Faith Works 4-17-2026

Faith Works 4-17-2026
Jeff Gill

Authors, readers, and a culture of religious literacy
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How do we share the message of resurrection with others?

Some like George Whitefield and John Wesley two hundred years ago preach on street corners and out in the open; we had a good example of that on Courthouse Square last weekend, and that approach can reach new audiences.

Others are more focused on institution building, planting congregations and seeing them properly developed and led and housed, which is where figures like my own tradition’s Alexander Campbell, or Joseph Smith, Jr., or even one-time local resident Archbishop Lamy came in, building churches and temples and cathedrals. There’s a place for that kind of well-ordered religion.

And then with the rise of mass media there came a new model for extending good news to those who needed to hear it: Aimee Semple McPherson, before her Dwight Moody and after Billy Graham, all examples of ministries which used modern technology to reach new audiences.

I will confess to being a lower-key preacher in most ways, including a personal interest in how literature and history can be used to open people up to horizons beyond their own immediate circumstances. For instance, Jan Karon may have reached more people seeking the hope of the Gospel with her Mitford series of books than many on television, or even those preaching in arenas. Susan Howatch some years ago and Anthony Trollope further back have been authors who created a space where the claims of faith can be quietly considered; C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien famously have done so with their writings. Ellis Peters had a series with a medieval monk, Brother Cadfael, whose chronicles I love to commend, murder mysteries with a regular touch of redemption in their plots.

Most Sundays, I preach to a roomful of people, generally looking to the texts of the day in the discipline of the lectionary (like most of my disciplines, I follow it mostly, but not always), and the circumstances of the people where I’m asked to speak. I trust God’s word can speak through my foibles and failings, and over time in a particular place I am building up a body of work, in the ear and the mind more than on the page.

Then there are these columns; they aren’t sermons, not quite. Whether as many or more, or less, are reading than did so when I started over two decades ago is something only the circulation manager knows for sure, but now we measure more by clicks than copies sold. What I’m regularly reminded of, though, is that there’s a wide audience of you all out there.

Helen Vendler said back in 1980 (almost half a century ago!) to a convention of English professors: “Our students come to us… having read no works of literature in foreign languages and scarcely any works of literature in their own language. The very years, between twelve and eighteen, when they might be reading rapidly, uncritically, rangingly, happily, thoughtlessly, are somehow dissipated… It is no wonder that they do not love what we love; we as a culture have not taught them to… Nothing is more lonely than to go through life uncompanioned by a sense that others have also gone through it, and have left a record of their experience.”

I think of this when people worry about the internet, and now AI, as obliviating the place of reading and literature in people’s lives. This is not a new concern, as this quote indicates. If we are “people of the Book” as many Christians would claim, what are we to do with the place of reading, let alone reflection, in our lives?

Perhaps part of the answer for preachers is in Professor Vendler’s claim: “It is no wonder that they do not love what we love; we as a culture have not taught them to.” We as a church have not, either. It’s not enough to say the people will not learn: we need to teach them, which includes finding a way past the obstacles our times place in the way.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s not done with this train of thought, as you can probably tell. Tell him what you’re reading at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 4-10-2026

Faith Works 4-10-2026
Jeff Gill

What the bleep is the problem, [deleted]?
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Profanity is in the news, and if you don’t know why there’s no point in going there.

What the bleep, man? Why do certain words carry such weight of approval or disapproval?

For religious people, the roots of the question go back to a commandment. Yep, one of the big ten (not that Big Ten). Do not “take the name of God in vain.”

There is a whole deep religion rabbit hole we could go down with the Hebrew four-lettered or “tetragrammaton” symbol of the divine name, where it comes from, what it means, and how you work around using it even while knowing it. But the point is you are not supposed to say it out loud. It has to do with respect, appreciation, and a certain amount of mystery that is beyond us, acknowledged by a faithful avoidance.

Some carry this forward, by the way, to a caution with even the word, or name, “God” and they write it “G-d.” Obviously, I don’t follow that, but I respect the usage in communications as a seminary instructor; you’ll note that while I’m not Jewish, I haven’t and won’t type out the English version of the Hebrew name. It’s a weighty issue for some.

(Then there’s the whole modern, secularist insistence on always putting the name God in lower case, which sometimes gets done to a fault, a stylebook issue I may take up some other day.)

So all of this about being courteous about the name of God, just like you don’t run your mouth and use my mother’s name, right? If you say “Rose” you better be respectful… and not associate such usage with profanity, which is our general point. What is it?

George Carlin made some money, as well as paying out a bit of it, with his "seven words you can’t say” routine in the 1970s. He was eloquent in his own way about the role hypocrisy and inconsistency played in what is profane and what isn’t, and when.

But profanity is most often used for impact; they exist legally in a grey area next to “fighting words,” speech used to provoke. I should note during my brief sojourn in the Marine Corps, profanity was not forbidden to sergeant instructors, but God bless them, they didn’t need it. I heard less profanity in the Marines than I did in [insert almost any institution here]. Now, we heard about maggots, worms, babies, infants, pathetic hopeless cretins, ignorant basket cases, and worthless wastes of space, but very little cursing.

Good sergeants probably knew Mrs. Froberg. One of the great American middle school English teachers, she effectively made the point to her room full of hormone addled teenagers that profanity, in a word, was lazy. Profanity was the sign of a lazy mind. And friends? When Mrs. Froberg said the word “lazy”? It had the impact of a sergeant saying “maggot” at the top of his lungs. You could tell having a lazy mind was close to the lowest form of life imaginable.

Mrs. Froberg was right. (Carve that sentence in granite.) Profanity leaves you nowhere to go. Once you’ve cursed at someone, what do you say next? You can pile up Carlin’s whole list, and then what?

There is always a better way to express yourself, and with that insight, I would say as a minister the problem with profanity, however defined, is one of stewardship. It’s like gambling: you can’t really find a specific argument against it, Biblically, but it is a profound failure of good stewardship, of appreciation and best use of the blessings you’ve been given.

