in control of a culture, and sin abounded, there is a flaw, even a heresy at work. He called his primary suspect "theological narcissism."

Theological narcissism, Dr. Butler said, is an assumption that one's own self is closer to God than someone different than one's self. And I trust I do no violence to his thesis to fill in from a theologian of a century ago but just two hundred miles to the east, in Nashville.

In my religious tradition's history, there are few figures more amazing in range and scope of their work and thought than Preston Taylor (1849-1931). As a leader among African American churches in the Restoration Movement, he served in the Civil War, had success in constructing railroads, and founded a funeral home and cemetery in Nashville, having served as an elder and preacher in his church from age 20. He formed the National Christian Missionary Convention for African American Disciples of Christ churches and preachers in 1917.

In his inaugural address to the convention, which he served as President for fourteen years, he proclaimed to the wider church "…if the white brother can include in his religious theory and practice the colored people as real brothers, he will have avoided the heresy of all heresies."

The heresy of all heresies. I thought of Rev. Taylor in 1917 Nashville as I listened to Dr. Butler in 2025 Memphis, and about the theological narcissism he warned us about. It was this blindness, this lack of fellow feeling, this absence of basic justice, this heresy of all heresies, which explained why the Bible Belt failed to become a no-sin zone.

Our faith can change human hearts and transform the world, but our cultural barriers and exclusions can block how that faith flows and moves people. By the banks of the mighty Mississippi, I found myself thinking about how we divert the flow of grace, and let sin flourish.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's interested in avoiding heresy and promoting justice. Tell him what flows through your gardens at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 8-1-2025

Faith Works 8-1-2025
Jeff Gill

Theological narcissism and other human errors in the church
___


Last month I made a pilgrimage to Memphis, where I encountered a variety of experiences, from yes, Graceland on the southern edge of the city (saw it, didn't take the tour), and the Lorraine Motel just south of downtown, whose story requires a space all its own, but it was a moving experience in its own right.

But I was there for a church gathering of my religious tradition, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). They aren't every year, I ain't getting any younger, and I had an assortment of reasons for wanting to attend, even if in part. I got there late, but made the most of the time I had.

You need to be open to the Holy Spirit in events like this, because with thousands present and hundreds of opportunities in any given day, there's the official schedule and there's what you do with it.

However, I went to a keynote almost against my better judgment, and was glad I did so. Sometimes those formal, official opportunities to learn are so over-prepared, so forced and managed, they become much less than they could be. When Dr. Lee H. Butler, Jr. spoke, it was all I could have hoped for; in some ways, that half hour or so might have been sufficient reason for all my time and expense involved in getting to Memphis, to hear that sermon-slash-lecture.

Dr. Butler is now President of Iliff School of Theology; that's a United Methodist theological school, where he is an American Baptist ordained clergyperson. My previous awareness of him was as Vice-President and Academic Dean for Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma; we overlapped one year as I began teaching for them in their online certificate program, but he left for Iliff in 2023 before I could visit the campus in person (which I still haven't done!).

Plus before Phillips, he taught at Chicago Theological Seminary, which is a seminary affiliated with the United Church of Christ (UCC), a tradition with which my own faith story is deeply entwined. Dr. Butler is a very ecumenical Christian teacher, with special emphasis on the traditions I'm closest to.

He opened with an observation that at least in part had occurred to most of us. I drove up to the convention center dimly aware of, but still startled to see in person, a giant oddly illuminated pyramid across the street. It is apparently two-thirds the size of the Great Pyramid in Giza, a nod to the Egyptian roots of the name Memphis, and now hosts a Bass Pro Shop megastore inside.

Dr. Butler turned to the deeper roots of why a Memphis was here in Tennessee, and the Mississippi River flowing past, known more often in earlier days as "the American Nile." And he began to unpack in detail the history of the American Nile, the image of empire in monumental form, the story of the Deep South which opens downstream in the Delta region, and of course about slavery, and the imperfect end of the era of slavery into the reality of a century of lynchings and terror and injustice, still hanging in the humid air of the river valley, weighed down by the heat of the sun and depth of the nighttime.

All of which he turned, slowly, steadily, into a calm, dispassionate analysis of theological narcissism, and how we struggle in every generation to turn our eyes toward God, even as we have a tendency to make everything about ourselves, our needs, our wants. And he broke it down into some very basic, simple problems.

I hope you can return next week and allow me to share them with you.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been ecumenical more often than not himself. Tell him how you've learned about your faith while on the road at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Notes from my Knapsack 7-31-2025

Notes from my Knapsack 7-31-2025
Jeff Gill

August is a month filled with promise, and heat
___


For anyone who played football in years past, there's something about the beginning of August which evokes a very particular memory.

Two-a-days.

Generally, you couldn't start two-a-days until August 1, which just added to their exquisite torture. They usually ran for two weeks, then eased back into one practice a day after school started (but the single one would last longer, a different sort of challenge). It was also the case that the heat and humidity of two-a-days tested everyone to the maximum, helping the coaches whittle down the roster simply by having some prospective players not come back on Monday of week two.

For those of us who did return, there was the battle for a starting role, or a position (or both). But that first week of two-a-days was a physical and also psychological, even spiritual challenge.

Why am I here? Is this really what I want to do? Is the short-term pain worth the long-term gain? These are questions that can rattle around inside your helmet while you run the drills, do the wind sprints, hit the blocking sled, start the full contact practices. Maybe I'm done here . . . maybe if I put my all into this next set of over-unders, the coach will notice me . . . maybe the coach hates me. Lots of questions.

Some get answered by the end of the two weeks, some never do, except inside your own head. Since you have to live there, you need to sort your own answers out. Maybe you should have been starting tackle; perhaps you could have been a running back and not a cornerback. Only one person will be starting quarterback, which gets lots of sideline conversation and debate in the stands, but there are forty or more dramatic narratives playing out inside each player. What am I doing this for, and how can I find my place on this team? And when can we stop running . . .

You may compare boot camp to two-a-days, but you are much younger when you start playing offense and defense on the gridiron, so those memories may last even longer, go deeper, at least as deep as basic training in the armed services will mark you.

My four years of football were just on this side of the divide my father never quite understood; in his day, not drinking water was a sign of strength, and if the coach whistled everyone to the fountains, it was a mark of toughness, or so they thought, for you to stand to one side and decline a spot in line. He took some convincing at the new normal, which was coaches lining us up regularly to drink up, and standing over us to make sure everyone did. The idea that it was unwise and unhealthy to drink less water on brutally hot days never quite set well with my dad.

We've learned a few things. Added a few more bars to his one bar helmet; now the concussion prevention technology makes helmets safer than the ones I wore. Football gets debated as a social presence and a youth activity; I just know when the calendar turns to August 1, I think "time for two-a-days, better go run a few laps to get ready."


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he was a truly untalented football player. Tell him your memories of summer practices at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 7-25-2025

Faith Works 7-25-2025
Jeff Gill

Endorsements are a matter worth some ethical consideration
___


Recently there was a notice out of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) modifying their guidelines around political endorsements, or so some claimed.

I'm reading all this more cautiously; you don't want to hear the whole history of the Johnson Amendment, which goes back to when ol' Lyndon Baines Johnson was in the U.S. Senate, and in 1954 was part of an effort to limit how non-profits in general and churches in particular could endorse particular candidates.