In the same way, swearing is inadequate stewardship of the gift of speech, of reason, of relationship. It’s a short cut that goes nowhere. You should avoid profanity, gosh darn it. It’s a small thing, except when it is not.

Mrs. Froberg says so.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has had many good teachers, of which Mrs. Froberg was one of the finest. Tell him about your memorable teachers at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 4-3-2026

Faith Works 4-3-2026
Jeff Gill

Jesus was dead on Good Friday
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Jesus was dead.

As they took him down off the cross, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that day. He was dead.

For three hours he had been subjected to the harshest punishment the Roman Empire or almost any earthly authority could hand down. Crucifixion was not like a hanging or beheading, which while humiliating and fear inducing would be a moment in time once imposed. To be nailed to a cross was to be killed in as slow a fashion as human ingenuity could devise, to inflict as much pain as possible without quite killing the victim.

There are some traditions suggesting a member of the nobility might be executed by archers; Roman hierarchies had long had their own rules, from being flung off a height near the Forum (a spot tourists still visit), or other forms of regal dispatch. Crucifixion was largely for slaves, or criminals in occupied provinces like Judea or Galilee.

Your death would be a relief, but it would not come soon enough. Some of the crucified would survive for days, especially when Romans were making an example of a population, nailing dozens, even hundreds to roadside crosses after an uprising. During the childhood of Jesus one such display happened in Galilee. Everyone knew what crucifixion entailed.

With Passover at hand, and Roman feasts planned, the victims were considered lucky in a way: they would not hang on their crosses past sundown, after being nailed up at noon. The thieves with Jesus had their legs broken, a gratuitous infliction of a last indignity which meant along with the pain and shock they could not hold themselves up enough to breathe, past the fluid-filled lungs of the dying in that fashion.

All the traditions agree that when the soldiers came to Jesus, he was dead. To be certain, they drove a spear into his ribcage, piercing his heart. No doubt. Blood and water poured out, but the heart no longer beat. Jesus was dead.

Friends may have taken him down from the cross, but Roman soldiers supervised. If there was the faintest flicker of life in that scarred and savaged body, they would have seen it, and stepped in, short sword in hand. But they turned the corpse over to the Jewish leader who offered his assistance, in closing out this grim scene before day's end by offering up his nearby vacant tomb. Joseph of Arimathea and what others were able and willing, likely including Nicodemus, took him down, cleaned the body off, wrapped it up (the body now an it, not a him), and carried him the short distance.

It is said "Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James" and even other women, including his mother Mary, had seen where the burial happened, perhaps helped at some stage of the preparation of the body.

Some of them would come back, not because they expected to find him alive, but to finish the decency of what should be done to the dead body of someone you cared about, whom you loved. Not at once, but after things calmed down.

For now, Jesus was dead. They all knew it. It was now one of the few things they were certain of. Jesus had spoken of the kingdom of heaven, the realm of God, his Father's house, but the disciples and followers and friends of Jesus knew that was somewhere else, sometime yet to come. This day, Jesus was dead. As we would be. The goal now was simply to not make that dread day come too soon, as it had for Jesus.

The one they had come to know as the fulfillment of God's plan, of divine purpose on earth as it is in heaven, was dead. The future was dark, and empty of hope, even as the tomb was now filled. What else was there?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a bit more to say on Easter day, but this is not that, yet. Tell him why you have hope at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Notes from my Knapsack 4-9-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 4-9-2026
Jeff Gill

History continues to be made in Licking County
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As a church historian, I have noticed over the "internet era" a trend on local church websites that saddens me more than a bit.

In the late 1990s on early congregational websites, and on into the early 2000s, you would almost inevitably see a tab "Our History." This was common, even standard.

Today, you may or may not find such information. If there's an "About Us" tab you might find a short church history note in the drop-down menu, but just as likely you will not. Obviously, the growth of new non-denominational churches feeds this trend, since they just started a few years back — and there's a whole additional story there about how even denominationally supported new church starts will bury their affiliation deep in a website if it's there at all.

One reason given for this is market driven, if not seeker sensitive per se: people don't care. Years ago people moved to a town and looked for "their" church, regardless of other factors; today, it's more likely families are looking for programs and worship styles which meet their needs, regardless of affiliation or even theology. History is not a connection for many.

Obviously, I have a different take on this. I try to be cautious, because what I like is not to everyone's taste, and I'm told occasionally I am wrong about some things. But I think history is woven into our tastes and instincts and interests in ways that go beyond the trends of the moment.

2026 is in theory a great year for people like me. It's America 250, with a peak around the Fourth of July, marking 250 years since the Declaration of Independence and our nation's founding, and many events have already taken place, with more to come even after July. In Granville, I'm doing a pair of programs in June I'll come back to next month about our history as a country and community around parks and the outdoors; in August, there's going to be a grand picnic event in Our Fayre Village. And on into the fall…

On the radio, some of you have heard me talking about a series of twenty-five historical figures in Licking County history. They range from the 1770s to the near-present, women and men, different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, some celebrities in their own right and others a surprise to even those who've lived here their whole lives.

The full list (in roughly chronological order): Rev. David Jones, Catherine Stadden, William Stanbery, Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy, William Hollister, Israel Dille, Jackson Shackleford, Thomas D. Jones, Johnny Clem, Gen. Charles Griffin, Edward Roye, Victoria Woodhull, William Woods, Mary Hartwell Catherwood, Reinhard Scheidler, Gertrude Dorsey Brown, Eli Hull, Augustus Heisey, Ellen Hayes, Bertie Burr Dawes, Jerrie Mock, Eleanor S. Weiant, Games Slayter, Dave Longaberger, Wayne Newton.

The challenge was to sum up a significant life in our county history in brief. They're one minute spots, but my part is forty seconds long for each. My hope is there's enough to make some of you want to go look up a bit more on your own.

Because all of these people tell us something about who we are. Not just who they were, but what we are trying to become as a nation, a county, a person in our own time. I would have loved to add a few dozen more, but these are a good start.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's a bit of a historian on a good day. Tell him which one intrigues you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 3-27-2026

Faith Works 3-27-2026
Jeff Gill

The question of a good death ahead of Good Friday
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If you were raised in the church, you don't find Good Friday too surprising.

That's simply the name long used in the Christian community for the day Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by Roman authorities in Jerusalem, some two thousand years ago.

Good, though? Good as in "holy," good because of the sacrifice Jesus as the Christ makes by accepting his death on the cross as necessary to our redemption from sin. Good because of our salvation in him.

To those new to religious observance, it can be jarring. Good Friday is crucifixion day? Really? And that's certainly understandable.

Good and death do not go together. Mostly. Basically. But if you have sat at the bedside of a long dying, there is a blessing, a relief, and yes there is a certain measure of guilt at times over the weight that relieved when death comes for someone long suffering. When only death is going to heal the situation, death can be, in a sense, good.

We are in the midst of an ongoing cultural discussion over how and when we can welcome death to the decision making. Sometimes, heroic measures, as the medical folk say, make no sense. Families are asked about "do not resuscitate" orders, or DNR markings on patient files. Harder are questions about feeding tubes, or other interventions. When do we stop pushing life, and when are we withdrawing it?

Recently, a number of deaths have been in the news, people I've not known personally, but whose lives keep intersecting with my own. Four men have stuck with me since their passings, in this order the last couple of weeks: Paul Ehrlich, Jürgen Habermas, Chuck Norris, Robert Mueller.

A scientist, a theologian, an actor, a lawyer. It would take longer than I have in a column to explain the personal ties, the likes and dislikes I might have had around their work, about these four very different public figures who died in a seven day period.

They were old men. They died, respectively, at 93, 96, 86, and 81. The last and youngest just a decade and a half older than I am, and what does that make me? The last two were known to have a faith they practiced, which is surely a comfort to their families, and I trust to them as their end approached. But I doubt any of them, or those they loved, called their last day "good."

Another "old man" who lived four hundred years ago didn't live as long as I am now. His name was John Donne, and he was a clergyman, a preacher, and a poet. Honorable callings, all. He is perhaps best known for a poem of which this is a part, from about 1630:

"Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee."

"Send not to know" refers to how the church bell was the internet of its day, in the Seventeenth Century. When the parish steeple rang out, you knew it meant certain times of day, but when it tolls, you learn the basic information that someone has died. You may well not know more, so you would have someone run into the village to find out: who died?

Rev. Donne said there's no need to ask. The church bell tolls, when the funerary tones ring out, for all of us. "It tolls for thee." We should not mourn more or less for ones we like more or less; each person's death diminishes all of us. Or as the Malian author Amadou Hampâté Bâ wrote not so many years ago in the Twentieth Century: "Whenever an elder dies, a library burns down."

May your Good Friday bring life, as we contemplate death. It comes for us all, but is not the end, and that is the goodness there is in it.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows everyone wants to get to Heaven, but nobody wants to die. Tell him what's good in your life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Notes from my Knapsack 3-26-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 3-26-2026
Jeff Gill

Mrs. Martin, in her manor house thinking back
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Victoria Claflin, child of Homer, Ohio, and honored woman in Granville as Victoria C. Woodhull, led an epic life literally from coast to coast of the United States, and in her last half-century all over Great Britain.

Her nearly fifty years a wealthy woman in the English countryside are a lesser known aspect of her story; they do play a role in why one of her all too few memorials is a marker behind the high altar of Tewkesbury Abbey, honoring her as "Victoria Woodhull Martin" as she was known in that neighborhood, whose good works went into the fabric of the massive church and to preserve the green lawns around it.

The monument includes crossed U.S. and British flags, and it hints at why her resting place is not there; she gave her daughter Zula instructions to have her body cremated after her death in 1927, to be scattered in the Atlantic midway between the two nations.

Mrs. Martin was not titled, but in her thirty years of widowhood, she lived among and entertained those who were, in London and on her Norton Park estate near Tewkesbury. Her banker husband sent many notes as he traveled for work and health before his death ended a twenty-year marriage, and almost all of them, well into their respective fifties, were signed "Your loving boy."

What clouds this last phase of her life is the passion she had for "stirpiculture," better known as human eugenics. Mrs. Martin on her estate continued to write and publish to advance this idea, that human happiness could be ensured by controlling who had children. The through line for this belief of hers is the first marriage she entered into having just turned 15 years old, and her first child, Byron, whose disabilities we do not fully understand today, but who was cognitively a child all his life, even to his death at 77.

Victoria believed that the trauma of her marriage, and her confused and unhappy relations with her husband (who by all accounts was a terrible person), were why her child had disabilities. That belief was at the heart of her "free love" declarations, rooted in the idea that happy marital relations result in happy children, and vice versa. In an era when germ theory, anesthetic in childbirth, & surgical hygiene was still all controversial, we can excuse her mistaken beliefs.

The tragedy is that this error led her further into the mistaken belief that social control of who can marry whom, and how many children each should have - including sterilization of "the unfit" - would result in contentment for all. Her arguments for eugenics are profoundly discomforting to read.

In four columns, I've barely touched on the range and scope of Victoria Woodhull's work. She deserved to be remembered for more than mistakes or the mischaracterizations of others, but living as she did in the middle of vast social tumult, her story gets caught up in many narratives. I appreciate the work of people like Mary L. Shearer in Illinois, a descendant of Victoria's second husband (whom I've barely mentioned!) who has worked hard to clear up accounts of their life together, and locally Dr. Judith Dann, a scholar of Victoria Woodhull's life, has done excellent work in print, and at public presentations.

I hope you are intrigued enough to read a bit on your own about our "Notorious Victoria," and draw your own conclusions.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's read more books about Victoria Woodhull than he can account for. Tell him what you found interesting at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 3-20-2026

Faith Works 3-20-2026
Jeff Gill

Opening up the inbox, and taking a deep breath
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As is so often the case, I have no one to blame but myself.

Most mornings, fairly early, I open my laptop, and toggle to the email. It is almost always a torrent, a literal steady flow down the page of new content, subscription account updates, solicitations to respond to opportunities to write about this or that.