It hasn't been used much, but the existence of this guideline was said to have a "chilling effect" on political speech by clergy in their pulpits.

What has changed is a court filing by the IRS, and an indication that they do not intend to apply the Johnson Amendment the same way, with the new understanding that when a preacher or church leader "in good faith speaks to its congregation, through its customary channels of communication on matters of faith in connection with religious services, concerning electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith" this is a conversation within the family, and something that comes under free speech.

Hmmm. Lots of wiggle room there in multiple directions.

What I'd say as a preacher over many decades is that I've never endorsed a particular candidate, or electoral option, from the pulpit. Not because I was worried about the implications for our tax-exempt status, but because it feels like it's on the wrong side of an ethical issue for me.

Let's try a different angle. It's well known that there is a general exemption for clergy around "confessions" and what we can be forced to share about what's said when a parishioner confesses a sinful act to us in our ministerial role.

Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that; some religious traditions have a "seal of the confessional" as a principle of their faith, many of us do not. Legally, if you're in the latter camp, you can't claim immunity from interrogation on the basis of a religious restriction you don't have, though I suspect law enforcement or prosecutors would go a long way around to try and avoid requiring a minister to testify about something said to them in confidence in their official role.

Yet we are all mandatory reporters; if a minister becomes aware of abuse or neglect, under Ohio law we're expected to report it. If clergy-penitent privilege applies to you, there may still be an expectation of reporting what you've observed, even if you first learned about abuse or neglect through a confessional disclosure. At a certain point, you have to consider what your ethical obligation is, and do what is right. When two rights conflict (protecting the sanctity of confession versus protecting children or dependent adults) you need to have a solid ethical framework to reason from.

Which brings me back to politics. I don't see myself ever endorsing a candidate because it simply is too far over a line of subordinating the truth claims of my faith to placing my preaching role in service of a particular office seeker. As you may have heard, politicians can disappoint you as time goes by. You may agree with them on many things, then find out later you loaned your credibility and the stature of your witness to a bent reed, a broken bough.

I have political opinions. Lots of them. They're easy to find! But not in the pulpit. I'm going to step out of that place of privilege and responsibility before I tell you what I think about the race for dog catcher.

Ethically, not legally, that's what appears to me to be the right place to stand.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has so many opinions they can trip him up sometimes. Tell him yours at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 7-18-2025

Faith Works 7-18-2025
Jeff Gill

All is not lost, even when it's gone


___


Already, it feels foolish and self-indulgent to say this, but here goes.

There's a feeling of deep personal loss haunting me. It's over the impending demolition of Tom Sawyer's Island at Walt Disney World in Florida.

Actually, not just the destruction of the island, but of the Rivers of America attraction as a whole, including the Liberty Belle riverboat ride, the Tom Sawyer rafts, and Fort Langhorn with its escape tunnel to the riverside back to the barrel bridge and Harper's Mill. All of it is going to be taken down to build a "Cars" themed area as Piston Peak National Park. No river. No island.

Arguments about Disney changing rides and architecture are as old as Disneyland (c. 1955). I can spin this reflection around change, or loss. Change is an ongoing point of debate, because most of us don't like it, mostly, but I'm thinking more in terms of just the loss of something special, something personally meaningful, something valued that's now gone.

As I was thinking about how I wanted to say this, another memory burned to cinders: the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. If you've never been there, I am sorry. You will never see the North Rim I've known; I've been trying to get back for years, but I won't get there either. My family has some very special memories about that unique place, which is different from the much more visited South Rim. It's a thousand feet and more higher, open a shorter stretch of the year, and the whole Kaibab Plateau is a place apart.

But the North Rim's Grand Canyon Lodge, the dining room and viewing terraces and associated cabins and campground and camp store, are all gone. A wildfire flared up, swerved, and in a series of unexpected events was almost all destroyed last weekend.

No lives were lost. Given the size and violence of the loss, that's amazing. I am glad, truly, that no risks were taken to try and save these remarkable timber structures with so much history and memories built into them, such that someone died in the attempt.

And at Walt Disney World, there's nothing life and death there, either. Some executives looked at visitor surveys, time spent and money expended, and made a business decision. Delete Jeff's fond memories, and build something more kids will clamor to visit and convince families to come spend thousands of dollars. Tom Sawyer's Island was a throwback, a quiet place in the middle of a busy park, an almost passive attraction with cool tunnels going effectively nowhere, but interestingly. It was atmosphere, with no buzz to it. For some of us, that was the attraction. To a park manager, that may have been the problem.

Tom Sawyer's Island is being torn down; Grand Canyon Lodge and the North Rim camp store burned down. The church I grew up in was demolished decades ago now; my childhood home is sold and was gutted and renovated. Stuff happens. Grow up, some of you are saying. Get over it!

I know that's all true. I just met an old friend I see at church conferences not often, and he told me "I miss my hair." Things change. This is part of life as we know it. In fact, we seek some change: weight loss, increased fitness, developing knowledge and wisdom and deeper insight. Getting smarter is a change. Going on vacation is a change, for that matter.

We like the change we want; the changes we resist are the ones we call bad. Here is where Buddhism suggests all attachments bring suffering; as a Christian, I'm looking for a middle ground. Tom Sawyer's Island and the North Rim hinted to me something of the eternal, of Heaven itself in temporary, earthly form. My intention is to be thankful for the glimpses they gave me, and to stay mindful of how the only enduring good is yet to come.

I'll still miss them.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still got the Haunted Mansion. Tell him what you miss in this life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Notes from my Knapsack 7-17-2025

Notes from my Knapsack 7-17-2025
Jeff Gill

Just to belabor the obvious
___




With summer in full swing, and the Fourth of July behind us, it's worth a glance on down the road… to the summer of 2026.

If you've been at almost any public event in the last month or two, you've probably picked up on the fact that we have some big events coming in celebration of 250 years since 1776, and that significant Fourth of July from which our subsequent celebrations spring.

America 250-Ohio and its state executive director Todd Kleismit have been around Licking County and Granville helping us get ready; our friends in the Daughters as well as the Sons of the American Revolution are excited and full of big plans themselves.

Obviously, the focal point of all these "America 250" plans is July 4, 2026. In Granville, Ohio if you ask "will there be anything going on for the Fourth of July?" the answer is "you have got to be kidding me." Of course there is: Granville's Fourth of July Celebration, an annual street fair, fireworks, and parade which Granville Kiwanis have been presenting since 1964.

My point here is not just to toot the horn of Granville Kiwanis: for one thing, I'm a member. It would be unseemly.

However, I've been around the discussions for the America 250-Ohio planning enough to know that the question in many parts of the state, or even elsewhere for Licking County, is "who will help us put on a big deal for 250 years of American independence?" Not everywhere is there a long tradition of a major series of events for the Fourth of July. In Granville, it's become easy to sort of take it for granted.

Trust me, there's gonna be a big event in Granville for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Simply because there's always a big event for the Fourth of July! We won't hold back in 2026. The county effort to participate in America 250-Ohio means there will be even more than usual going on, all through the year, which will help make July 4, 2026 even more special.

This just makes me want even more to point out how fortunate we are in Granville to have the history and traditions around the Fourth of July which make it an event people come from long distances to experience along with us. In the summer of 1806 when Granville was just getting started, the early records indicate "young America" observed the Fourth by using gunpowder to blow up stumps, which shows some things never change. Speeches were made, and festivities have been observed in every year since. It's just had a particular shape and form since 1964.

As a participant in the effort, though, I want to note here how not every town or community can pull this kind of program off. The banner we used to put up, and the tagline we still have, is a laconic "Just Another Granville Kiwanis 4th of July Celebration." As in "yeah, we did it before, and we'll do it again." With Granville Rotary helming the Firecracker Five, and the Granville Arts Boosters committing violence against lemon halves, and the GHS Football team tending the trash and hoisting bleacher sections, and our Marching Blue Aces and 4-H Band, plus the various Scouting units doing their parts… it is a complex web of interlocking mutually supportive efforts which take both leadership and participation to pull off.

Or as is often said: the planning for 2026 is already started. And it's gonna be great!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's proud to be a Kiwanian, especially around the Fourth. Tell him what you want to see happen in 2026 at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 7-11-2025

Faith Works 7-11-2025
Jeff Gill

On having watched fireworks
___




You can post your pictures of fireworks on social media, but will anyone really look at them?

We all know fireworks on a screen, TV or computer or phone, are not at all like watching them in person. Yet I know each year walking to the field where we set up our chairs and wait for dark to fall and the fireworks to rise, I say to myself "this year I'm not taking any fireworks photos" and then I do anyhow… and post them later.

Call it a tradition of sorts.

What I do know for sure is that the experience of watching fireworks is something that passes by, that you try to catch with your attention, your focus, even as they flare and fade. Taking pictures is a reminder of this, as you see a certain stage of explosion and expansion but your picture tends to be a beat or two too soon, or a little too late. The photograph is a discrete moment, but the experience is a passage, a flow.

Which ends. The boom followed by the expanding arcs and sudden flashes then sizzle downwards and drizzle back into darkness. They come (ooooh!) and go (ahhhh!). Some of the big city fireworks you see on television I wonder about, where the show is a constant fusillade of multiple shots all overlaid, one to another then another and boom then another and on and on. How do you get the sense of the pinnacle of the explosion from the eruption before to the dissolution that follows? It's just boom boom boom boom and your eye and mind can't quite catch up from one fireworks shell to the next.

This seems to be a classic case of how less really can be more. The grand finale is a fireworks classic, but if the whole show is finale, are you really getting more fireworks experience, or in a peculiar way, less?

There's also an awareness I know others have along with me. While there are more events than formerly with a closing fireworks show, from Disney World evenings to Denison commencement eves, in general you get about one live fireworks a show a year, if that. Not everyone goes to see the fireworks, even if it feels like it trudging back into Granville from Wildwood Park, or waiting in traffic in Heath heading out of the parking lots, let alone the boats piled up near the ramp at Buckeye Lake. For all of us in sum who attend them, there are some who opt out.

What I think as an annual attender, though, is that I've got about twenty more fireworks to see, give or take. Looking at my family longevity and general patterns of mobility as one ages, it's reasonable to ballpark my remaining budget of firework shows at two dozen for the most, possibly less. Twenty sounds like quite a few yet, but it's like what a twenty dollar bill used to feel like, but once broken tends to vanish quickly. So too with more fireworks shows behind me than ahead.

When I was a Scout at summer camp, the director in the closing campfire told us to look at the sparks rising, as the logs shifted in the huge pile at the center of the firebowl. Some rose a short distance and turned, twisted, and faded; others kept climbing up an updraft, ascending far overhead. He would talk about those sparks as representing us, some achieving great heights, others perhaps sputtering and fizzling out early. His point obviously was to exhort us to be those towering sparks, even as we all warily watched the ones with less aspiration, but wandered over towards our seats glowing brightly, until they didn't.

Interestingly, what's endured is that memory. Of those sparks, high or low, of the story by firelight, and other faces not all of whom are still with us. As well with fireworks past, long faded, but bright in recollection, with faces upturned, and even all the oohs and ahhhs still echoing decades later.

The fireworks are over, but the experience of their passing somehow lasts.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's content with one fireworks show a year (your mileage may vary). Tell him what annual events you value at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 7-4-2025

Faith Works 7-4-2025
Jeff Gill

If you're pursuing happiness, it might be in Micah
___


There's a key line of the Declaration of Independence, whose passage by we mark on the Glorious Fourth of July, now 249 years later: how the people of these United States "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Thomas Jefferson was going for a more poetic phrase with "the pursuit of Happiness," when many if not most of his initial readers would have known the triad of "Life, Liberty and…" was phrased differently in John Locke's influential writings, filtered through the French philosopher Baron de Montesquieu, as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property."

Clank, goes the phrase. That word! Property? It's like Lucy telling Santa Claus what she wants for Christmas was "real estate." Happiness is much more inspiring, and surely more universal a human impulse?

Jefferson was very much in keeping with Montesquieu, though, in seeing a rational shift from "property" to "happiness." They saw in Locke's seminal treatises a case being made for the chief work of government to be the protection of basic rights, starting with the right to life — so even a monarch could not justly take a life merely on a whim — which points toward the right to liberty, which gives rise to "habeas corpus" rights we trace back to the Magna Carta of 1215 A.D. (which is now honored in the chief courtroom of the Licking County Courthouse) and beyond, to restrictions placed on the king in 1166, limiting a ruler's ability to imprison their subjects.

So a right to life, sure; a right to freedom, unless with specific reasons why they should lose it, of course. But a right to pursue owning property?

It's a logical next step, though. If even the rights of kings are limited as to taking life away, or taking freedoms away, then there is surely some kind of right for a subject, or citizen, to own what is theirs without fear of the nobility just riding in and taking it. In fact, say Locke and Montesquieu and Jefferson, there is an affirmative obligation on the part of a just government, of whatever sort, to protect property rights, so that a worker can enjoy the fruits of their labors.

George Washington most loved quoting a particular verse of the Bible: Micah 4:4. He refers to it in one form or another some fifty times in his personal correspondence: "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid."

"None shall make them afraid." Washington, too, saw the role of government as being the bulwark, the shield against misuse and abuse of authority or opportunism to prevent people from the simple enjoyment of their property. Why else have laws and government? So that a person who simply has a grapevine on a hillside and a fig tree near their front door has no need to fear that their efforts can be stolen or appropriated without due cause.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of… a life that is free from the impositions of the powerful, in which you can enjoy the fruits of your labors. King George III was too loose and indifferent about how his government took away property or liberty or even lives, and so the Founders on July 4, 1776 declared that such an unjust government was no government at all.

They declared their independence from it, and set before themselves a challenge to do better, to be a government which respects the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of… happiness, in the most basic of forms, the kind of happiness we have to earn, but which should never be taken away from us.

That is what we continue to pursue.



Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's enjoyed looking up a few of Washington's usages of Micah 4:4. Tell him your favorite verses at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 6-27-2025

Faith Works 6-27-2025
Jeff Gill

1700 years of religious guidance, plus a little controversy
___




Irenaeus and Tertullian in the very early Christian church talk about a "regula fidei," a "rule of faith" which was a statement of common belief the community could use to explain to new folk what their faith was in essence.