Let's stipulate for starters that I have too many news and media sources. Given what I do here, that's no surprise (and no, I don't get free access to this paper, in print or online, that's on me). Newspapers, magazines, Substacks, online newsletters of various sorts, and while I get too many I did not ask for, it's not like the torrent would be manageable if it was just the ones I agreed to at first.

This is before I turn on the television set or open up an app on my phone, and decide which firehose of content I want to have pour out into my eyeballs. I'm just talking about my online and even email inputs.

How do I sort it out? I get asked about this fairly often, and I wish I had a better answer which I felt good about for myself, let alone to give others. There are a handful of benchmark pages and writers whom I would hasten to point out are not those I agree with — part of why I'm not going to provide a list here today — but whose perspectives seem to me to be helpful in getting a starting point in what's going on.

It won't surprise most of you to hear that's not from scanning the headlines, which I do look at on what I know many call "legacy media." That comes after a time sifting some religion content, usually tied to the Christian calendar (did you know we're in Lent? that we just passed Laetare Sunday, halfway to Easter?) as a healthy grounding. Saints days are not part of my Protestant tradition, but I like how they function as milestones, guideposts if you will, along the vast annual track we cycle through, month after month, season after season. Nothing says I can't mark saints' days, so I do.

Last week I spoke in defense of print Bibles; I support a general acknowledgment of the church calendar (without getting into peculiar debates over rules for the colors of pulpit coverings and such, which can be overdone). I'd also like to say we do well to keep our hand in with writing.

Yes, the guy who writes vast amounts of stuff on his computer keyboard, who has reached that point where he doesn't have to look at his hands to type, says we should write things down. Why? Because of the same factors that lead me to say a physical Bible is important, which have to do with memory.

And memory is not about passing tests or showing off knowledge. Your memories are in large part who you are. I've had some powerful reminders of this over the last six years. There is something powerful, and even useful, in forgetting (a subject to which I'll return), but we are also very much what we choose to remember, to hold onto, to focus on. What stories, or events, or values, do we choose to keep "front of mind"?

Online stuff is tied to (spoiler alert) algorithms and technology that helps to wipe our memories and upload new content on a regular basis. Like that firehose I confront on my computer screen most mornings. What you write down? That sticks in the brain, and somewhere deeper than neurons, I think. Notes and underlinings and scribbles in margins. Letters and journals, even. With pencil or pen, on cards or notebooks. The act of writing is a work of memory, which shapes who we are, who we become.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he carries two pens and a pocket of index cards everywhere. Tell him how you remember who you are at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 3-13-2026

Faith Works 3-13-2026
Jeff Gill

What we remember is what we live
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Does your faith community have a living word at work in your midst?

"The living word" is what the Danish theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig calls the communal text of what we have memorized. It may vary from congregation to congregation, but those shared corporate remembrances shape the life of the community.

Think of what you, and your fellow worshipers, have in your minds and hearts, whether there's a book nearby or not. John 3:16 will come up quickly for many; the Lord's Prayer is in multiple gospels (watch that ending, which is another subject), and there are actually two versions of the Ten Commandments in the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament.

Some communities put more emphasis on learning by heart than others; a few of us have committed Romans 6 & 8 to memory, or at least the last half of Romans 8. Quite a few of us know I Corinthians 13 from start to finish. How about Psalms? The 23rd, the 121st, old 150? My wife and I have most of Proverbs, chapter 31 (at least from verse 10) ready to recite, a long story for another day.

Actually, you might be pleasantly surprised once you start in on piecing together what you do have. Maybe not word perfect, but close. I don't have as good a memory as I might wish, but Isaiah 40 for funerals, and 53 for Easter, along with the whole story of Joseph in Genesis 37 to 50 in parts, if not the whole, live with me.

And who of us doesn't have at least a steady echo in our heads with Linus speaking from Luke, chapter 2, along with goodly chunks of Matthew 2? Plus Luke 24: 13-35 a fair number of us could assemble, if piecemeal, as a coherent story we carry.

I mention all of this to speak a word for holding onto a print Bible in your spiritual disciplines. As many of us are reading scripture a bit more regularly in Lent, preparing for Holy Week at the end of the month, there's something to be said for the physicality of a book in one's hands.

Bible apps? Helpful! The Bible on my phone? Got it! Resources? So, so many: I have a rich collection of Greek and Hebrew helps, but I pull up an interlinear reading on my laptop or phone all the time to piece together an exegesis of a term in the week's reading. Yes, you can read Holy Writ on screens and devices.

Yet it is indisputably true: physical books provide cues which anchor memory. Reading on screens tends to default to more of a "scanning" mode, with less retention in your long-term memory. The National Institutes of Health call this the "screen inferiority effect." Reading from a text with weight in your hands, the feel of pages as you turn them, seeing the marks on the page you've made in the past, all of this builds connections within your memory-making capacity in ways a well-lit screen cannot.

A stack of leather-bound unread Bibles gathering dust versus a Bible app you actually read: there's no question I support using any technology to keep you immersed in a living, vital Bible practice.

What I want to encourage, though, is having a version or two around in print, between covers, which you pick up, underline in, and read through. Because I'm with Grundtvig: the Bible you remember is the scripture you live out. And that's when God's Word "is living and active and full of power." (Hebrews 4:12)


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a few Bibles at home, some of them in English. Tell him how you remember to read the Bible regularly at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on X.

Notes from my Knapsack 3-12-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 3-12-2026
Jeff Gill

Victoria Woodhull, apostle of free love (or was she?)
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In 1876, Victoria Woodhull in one of her last public statements on marriage in the U.S., before moving to Great Britain in 1877 (where she would live until her death in 1927):

"I mean by marriage, in this connection, any forced or obligatory tie between the sexes, any legal intervention or constraint to prevent people from adjusting their love relations precisely as they do their religious affairs in this country, in complete personal freedom; changing and improving them from time to time, and according to circumstances."