We have pieces, fragments of those old rules or symbols or statements (all terms used in Latin and Greek for these confessional statements). On one level, they all stem from the most basic statements of faith for Christianity: Simon Peter's confession in Mark 8 "You are the Christ," or Matthew 16's "You are the Christ, the son of the Living God" made at Caesarea Philippi, or Martha's statement in John 11:27 "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."

In a sense, "Jesus is Lord" (as Paul sums up in I Corinthians 12) is an elegant statement of faith which may, in some senses, be enough.

It didn't take long for the early church, as it spread throughout the Roman world, to run into complications. And complications lead to more complicated answers. The "symbol of faith" or confessional statements got longer, and themselves disputed.

Constantine becomes emperor over the Roman Empire at York, England in 306, defeats his primary opposition in 312, and in 313 issues the Edict of Milan requiring the toleration of Christianity… just a few years after the intense persecution of the faith by the emperors preceding Constantine, peaking in 303. Soon, the new emperor is suggesting that Christianity can be a new source of unity across the Mediterranean and beyond.

But he's disturbed at learning there are disputes within the recently beleaguered church, with some leaders or bishops disagreeing with others on the nature of Christ, and how God is at work in the person of Jesus. Given his military and imperial background, it's no surprise Constantine says "we should fix this" and calls the bishops together for a council, in a suburb of the city he had decided in 324 to declare as a "New Rome," what had been Byzantium and would now be Constantinople, today known as Istanbul.

So it was in 325 there was a council of bishops in Nicaea, just east of the new capital; some 300 bishops were present, plus a thousand or more priests and deacons and imperial officials, including Constantine himself for at least parts of it (though he did not ask to be allowed to vote, since he was not a bishop, and by some accounts not yet baptized).

Ultimately, the council of Nicaea came together in late May of 325, deliberated and discussed through June, and left by mid-July to attend formal events in Constantinople. During that time, they developed the "rule of faith" or creed we still call the Nicene Creed.

Less than 200 words in English translation from the Latin original, it is a succinct statement about what the Christian church held in common, mostly about the nature and role of Jesus. It is not a trinitarian document per se, focusing more on the subject of Christology, or the theology of who Christ is and his relationship to God. Somewhat infamously, the third person of the Trinity is given just five words as almost an afterthought: "And in the Holy Spirit."

I come from a non-creedal tradition: not opposed to the Nicene Creed, but not using it as a test of fellowship. There is also the Apostles' Creed, which many traditions use somewhat interchangeably with the Nicene, whose history may or may not go back as far. I'll leave that for scholars.

What Christians do have here is a testimony: a witness to the consensus they found in 325 A.D., now 1,700 years ago this June. All but two bishops could agree to the words we still share to try and explain to those new to our faith what it is we believe about a subject that is deep, and ancient, and we would affirm as true.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still wrestling with creeds himself. Tell him how you see tests of fellowship in church life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Notes from my Knapsack 7-3-2025

Getting a little ahead for the July holidays...

Notes from my Knapsack 7-3-2025
Jeff Gill

Democracy and other old habits
___




249 years since the Second Continental Congress in a hot, stuffy room in Philadelphia put down on paper their reasons for declaring the colonies to be a group of states, united even, independent from Great Britain and her monarch.

It's reliably reported that George III's descendant, King Charles III (his great-grandmother's great-grandfather was George III), does not hold this against us. Much. Which is kind of him.

It was actually some years later, in 1787 as the Constitution was being finalized, that a lady not allowed inside the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall for those 1776 events), named Elizabeth Willing Powel had a question for Benjamin Franklin: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" She wasn't being sarcastic, she just wasn't sure what the Constitutional Convention had decided upon.

Franklin's response has entered American legend: "A republic, if you can keep it."

That semi-sardonic closer, "if you can keep it," has echoed through a dozen generations or so. Can we keep it? Franklin was saying to Mrs. Powel that the Constitutional Convention had not chosen monarchy as our form of American continuity, but if we want our governance to be done as a democratic republic, we're going to have to keep working at it. Working, in order to keep it.

The historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt perhaps helps Franklin make his point with her aphorism: "In every generation, civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them 'children.'"

Children come in a variety of sizes, and even ages in a way. Franklin and Arendt are just reminding us it takes an ongoing teaching effort to maintain an idea, let alone a complex interlocking set of ideas, in common currency.

The American experiment is based on democracy, but of a particular sort. We don't vote on everything, even if the vote of the people, or the "demos" is at the foundation of how we intend our government to operate. We don't have town meetings to decide on war powers or the amount of inside millage. We ask elected representatives to handle the "public things," the "res publica" if you'll forgive a little Latin, on our behalf. In a democratic republic, we vote in people to exercise wisdom and discernment, knowing if they govern too far off the popular will, we can vote again to remove them.

Polling isn't in the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence. I think the Founders would have been baffled by how much time we spend politically thinking about poll results, but they would have understood the basic concept. They knew in their day that maybe 15-20% of the Thirteen Colonies were Loyalists, wanting to maintain historic and legal ties to the British Crown, and maybe 15-20% were avidly for independence.

That meant 60-70% of the new United States were "yeah, okay, whatever" about independence. If it worked out for them, they were for it; if things went pear-shaped, they might change their minds. To govern meant to find a path where a working consensus could hold.

"If you can keep it." The challenge continues in 2025. To teach what democracy is and isn't, why a republic operates the way it does, and to vote (and sometimes impeach, or otherwise let elected officials know where they need to be wary) for the elected officials who will govern wisely and well. I think we can keep it, but the question will remain.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's found democracy in a republic to be a neat trick. Tell him how you see it working at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 6-20-2025

Faith Works 6-20-2025
Jeff Gill

Longest days, shortest nights, time in balance
___


"To stand still" is the literal meaning of solstice, with "sol" added to the standing stillness, as the sun's apparent movement on the horizon stops.

Each morning for some time now, the sun has appeared from our perspective to rise further and further north. It arcs higher and higher in the sky, and the days are getting longer in ways you don't need to check your phone to verify.

Daylight is longer (and hotter) while nights are shorter (and often warmer themselves). This has been happening since March and the equinox, or equalness of night and day, the Sun rising due east. Now the light starts far to the northeast.

During the period around a solstice, the rise point is stable. Steady. But you know what that means. No one will thank me for pointing out that in a day or two further on, the Sun's appearances will start sliding south, to the east at the autumnal equinox in September, heading for the other solstice, winter's own, in late December.

Of course that's all far away. Half the year. For now, we have long days well into July and verging into August, but you will start to notice the change in the mornings. The angle of the sunlight on the bedroom floor, where your morning chair sits as dawn breaks . . . and daytime will slowly, steadily reduce.

For now we can hold onto what we have. The longest days of the year this weekend give us lengthy mornings, and evenings that go on as if we were in Alaska or something, the light only grudgingly retiring into night.

Our church calendars are focused on the darker half of the year, with Advent taking us into the darkest stretch of time, and Lent helping open up daylight from early spring towards Easter. Those seasons and celebrations from Christmas to Pentecost allow us to frame and manage the loss of light and warmth through our devotions and disciplines. The rest of the year is labeled "Common" or "Ordinary Time," but I'll dispute it enough to say there's nothing ordinary about the weeks we're privileged to be living through.

It is peculiar that we treat trees fully in leaf as normal, when they spend a majority of their time otherwise. My father taught me to know trees by their bark and shape, as well as leaves "because most of the time they don't have them!" An ordinary day might be spent running through sprinklers and sitting in lawn chairs listening to a concert on the green, but how ordinary is that sort of experience?

We all know that when things get stable and steady, like they are around a solstice, the next thing to come is change. And for most of us, we don't like it. This can deteriorate quickly into always mistrusting security or comfort or any simple pleasure, because the experience of it can become a signal to us it soon will end. That way lies discontent.

My mother, who just celebrated a major birthday, is content. She has lost most of her memory, and yes, that's a sorrow, one we children of hers feel often. What can't be denied, though, is that a woman who has spent many of her ninety years worried about what will happen next, not without reason given her memories of the past, is now happy. Sincerely, seriously happy. In ways we really didn't see coming.

Since she no longer remembers most of what has worried her in the past, she's delighted by almost any enjoyment that comes her way. The party, the cake, her kids and friends of theirs: she delighted in pretty much all of it. Not despite, but because she can't remember much. It's enough to make you think about forgetting some stuff.

We are in the time of solstice. If you recall, that means days will soon get shorter, and that can worry us. Or you could just forget it, and give thanks for the long warm sunny days we are getting right now.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has a list of things he really should just forget about. Tell him how forgetting helps you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Notes from my Knapsack 6-19-2025

Notes from my Knapsack 6-19-2025
Jeff Gill

When a canal boat is a vehicle into the future


___



Saturday morning in downtown Newark, 10:00 am June 28th under the broad canopy of the Canal Market District just south of Courthouse Square (which I promise I will get back to after the Fourth of July!), there's an occasion of some living history I'd love to invite you to.

We will be sitting "in" the Ohio and Erie Canal, so to speak. Newark's Canal Street marks where the canal itself, once filled with water and the passing canal boat, formerly rippled past the old County Jail and on towards an aqueduct over the North Fork of the Licking River, heading east towards Coshocton and ultimately Cleveland, or west if you prefer, back through Lockport's many canal locks, and then south down to Portsmouth.

Canal Street is a street today. It hasn't flowed since the Flood of 1913 gave it a final flush. But it all began 200 years ago, with the first spadefuls dug for this massive project for 1825 America, actually just south of the city, in today's Heath, Ohio.

Considered the "Licking Summit," a practical high point on the way from the Ohio River to Lake Erie, governors of Ohio and New York State came to the rural countryside of Licking County to formally get the Ohio and Erie Canal project started, a companion to New York's famous Erie Canal which was already changing the economic and social landscape of the Midwest. Begun in 1817, it was already in use but was a few weeks away from formal opening ceremonies when New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, a presidential hopeful, came to Licking County to help break ground for the state-spanning project.

July 4, 1825 was the groundbreaking, and after speeches by Thomas Ewing of Lancaster and Gov. Clinton, and a few remarks by Governor Jeremiah Morrow of Ohio, the two governors took turns with shovels before a large crowd of appreciative onlookers from not just Newark & Granville, but from all over the state. The Erie Canal connected the Hudson River, and in effect New York City, to Lake Erie at North Tonawanda, New York next door to Buffalo; the new means of transportation helped grow and develop both cities as hubs of commerce and industry, along with lowering food prices on the Atlantic Coast while helping enrich farmers and brokers in the Midwest.

The hope was that from Buffalo to Cleveland, lake passage would then connect to even deeper access to more of the Midwest, with financial benefits (it was said) to all involved.

The Ohio and Erie Canal was in use in parts by 1828, and from end to end by 1832. Granted, the rise of railroads in the 1850s began the obsolescence of the canal system, but canals played a key role in opening up the heart of the United States to commercial development. DeWitt Clinton unexpectedly died in 1828; Jeremiah Morrow ended his second two year term as governor in 1826, and would later serve in the U.S. House of Representative, but refused to run again in 1842 because he thought he was too old to serve. He was 70 years old at the time; he would live to age 80, and Morrow County to our north is named in his honor.

Fourth of July events take precedence, so our 200th anniversary for our pioneering infrastructure project will be on June 28th. It's a good time in any case for us to look back at canals and transportation, and look ahead to how business and industry are changing our landscape today. Come join us!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's looking forward to speaking on behalf of the unsung Jeremiah Morrow at the program. Tell him what living history you've learned from at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 6-13-2025

Faith Works 6-13-2025
Jeff Gill

Two giant shadows across this summer's landscape
___


Walter Brueggemann said not long ago: "Churches should be the most honest place in town, not the happiest place in town."

Born in 1933, he died on June 5; it seems no coincidence to many ministers and teachers of religion in this area that David Woodyard, born less than a year earlier, died at the end of March, with a memorial service at Denison's Swasey Chapel last weekend, where he ministered as chaplain and taught as a professor for over 60 years. David and his wife Joanne were married in Swasey on her graduation in 1955, together 70 years as a couple.

There were echoes of Brueggemann's passing in the air as we talked about Dave Woodyard, Dr. Woodyard, Dean Woodyard, depending on who was speaking. Dignitaries from the stage, and friends of long-standing in the aisles before and after. David's father was an alumnus (Class of 1916), and later board member, so in sum there have been Woodyards shaping Denison University for over half its existence.

Both Woodyard and Brueggemann were known for their commitment to their students, sometimes to their discomfiture. I only knew Brueggemann by his writings, and one workshop almost thirty years ago where I heard him speak twice, preach once, and a couple of interactions afterwards in the hallways. Still I can say they shared a passionate intensity about the human ability to know something of God's intentions in this world, and a kind but relentless insistence that the text of the Bible shows us a divine purpose that is often at cross purposes to our own desires.

One thing said in a number of ways by multiple speakers at David Woodyard's memorial was "Dave showed up." He practiced a ministry of presence, on campus, in student spaces when invited, opening his home with Joanne to students and new faculty in many ways. He kept more than office hours, he came when called no matter the circumstances or tensions afoot, and in many ways we all called him fearless.

Which made him hard to argue with sometimes; I still did, and I enjoy some of the memories of our interactions even when they were disputes. Like Brueggemann, Dave Woodyard felt American Christians in general, and his own mainline Protestant fellows, were too comfortable. He argued from the sincerely held belief that church should not simply be a place you come to in order to find reassurance, especially to be reassured that you were right.

Walter Brueggemann said not long ago, according to Carey Newman in Baptist News, to a room full of pastors: "You are afraid of the text." 

Then, Newman says, he paused.

"You are afraid of what the Bible says."

Again, there was a pause.

"You are afraid of the what the Bible says because you are afraid of what the Bible will ask you to do."

That sounds very like something Dave Woodyard would say.

As someone who has spent the bulk of his professional life in congregational ministry, I pushed back occasionally on Dave's assertions that Christians are too comfortable, and needed to be challenged at every turn. I would offer from my own experience a counter-perspective about the very real pain and needs of even middle-class American Protestants, while admitting that there was a point to his concerns with how comfortable churchgoing people could insist on being.

Dave didn't blast me out of my seat, he listened, as I know he did with his students. Then he would, with respect but a sharp wit, push back. These were always useful discussions, I think for both of us.