Allowing for some Victorian turns of phrase here, that's not a controversial statement in 2026. Some scholars even see it, in 1876, as a retreat from her more controversial earlier speech of 1871, where before a packed house in New York City, in response to a shouted accusation from the crowd, she said "Yes, I am a Free Lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere."

The latter statement, and the interpretation usually placed it, has defined Victoria Woodhull for generations. She's been called "the apostle of free love" and been adopted as a sort of mascot for all sorts of movements around sexual liberation. Her later comments modifying and limiting her intention are often dismissed as late in life prudery and a retreat from a former bold stance.

But I have come to believe that there is, for her time, an even bolder interpretation to put on her words in and just after 1871, which is in line with her later assertions against promiscuity, and in favor of marriage and commitment. It is present in her many recorded speeches from the late 1860s almost to the end of her life, though it has to be said that much of her rhetoric in the Twentieth Century leaned into the then-new eugenics movement. But her original theme is a bit disguised, again thanks to the euphemisms of her era which was indeed called "Victorian." To find it, let's look at some other eminent Victorians whose lives made me realize what our Victoria was trying to say.

Noted newspaper editor Horace Greeley ("Go west, young man") infamously had a tempestuous relationship with Mary Cheney, they were married in 1836: Wikipedia sums up by telling us their "marriage was not a happy one, and [that he] avoided his wife and their house. However, he kept her almost constantly pregnant." They had seven children and an unknown number of miscarriages. Not to be crude, but he could not have "avoided his wife" entirely, could he?

By way of comparison, in England the author Charles Dickens married Catherine Hogarth, also in 1836; in the next fifteen years they would have ten children and at least two miscarriages. Though she was for that era a well-educated woman and an author herself, it was recorded that he said had "contempt" for her intellect, and called her housekeeping "incompetent." Yet there were at least a dozen pregnancies over fifteen years?

What I'm saying is that the skeleton key to Victoria Woodhull's social teaching was something even she could barely bring herself to say straight out: she was arguing a woman had the right to say no, even to her husband. And her audiences in general knew that was what she was saying. For this assertion, this right to say "no," she became known as "Notorious Victoria."


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a fourth and final installment coming later this month. Tell him what you think about our Victoria at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 3-6-2026

Faith Works 3-6-2026
Jeff Gill

Faith and citizenship in America 250
___


When we look back to the years around 1776, which we mark this year with the America 250 celebrations marking the passage of the Declaration of Independence, distance can tend to flatten some of the differences which are more obvious in the historical record.

We are in the middle of another Middle East conflict in 2026, in opposition to a country with a state religion. But it's worth recalling that the United States isn't in opposition to Islam itself. From the Founders themselves, religious pluralism is part of our model for representative democracy, going back to John Locke, whose political philosophy was so influential on the Declaration.

Thomas Jefferson rephrased a passage from Locke's 1689 "Letter on Toleration" in his personal notebook around 1776, reminding himself that Locke: "…says neither Pagan nor Mahometan [Muslim] nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion." The precedents Jefferson copied from Locke echo strongly in his Virginia "Statute for Religious Freedom," which says: "(O)ur civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions."

The statute, drafted in 1777, which became law in 1786, inspired the Constitution's "no religious test" clause, and was one of the influences on what would become the First Amendment in the 1789 "Bill of Rights" which the founders quickly added to the 1787 Constitution.

Jefferson wrote in an autobiographical fragment from 1821 about his intentions with the Virginia "Statute for Religious Freedom": "[my] intent had been "to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan [Muslim], the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination."

John Adams mentioned Muhammad favorably in his 1776 book "Thoughts on Government" as a "sober inquirer for truth" along with figures like Socrates and Confucius. He also signed the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797 as president, which states that our new nation had no "enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen [Muslims]."

George Washington's views are even more expansive, if with qualification. A 1784 letter to a business associate about prospective employees for Mount Vernon says: "If they are good workmen, they may be of Assia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans, Jews, or Christian of any Sect—or they may be Athiests…"

Sadly, this is largely about the purchase of skilled tradespeople, more than the hiring of such staff. Washington, like Jefferson, was an enslaver on his properties. Later records with names of people enslaved at Mount Vernon include women's names like Fatima and Nila which strongly suggest Islamic connections, as does the Anglicized name "Sambo" from Sambou, a common name for a second son in Islamic parts of west Africa. Most scholars estimate at least 15% of enslaved Africans brought to the United States were Muslims, so the presence of that faith would have been general, if largely invisible to public records.

Yet Washington, after a visit to Newport, RI in 1790 wrote back to the Touro Synagogue and the anxious Hebrew congregation there these words: "the Government of the United States…gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." And in closing reassurance, he says "May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy."

"To bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance" are words worth holding dear in the American 250th commemoration, as is Washington's love of Micah 4:4, which he cites some 50 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: for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it."


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he does not have a fig tree, but hopes a shady porch will do. Tell him how you are marking this America 250 year at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 2-27-2026

Faith Works 2-27-2026
Jeff Gill

Feeling part of a larger family in Licking County
___


60 years is a respectable run for almost any event, and I was caught by the reminder at The Dawes Arboretum of their Maple Syrup Day tradition.

Beman and Bertie Dawes began tapping maple trees in late winter of 1919 when they began what would become their family estate, Daweswood. Decades later, as The Dawes Arboretum, their son Beman Gates Dawes, Jr. would suggest to his fellow board members that they hold an old-fashioned "Maple Syrup Day" in February of 1966.

This caught my attention because my wife Joyce and I went out to Dawes in our first winter in Licking County, at the invitation of some active volunteers there who were active in our church at the time, as well as the legendary Al Cook, director of horticulture but also storyteller extraordinaire.

But in truth it was Marge and Jess Woolard, and Gerald Patton, who first told us we had to come out and learn about tapping trees for sap, as the days lengthened, the sun shone longer but nights still froze, all bringing up the sap from within the wood bearing the sweetness that would become, with great care and much effort, the maple syrup we all loved.