Having taken that side so often in life, I will admit on his passing, and that of his fellow Christian and peer in both age and perspective, he and Brueggemann are right to worry. Now that they are gone from our midst, we need to pick up the theme. If faith is simply a source of comfort, it may not be the clarion call of God for justice and sacrificial love that scripture testifies so consistently.

Let us be uncomfortable at times in church, and thank Walter and Dave for the reminders of how this is part of God's love for us, as well.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he always knows it's a fine line between discomfort and justice in this life. Tell him how you need to be pushed at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 6-6-2025

Faith Works 6-6-2025
Jeff Gill

Missing Bible verses found in Biblical footnotes


___


We were talking last week about verses which some English translations of the New Testament have relegated to footnotes, changing the numbering system going back to the King James Version (KJV) of 1611.

The dozen and a half or so you'll see marked differently in modern versions are: Matthew 17:21, 18:11, 23:14; Mark 7:16, 9:44 & 9:46, 11:26, 15:28; Luke 17:36; John 5:3b-4; Acts 8:37, 15:34, 24:6-8, 28:29; Romans 16:24; and then the very controversial status of I John 5:7-8 which is a column itself, let alone the highly debated Mark 16:9-20 closing which often gets a "box" or typeface change, plus the well-known story at the end of John 7 and opening verses of chapter 8 (which many scholars think is misplaced, but original to the Greek text).

In the Twentieth Century U.S., there were attempts to take the Tyndale-KJV tradition and render it into modern English for American churches (dealing with stuff like "suffer the little children," as well as "thee" & "Thou"). This produced a U.S. translation into English known today as the Revised Standard Version, which is the one I grew up with. The RSV translators used the newest Greek text consensus, which was different at a number of points from the old 1500s "Textus Receptus."

The RSV became controversial for using the oldest texts as their benchmark, then using footnotes to indicate "other sources say," differing from KJV readings. Some churches said "KJV or nothing," others accepted the newer readings from older texts, but there were challenges to some of the translation choices made. This meant after 1952 when the entire RSV Bible was published, other groups pushed for their own translation into modern English, starting with the New International Version (NIV) which was worked on between 1955 and 1978. Some liked it, some did not.

The Living Bible was also an attempt (originally by one man) to take the KJV norm, but adapting it or paraphrasing into modern language. Ken Taylor's complete Living Bible paraphrase came out in 1971, beating the NIV team (you may know it as "The Way" which was its paperback cover produced in large numbers through the Seventies and Eighties). The New American Standard Bible and New King James Version each were their own responses by different publishers to tensions around the choices made by the RSV & NIV translators.

Today we have around a dozen solid English translations, some aimed at more conservative audiences, others more academic in aim, but all stuck with the same question: lots of the bedrock KJV Bible underneath English language understandings of scripture is based on a consensus from the late 1500s. We have a different consensus today in the textual studies world about what the earliest readings are in some places -- and it's not the KJV reading. Which means in traditional numbering, some verses get "relegated" to footnotes, because they're now seen as pretty clearly additions or changes made, well after the earliest manuscript basis can be established. If we get a reading from two good manuscripts clearly dated to 250 or 275 AD, but the KJV/Textus Receptus reading is based on manuscripts from 300 or 325 or even 410, the translators today will go with the earlier reading.

The numbering issue does surprise if you don't know this background. If one says (for instance) Matthew 17:21 is a later interpolation into the text, you can't renumber the whole remaining New Testament from there. So the translators skip from 17:20 to 17:22, but I guarantee you there's a footnote explaining it, and usually including the former reading but in smaller print at the bottom of the page.

Ironically, we saw debates over translations back to the release of the KJV itself, when "conservatives" in 1611 said "We will keep using the Geneva Bible!" because they disagreed with some of King James's readings about kings, purple cloth, monarchs, etc. The issue of seeking clarity about what God is saying to us in these texts is one still with us today.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; as his wife can tell you, he owns too many Bibles if that's possible. Tell him why you prefer a particular translation at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads of Bluesky.

Notes from my Knapsack 6-5-2025
Jeff Gill

A few words about Joseph Warren, 250 years later


___




As I hope you're aware, there are many plans being made around Ohio and the nation at large for 2026's 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The America 250-Ohio organization has been active around Licking County already, and we'll hear more from their cooperating groups in coming months.

Back in 2023 I had the pleasure of noting an early 250th anniversary, of Rev. David Jones passing through Licking County on February 10-11 in 1773 and leaving the first detailed historical reference to our area. And 1776 brings us to 250 years next summer.

But we just marked 250 years since the Battles of Lexington and Concord, generally acknowledged as the formal beginning of the Revolutionary War (the Boston Massacre in 1770 & the Boston Tea Party in 1773 early eruptions of what was to come). April 19, 1775 was "the shot heard 'round the world" at Concord Bridge, an overt hostilities between the local militia, the Minutemen for how quickly they trained to be ready to meet British regulars, and the armed forces of the Crown.

I had started to tell you all about our West Courtroom's art, and will return to the subject; Todd Kleismit, the America 250-Ohio executive director came on May 1 to help us mark the restoration of that glorious space. But I wanted to pause that narrative to mark an event I've long found inspiring.

June 17, 1775 is having a 250th commemoration, and it's the date of the Battle of Bunker Hill, just across the Charles River from Boston. The British forces moved to push Colonial troops out of fortifications overlooking the harbor, thinking as one of their generals said that "this untrained rabble" would not take much pushing.

They pushed back. One general commanding the valiant defense, Israel Putnam, was cousin to Ohio's renowned Rufus Putnam; another who leapt to front line defense while holding a general's commission was Dr. Joseph Warren. Thanks to Esther Forbes's 1944 novel "Johnny Tremain," I've long had a soft spot for the humane doctor behind the patriotic legend, and history supports much of how Forbes portrayed him, and how Disney depicted him in 1957's movie version.

The actual Joseph Warren has Warren County in Ohio named for him, among fourteen states with one, along with a dozen cities and a few dozen townships across the United States. He took command of a redoubt, a strong point at the hinge of the thin American lines, where that "untrained rabble" held off three charges by well-trained British troops until their ammunition ran out, and faced with long rifles and fixed bayonets, their lines broke.

Not Warren, though. In 2011 his skull was exhumed and forensically examined. The shot that killed him left a clean circle on his left cheekbone, unmistakably indicating the calibre of round which was that of an officer's handgun, and the damage in the back of the skull marked the angle the shot was fired from. It was almost certainly an officer, on horseback, who recognized the Patriot leader, and in fury at the casualties his forces took in gaining the ground, shot a standing, unflinching Joseph Warren in cold blood.

He was brave, he was steadfast, he stood his ground, and his death inspired the Revolution that was to come, and outlived him. I honor his memory this June 17th, and you might want to, as well.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; this isn't the last America 250 piece you'll read by him! Tell him what inspires you in history at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 5-30-2025

Faith Works 5-30-2025
Jeff Gill

Are there missing verses in my Bible?


___


Apparently, there's a social media post going around on clips and reels and memes and such, talking excitedly about "missing verses" in someone's Bible, and that "they" (we all know about "Them!" of course) are making scriptural verses disappear.