Our first must have been the 24th, and I dimly recall going back and helping for the 25th occasion of "Maple Syrup Day." Gerald loved to explain to kids about the passage of the sap in the tree, and through the spiles into the tube system they had started using instead of individual buckets, drawing multiple trees' worth of sap into barrels. The Woolards held court at the log cabin helping cook down the sap into syrup over an open fire in a vast iron kettle. The old evaporator used by the Dawes family was in a corner, no longer at work, but testimony along with a range of earthenware jugs of the mark left by Daweswood on the forest. Dawes maple syrup was a coveted gift: Beman and Bertie never sold any, and to be fair they had the Pure Oil Company to pay the bills. They just loved making maple syrup.

Today's Dawes Arboretum makes its own mark, teaching about trees, nature, and history. Part of that teaching is good stewardship, and part of that stewardship is… they don't tap arboretum trees for sap anymore. Well, just a few, gently, for teaching purposes. But tree tapping leaves scar tissue, and over time is not good for sugar maples, and an arboretum is about sustaining trees, not killing them.

But as I learned this, I also saw at this 60th anniversary old friends from Granville, Tom & Wendy Miller, whose maple sap was simmering on the fire in the familiar old kettle; syrup for tasting was from up by Utica. The Dawes family endeavor now covers the county.

And I will say that over thirty years ago after Joyce & I had been arboretum members & volunteers ourselves for a while, I wrote a piece for their newsletter about our new big backyard, 2000 acres worth. We lived in an apartment when we first came here, but Dawes gave us a piece of property we could get out into and explore and help manage. Later we'd be part of replanting the hedge lettering on the southern edge with new arborvitae spelling out "Dawes Arboretum."

Having met a few members of the Dawes family through the years, I know they stay connected to the former family homestead, and they've always made me feel welcome there. It's a working example of a faith concept common in Christian scripture, about "adoption." Becoming included in a family to which you were not born, but adopted into.

Families of faith, associations and organizations, all echo this idea. To be adopted, included, made welcome, in a place and as part of an effort that is ongoing. Including making maple syrup!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been adopted into a number of non-traditional families through the years. Tell him about how you've been adopted at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Notes from my Knapsack 2-26-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 2-26-2026
Jeff Gill

The triumphs and tragedies of Victoria Woodhull
___


Buckman and Roxanna Claflin are in the December 1853 property records of Licking County, buying and quickly selling the property on the north edge of Homer, along the North Fork, which they had long leased. Some historic accounts say they were in Mount Gilead by that year, or it could be an older daughter was living there (married to the Morrow County sheriff), and they were back and forth, ending up as residents there for certain by 1855.

We do know that in the fall of 1853 their 15 year old daughter Victoria, born here in Homer, was by that time married to 28 year old Dr. Canning Woodhull in Cuyahoga County, quickly moving from Cleveland to Chicago by the start of 1854. Things would not go well for them there, though they would have a son, Byron by the last day of the year; after sojourn across the country from New York State to California (which by the way was her middle name at birth), they would end up in New York City by April of 1861 where she would have their daughter, Zulu (later Zula), and at some point afterwards divorce back in Chicago.

This divorced and largely uneducated mother of two could easily have become just another story of the American west, struggling to get by during and after the Civil War. Instead, she will by 1870 have become one of the most remarkable characters in New York City, with her sister Tennessee the first women to hold seats on the New York Stock Exchange, publishers of a pioneering newspaper (first to publish in the US the English text of "The Communist Manifesto" among other things), leading suffragist to become the first woman to address a Congressional committee, the Judiciary Committee, on the record, and in 1872 a candidate for the presidency of the United States.

And the leading public speaker of her day, second only, perhaps, to Henry Ward Beecher, noted preacher across the East River in Brooklyn, whom Woodhull would accuse of adultery and worse days before the 1872 election. Her editorial would launch three years of hearings, testimony, lawsuits, and legal proceedings which would put Woodhull, not Beecher, in jail twice… and in a way lead to her departure for England in 1877, having divorced her second husband, Col. James Blood, the previous year.

Deeper scholars than I, including some in Granville under the auspices of the Robbins Hunter Museum, have tried to sort out the complicated records of the Claflin family, of which I've only located a few small parts on my own. But there is a through line in Victoria C. Woodhull's story I think worth re-telling, even if it takes a few installments to set the stage, a narrative which is all too relevant in 2026 as we watch hearings and testimony and legal proceedings play out over power, permission, sex and gender issues.

Why did Buck & Anna let their 14 year old daughter go out with, and soon after her 15th birthday marry, a man a decade and more older? The fact that he was a doctor (and he was by the standards of the era, if not a good one) doesn't justify it; if you think "well, in the 1850s?" you would be incorrect. Records before 1890 are notoriously spotty, but many historians have taken a shot at figuring out things like average age of first marriage for women & men, and in the 1850s it was around 19, edging up into the 1860s. 15 wasn't illegal, but it wasn't usual.

It is hard to read the fragmented narratives around Victoria's early life and not think money and security loomed large as rationales for this otherwise impossible situation, for her parents if not for her.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got two more installments planned, so here's hoping you're interested. Tell him if you are or are not at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 2-20-2026

Kelly --

I will need your help here for one last step! What follows is 802 words of body text in total, which is long. If you clip the first three paras, that brings me down by 137 words, to a perhaps more tolerable 665 words (not counting title and colophon). If you can run it all, do so with my blessing, but also if you just have to chop those first three paras. If I felt better and started sooner, I might find 150 words elsewhere, but as it is 2 pm, here ya go, and may your editorial discretion work well for both of us...
Pax, Jeff

+=+=+

Faith Works 2-20-2026
Jeff Gill

A preacher with a particular portfolio

___


There are times when it is tempting to do memorial tributes, and I've not done so. Hardly a week goes by when someone, somewhere, with a connection to the life of faith and to religious practice more generally, does not pass away, and so you can lapse into a near-obituary format.

Local figures of note, personal connections, and deaths in my own family: I've done some of each, I hope with judicious attention to how the loss is of even possible interest you, the reader.