After answering a couple of direct questions, this sounded like a definite item for this column, but I ask your forgiveness in advance: it will take two weeks. So this one won't resolve the whole issue!

On "missing" verses, it's true up to a point; many if not most modern translations have had to deal with new information about ancient texts in Greek and Hebrew. As for "missing," any translation I know has moved them into footnotes, so they're on the page, but not in the main body of the text.

To keep it as brief as I can, there is in the textual history of Scripture a number of verses which are "problematic." In the hundreds of Greek and Syriac and other early (pre-Latin) manuscripts (because the Bible is translated into Vulgate Latin by St. Jerome in about 400 AD, well after the first manuscripts in Greek script were written down), there are variations. Small variations, but unmistakable ones.

You can have ten versions of a New Testament book, like Matthew or John or Ephesians, all from before 300 AD, and within those ten texts three or four different phrases at the end of a line, or as a section transition into the next. Scholars for millennia have had to pick and choose WHICH reading of a verse or line to use in creating the new translation -- as Jerome did in Bethlehem making his Latin translation.

Luther is kind of his own thing (largely influenced by Erasmus, whom we'll come back to) in German, but when the English Reformation got rolling, influenced by Luther's translation and Calvin's work in Geneva, King James organized around 60 scholars to give English a good translation; before the Reformation, Wycliffe and Tyndale (and Coverdale) had already done versions in English, which the Roman Church condemned, as they used exclusively the Vulgate Latin. King James's translation team in 1604 used Wycliffe & Tyndale & Coverdale's work as a starting, but they wanted to go back to Hebrew & Greek originals themselves -- so they had to wrestle with which Greek text?

They chose the 1516 "Textus Receptus" which just means "Received Text," the brilliant Erasmus's best shot in the early 1500s to assemble a reliable consensus Greek text from the ancient manuscripts available -- at that time. The King James committee also chose the Masoretic text of the Hebrew scriptures (and used the Vulgate for the Apocrypa because they were running out of time by 1610, but that's not an issue for most American Protestants, so I'll skip that), which was a translation of a translation, but it would do until the Dead Sea Scrolls appeared in 1946.

The final "Authorized Version" of 1611 for the King, known today as the "King James Version" made a number of different choices than Erasmus in the New Testament reading of variant texts; some good choices, some because they suited the king's needs in the politics of the day. Puritans, who end up in large numbers coming to America in the next few decades, weren't thrilled with the AV, or KJV, because of those variations, but quickly it dominates in English over the "Geneva Bible" though many copies of it would make their way to the Colonies with the Puritan emigrants . . .

So there's already in 1611 a history of variant readings in different translations. This is all because Erasmus didn't have ALL the Greek manuscripts available to him when he assembled the "Textus Receptus," plus more very old manuscripts were yet to be found in the monastic libraries of the Far East.

That's part one on "missing verses" in today's Bibles; come back next week for part two!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he wishes he read Syriac, but textual studies requires more patience than he possesses. Tell him what you've always wondered about at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 5-23-2025

Faith Works 5-23-2025
Jeff Gill

As we vacation on Amity Island
___


"Jaws" came out fifty years ago, and in the movie, Amity Island has a billboard celebrating "50th Annual Regatta — July 4th - 10th" which grounds the whole thing in history, kind of.

My high school basketball coach grew up on Martha's Vineyard, and he could not have loved "Jaws" more for the scenic tour of his old stomping grounds. I don't think he could have told you a thing about the plot of the thing, he just watched it multiple times to watch the scenery. Did he miss the point? He was entertained, and bought tickets, so everyone wins.

Monday is Memorial Day, and there will be celebrations and commemorations, and we will all miss the point in some ways. It is a day for remembrance — in Great Britain and Canada they have a Remembrance Day on Nov. 11, marking the end of World War I in 1918, which is also sometimes called Memorial Day (and we call Veterans Day here). Our day for memorials and remembrance of those who died in our nation's service goes back at least to 1868, and certainly in the fresh memory of the Civil War from 1861 to 1865, and the hundreds of thousands of deaths both North and South in that conflict.

So there is a solemnity to this weekend, and certainly to at least some part of Monday. Gen. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic issued his General Order Number 11 asking that veterans mark May 30 as a date to tend graves and honor the dead of the late conflict (it can easily be found online, and I think still rewards re-reading even if the language is as flowery as you might imagine for 1868). May 30 was Memorial Day up into the 1970s when we nudged many national observances to Mondays, in the ongoing creation of "weekends" as a civic reality.

Memorial Day weekend is also the beginning of summer, with schools letting out and camps opening and family vacations setting out. It can also be, for many parish clergy, a time to say goodbye to substantial amounts of their congregations, with cherished hopes that they'll see them again come Labor Day or after.

Honoring sacrifice, giving thanks to God for life, taking a day of rest: these all have their place in most religious traditions. We stir them in with patriotism, commercialism, and a frantic pursuit of leisure, if not happiness, and get the modern American summer. Memorial Day is one of the first casualties of this potentially toxic mix.

Longtime readers know around this point of the year I like to encourage people to visit places of worship while on vacation. It's so nearly counter-intuitive for our culture of recreation I feel compelled to keep mentioning it, even as I don't want to make it one more obligation you should feel as if you have to fulfill.

Going to church somewhere you've never been can really teach you things about your own faith community you'll never learn at home. It will make you appreciate things you didn't know you valued, and might even cause you to see why a minister or some other church leader wants to make certain changes. Plus being a stranger in worship will help you see strangers in your church very differently, and I suspect much more clearly.

The mayor of Amity said insistently "we need summer dollars!" His pursuits in the office you might say blinded him to other realities swimming off-shore. We need much each summer, to refresh, renew, restore. Just make sure you don't pursue your version of Amity's summer dollars to where you miss what you need to see right in front of you.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's looking forward to Memorial Day observances for many reasons. Tell him how you revitalize in the summertime at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Notes from my Knapsack 5-22-2025

Notes from my Knapsack 5-22-2025
Jeff Gill

Licking County's most remarkable collection of art
___



Earlier in May I was describing to you here the steps in the process which led to the West Courtroom of the Licking County Courthouse as we have it today, beautifully restored and re-dedicated on May 1, 2025, which is "Law Day" each year.

We had a justice of the Ohio Supreme Court on the bench, along with the Common Pleas Judges on either side, and another dozen judges filling the jury box. I was honored to get to speak as part of those proceedings, helping put some context on the amazing art and decoration you can see there, much of it dating to 1903 to 1905, with some blanks filled in over the past year of restoration work.

If you've been in the massive and ornate West Courtroom (I won't ask why!) you know the ceiling is dramatic, but throughout living memory has been shrouded in lamp-black and cigar smoke from earlier times. The amazing oculus in the center, evoking the Pantheon ceiling in Rome, has been dim and shadowy for generation.

As one of the final stages of restoration of our county's courthouse, which needed work from the cupola on top to the walls and windows of this 1876 structure, the West Courtroom was painstakingly restored, by skilled professionals in art restoration. We've all learned fascinating things about the work done and what it represents; my part has been to anchor the work to create the plaster architectural elements, and of the attached murals and paintings, to a precise point in time, and also to some specific artists.