Big names with major attention already paid don't tend to tempt me. Their eulogies are usually tended to sufficiently on platforms for everyone to hear or read or react to. But learning of the death at age 84 of Jesse Jackson made me remember, and reflect, knowing his legacy is… complicated.

Rev. Jesse Jackson was a pivotal figure in the Chicago of my youth. He came from the South, having been briefly at the University of Illinois as a football prospect; returning to North Carolina he found his footing, led protest marches against segregation, finished college, and married, then came back to Chicago Theological Seminary in 1964.

Soon he was leading students at this UCC seminary en masse to Selma, Alabama, and famously he never finished his M.Div. receiving a "D" in his last class: Preaching. His faculty mentor said later Jesse never turned in his written work, "he just preached."

From 1965 Jackson was a part of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s work through the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, his primary representative in Chicago; after King's assassination in April 1968, an act for which he was present, Jackson returned to Chicago and continued to open up the work he had begun under King's auspices and began to carve out his own path towards seeking justice.

That path was at times a rocky and controversial one. He made surprising alliances such as with Mayor Richard J. Daley, before famously not endorsing his son, Richard M., in 1989, in favor of a black third-party candidate. But by that time Jackson had run for president not once but twice himself, and had put himself forward as not just a leader for African Americans in the United States, but as an American leader in the world, negotiating for hostage releases in Syria and talking to foreign heads of state as a near-peer.

To say he was not popular in some circles is to say little, to say more requires an unpacking of the history of racism, let alone of race and politics. But in the fall of 1991 he was hinting at a third run for the presidency, and Bill Clinton was still the Arkansas governor who had spoken too long at the 1988 Democratic convention. Jackson had a shot.

And in that fall I was minister of a church in Fairmont, West Virginia. Jackson was scheduled to give a speech downtown on a Sunday morning, at 8:30 am, and our service wasn't until 10:30 so I decided to chance it, thinking I could always slip away if it started late or went long.

Unique in my political experience, such as it is, Rev. Jesse Jackson got to the podium at exactly 8:30, and finished as scheduled. It was a cold, grey, wet morning, in a town with its own vexed history around segregation; despite strong union support in a coal mining region, the crowd was expected to be small. It was not. Speaking from a platform near the corner of the courthouse, underneath the looming limestone of the business district, to people standing on the pavement growing damp from a steady drizzle, Jackson started soft, and slow.

His passion and his message grew and echoed in that open area, barely needing the amplification. Many in the crowd there were present more out of curiosity than support, as I was, but he gathered us up in his message about opportunity, and fairness, and justice… for all.

Rev. Jackson came to a logical end in his sermon, and concluded with all but a benediction, then left. There was another speech to give in Morgantown at 10 am.

We may not all have voted for him had he run, but he had our attention, and in a sense, our support. For what mistakes he may have made in his life, and they were real ones, I come back to that morning, and the power of his message, and how well he delivered it.

Jesse Jackson never pastored a church. He got a D in his preaching class. But he knew how to deliver a sermon. And telling the underprivileged and dispossessed to believe "I am somebody" is a message very close to the gospel. So Godspeed, Jesse. I'm glad to have heard you.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's heard a variety of good preachers in his life, some of them ministers. Tell him who has preached well in your hearing at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 2-13-2026

Faith Works 2-13-2026
Jeff Gill

A committee meeting that accomplished something
___


"Nothing useful is ever accomplished at a church committee meeting."

I was present when a ministerial colleague made that comment, and after the service, I had to work my way over to him and say while his general point was understandable, I had an exception to tell him about… and now you.

Yes, many committee meetings in church life can be tedious and confusing and not always get much actual work done. For some people it's a social activity and they can't go on too long, and in other cases it's more about tradition and authority than it is achieving agreement and sharing vision. But when groups of people need to plan and prepare for actual activities, you're going to have committee meetings.

There's a different reason, though, why I have a soft spot in my heart for church committee meetings, especially on this Valentine's Day eve.

45 years ago, in February of 1981, a young woman I knew slightly named Eunice Hanebutt found out I was a member of the Disciples of Christ religious tradition; she was on an ecumenical campus ministry team that was planning a service with a speaker from that tradition — in fact, he was the president of the seminary I would attend four years later, T.J. Liggett.

"If you would just come next week to the worship committee meeting and see if you'd consider being the liturgist for that service next month?" Euny asked. I thought about it — I had never attended this campus ministry at the time, going home for worship or DJ'ing at my dorm radio station on Sunday mornings. Then I said "sure, I'll come."

The precise date is lost to the mists of time, but it was a Thursday night at 7 pm, and so either Feb. 12 or 19. I arrived at the building, and found my way through the halls to the library which had a conference table in it, and the campus minister at the head near the door, with half a dozen people around it extending towards the window, with an open seat near the other end. Next to the choir director.

Now, I knew the choir director slightly: she had co-directed a mass choir between my men's dorm and her women's dorm in something called "U-Sing" which was a campus-wise competition each spring between residence hall choruses and the Greek system's entries. In rehearsals, she was clear and confident; I had moved pianos around at her direction in a basement rec room, and sung with some forty-nine other voices as she led us through our two numbers.

So I sat down next to her; we re-introduced ourselves to each other, and I'm told I made some kind of lame joke, which made her laugh. Yes, reader, I am now married to that woman. Joyce Meredith has heard my lame jokes now for 45 years, and still (often) laughs at them. I was the liturgist that March, and in April we both went together on a church bus trip to Chicago to wander together the Museum of Science and Industry on a Saturday, sharing a seat on our way home back to Purdue that evening. We've been a couple ever since, married almost 41 of them.

And I'm reminded, too, of a line from Charles Williams he wrote to his new friend C.S. Lewis as events brought them together: "My admiration for the staff work of the Omnipotence rises every day." Because in the course of human events, Eunice Hanebutt Hayes, after marrying Brian Hayes, ended up living in Newark, Ohio. We run into each other at different moments, and I know we both are aware of the staff work God is still supervising.