The "maestros" of this complex display of art in a functional space were the Bryant Brothers of Columbus, Ohio. They had started some years earlier in Canton, and moved to the center of the state as their work expanded, but they were interior designers on a major scale. Their portfolio included churches and cathedrals all over the Midwest, a number of palatial residences, and just a few courthouse commissions.

The Bryants didn't do the art, they hired the artists for the client, and put the pieces together in a harmonious whole, as interior designers do. On June 26, 1905, the county commissioners in their official minutes contracted with Bryant Brothers to finish the interior of the West Courtroom, and with August Roeder of Toledo to finish the flooring upstairs, soon after with an additional amount to complete the general contracting of the electrical work and finished carpentry of the space. The lighting design of the room was on the cutting edge of technology for 1905, even if the art was classical.

And classical barely begins to describe what the Bryant Brothers pulled together, which you can now see in bright, vivid colors again today. They employed an artist from Toledo, Ludwig Bang, about whom I've already written, who was the only one of the three main artists for the West Courtroom to actually visit Newark. Two more artists play a significant role: Adèle Bassi, with her studio in Florence, Italy just up the block from the Uffizi, and John Franklin Douthitt of New York City, with his studios above Fifth Avenue.

All three would come together in one place, thanks to the Bryants; each has a unique story — for which you'll have to come back and hear more!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's had a great time researching this little project, with more to share. Tell him about the art that inspires you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads of Bluesky.

Faith Works 5-16-2025

Faith Works 5-16-2025
Jeff Gill

Pope Bob from Dalton makes me smile
___



Habemus papam: we have a pope!

I'm from northwest Indiana and my father spent his last two decades working in Hegewisch, a Chicago neighborhood that's about as far south as you can get, with Dalton the next one over. So there's a whole bunch about Robert Prevost's upbringing which I can relate to, even if he's six years older than I am.

His mother was the Cubs fan; he's a White Sox fan, which is a comfort to many on the South Side, I'm sure.

A short point, and a longer observation: first, there are some complaints on social media about all the attention to a Catholic pope "because not everyone belongs to his church." True, but as a non-Catholic myself, what a pope says is worth hearing. I may not agree with all his doctrine, but the papacy is a leadership office in the world which in its own way is as consequential as, say, the president of Russia or the premier of China.

My longer comment has to do with choosing to be the fourteenth Leo of the 267 popes since St. Peter. The new pope has clearly said it's meant as a nod to Pope Leo XIII, who died in 1903, born in 1810.

Leo XIII wrote a papal encyclical titled: "Rerum novarum." In English, "Rights and duties" or "Rerum novarum" in Latin, short for "the rights and duties of capital and labor."

"Rerum novarum" is significant far beyond the Roman Catholic Church in that coming out in 1891 this was one of the earliest comprehensive social, theological, and political responses to Karl Marx's "Das Kapital."

Both works were meant as responses to what was known in the Nineteenth Century as "the Social question." In brief, this is the challenge presented to Western societies in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Rural life could be poor, but endurable, in a medieval culture where the people of the land might have no money or wealth, but their garden plots and market exchange provided a relatively decent standard of living.

The late 1700s and early 1800s saw a shift to mechanization, a move to urbanization, and a working class developing living in cities on a wage-earning basis . . . and for many in this new industrial working class, poverty of a different sort than came from drought or pestilence and crop failure in the country.

The Social question asked what was to be done about industrial scale poverty; two hundred years after the development of nation-states, in 1848 there were popular revolutions all across Europe, centered in urban areas, forcing an accounting of how a government should respond to poverty. One was the Communist Manifesto of 1848, which was developed into a broader theory of capital and class consciousness and ultimately revolution by Marx in 1867.

Meanwhile, in places like Great Britain were debates between people like Gladstone and Disraeli who were united in saying "constitutional democracy will sort this out" with a social safety net of sorts; northern Europe tended towards more of what we call today a "welfare state." In the U.S. of this period, our response was to say "Go West, young man" and solve such socio-economic tensions with the frontier and homesteading.

Leo XIII said "there's another way." That's what "Rerum novarum" is, basically. An attempt with an eye towards eternity to talk about current tensions between labor and capital that is neither weighted towards revolution nor is it a faith in a welfare state to create a safety net. Without getting into further detail on Leo XIII's other way, what we've heard from Leo XIV is that in 2025, it's time for the Catholic Church and Christians in general to look at the lives of working class people in light of emerging technology once again, and look for "other ways."


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got social questions aplenty. Tell him what yours are at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 5-9-2025

Faith Works 5-9-2025
Jeff Gill

Selecting a leader in religious traditions
___


This week a conclave of cardinals begins the work of selecting a new Bishop of Rome, and leader of the Catholic Church.

It's a very public process, with the traditions and rituals of secluding the voting cardinals (not all cardinals vote, but most of them) to focus their prayers and reflections, and then the crowds thronging St. Peter's Square to watch for the legendary "white smoke" which means a new Pope has been chosen, as the ballots are burned.

It's a democratic process, of sorts. Not a popular democracy where Catholics line up in various parishes to vote for a candidate; not every priest or even each bishop, just cardinals, and those over 80 years of age are excluded, making it about 135 who will be crowded into the Sistine Chapel.

There's an old saying about campaigning for the office, I've been told by people with some experience in Rome: those who enter a conclave as pope, will leave a cardinal. Which is to say, don't put too much faith in a front-runner.

Our presidential campaigns used to run more that way, too. I've been spending a great deal of time lately in 1859 and 1860; Lincoln didn't even go to the Republican Convention in Chicago in the summer of 1860. Everyone knew he was "in the running," but the most likely candidates were Ohio's Salmon Chase, or William Seward of New York. Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was a "dark horse" candidate, but his allies campaigned on the floor, while Abe stayed downstate in Springfield.

It's quite possible by the time you read this the new pope will be selected, but given that so many of the current crop of under-80 cardinals don't know each other, and most have never even been to a conclave, it could take a while, just to allow them to size one another up. And the final selection could be someone we're all not talking about.

Various religious traditions have a variety of ways of selecting their pre-eminent leader. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a process which ends with their most senior leader as President of the church, and the current office holder is Russell M. Nelson, who is 100 years old. Contrariwise, there are Amish groups who come to a time of leadership transition, which tends to happen each year, and the adult men are called forward to select a Bible from a table covered with them: when everyone has chosen, an elder calls out a Bible verse, to which all turn. One man finds in his Bible a slip of colored paper in that page, and he is the leader for the coming term.

Age, providence, election: which is the best way? My own religious tradition has a "General Minister and President" who serves a six year term, which can be reaffirmed once, voted on at a General Assembly which we've held every other year but is about to move to every third year, but where each church has representatives who can vote, as can each minister with standing. In her second term currently is Rev. Teresa Hord Owens, and she's done a fine job in this parson's opinion.

My mentor in seminary, Dr. Michael Kinnamon, was a nominee for the office in 1991. He recently wrote a book titled "The Nominee: A Novel" which puts "a novel" in the title to make it clear this is fiction. However, if you were around our religious tradition in 1991, you'll quickly realize he's barely fictionalizing the process. I commend the book, and my quick take on it is he's wanting to communicate something about the complexity of how any religious group selects leaders.

What is the right way to do it? I really can't say. But I'll be "watching" for that white smoke.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's interested in how you think religious leaders should be selected. Tell him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.