So Happy Valentine's Day to Eunice and Brian, to Joyce, and to any of you wondering if church committee meetings ever accomplish anything. Sometimes, I assure you, they do!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's often reminded of how God is in the oddest small details, along with the grand design. Tell him where you've run into this staff work at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Notes from my Knapsack 2-12-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 2-12-2026
Jeff Gill

Victoria Woodhull knew something about wealth and power
___


Victoria Claflin Woodhull has an Ohio historic marker in Homer, Ohio, where she was born in 1838. She has a cenotaph behind the high altar in Tewkesbury Abbey, not far from her final home in the west of England, a religious establishment she and her daughter supported generously.

But Victoria's will was clear that she would be cremated at her death in 1927, and those ashes would be scattered in the Atlantic, halfway between her adopted land and her home, where in 1872 she ran for President of the United States.

In reference to that combination of loyalties, it's interesting that she has a monument, albeit anonymously, on Parliament Square in London, just steps north of Westminster Abbey and in clear view to the east of Big Ben. Victoria Claflin Woodhull Martin, her third and final husband being a British banker of note, left Victoria a woman of wealth on his passing, a country home near Tewkesbury Abbey and a town house in London, where her parents lived with her near Hyde Park until their deaths. Buckman and Roxanna Claflin are buried in London, a city their daughter came to know well.

So when a plan came about to erect a statue of Lincoln to mark the century of peace between the U.S. and Great Britain since the War of 1812, a cast of a marvelous statue by Augustus Saint-Gaudens placed in Chicago's Lincoln Park was made available in 1914, but on arrival Parliament realized there were no funds to place it on an appropriate pedestal. After a brief controversy, the matter passed: because Victoria C.W. Martin stepped up and paid for it herself.

If you don't know that, you'd pass by unawares. And in fact, the only monument to Victoria Woodhull in this country (as she was most known as through her public career) is in Granville, on the side of the Robbins Hunter Museum, because Robby in 1973 decided this Licking County girl needed to be honored as we headed into the national Bicentennial of 1976, and he built the "V. Woodhull" clock tower over his west door.

I found myself thinking about what V. Woodhull would have to say about our current debates around J. Epstein. I suspect she'd say she was familiar with the type.

Because she was married off having barely reached the age of 15, to a 27 year old doctor who turned out to be a cad, a drunk, and a philanderer (and not much of a doctor). You might ask what her parents were thinking, letting 14 year old Victoria date a man in his mid-20s, and I certainly have. Buck & Roxy are in the county records in 1853 making a final real estate deal in Homer; many stories are told about them, and most aren't true. Which are, we still debate. But poverty likely played a role, just as it did for many of the families who let their daughters go "earn some money" at the Epstein compound. Roxy, for one thing, was illiterate, placing only "her mark" on the documents filed away in Newark. She and Buck had ten children, of which Victoria was the seventh; only six would survive to adulthood.

Victoria's history is vastly complicated by a two word slogan which opens up a wide range of debate and discussion: "Free love." In later life, certainly from 1871, her early reputation as a speaker, spirit medium, and suffragist was overwhelmed by the controversies invoked by her having raised the banner of "free love."

But what Victoria meant by "free love" was not necessarily how many people choose to interpret the phrase. We'll pick this question up next time.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he keeps finding new Victoria Woodhull documents even when he's not looking for them. Tell him what you've wondered about her at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 2-6-2026

Faith Works 2-6-2026
Jeff Gill

Your minister still isn't asking for gift cards
___


A quarter-century ago, when I was serving as parish minister in the Hebron area, I had the honor of hosting a guest speaker during the week from the Ohio Attorney General's office. Betty Montgomery held the position at the time, and I knew someone who knew her, and after some contacts were made, a person whose name sadly I do not recall came to speak to our community.

In 2001, the internet was still a' borning, few in our area used it, and e-commerce was still new. The problem then was door-to-door scams, and after a rough summer before, a few community leaders and I wanted to warn our folk in the spring, before so-called house painters and blacktop refinishers coming around made their inroads into the savings of senior citizens.

Now, I am one, and the internet is everywhere, including my lightbulbs and thermostats. Scams still come door-to-door at times, but we have them arriving in our in-boxes and notifications through devices in our pockets and purses. The scammers? They're a world away, but up close and personal in our business, spoofing or masquerading in digital form as clergy, leaders, even friends, and the one mercy is that they're still mostly asking for gift cards as a way of getting at your money. Even the least prepared know not to share a bank account number with a request online, let alone a pin number.

Gift cards, though: oh my.

So in Granville, on a Thursday at the end of the month, Centenary United Methodist Church is hosting at 10:00 am a speaker from the Ohio Attorney General's office, Danielle Murphy, to talk about "Scam Protection and Awareness." It's free and open to any and all, no reservations needed. Pastor Bob has dealt with a few waves of gift card requests in his name to church leaders and members, and this is his constructive step in response.

It is of no little interest to me that the problem doesn't go away, but it changes, and we have to, in the words of Jesus, "be wise as serpents, and innocent as doves." We in faith communities need to do the work of holiness in our areas, but with a wary eye to how sin can creep in and misuse our good intentions. That's what scammers take advantage of, the desire of people to be helpful.

If you think "I know better, I don't need to go" my suggestion is: come and see if you know as much as you think. The tactics keep changing, and the evildoers — that's what they are, wherever they are as they call and text — keep changing their strategies. We have to understand the tools and techniques in part because we can not only not get suckered, we can be alert to how we can help others.

So I plan to attend, and if you are available on a Thursday morning, this Feb. 26th at 10:00 am, I hope you might come as well to hear what the state's legal officers have to say. Betty is retired, and Dave Yost is in the job now; blacktop scams with buckets of used motor oil are less common (but still around), while it's our smartphone that can make us feel dumb. To keep doing the same good things requires some new approaches, and I hope our Attorney General's staff can help local churches and our community protect the vulnerable, and allow us to know how to communicate and share and give wisely.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's curious what scams will look like in 2051. Tell him how you stay connected at knapsack77@gmail.com.

Faith Works 1-30-2026

Faith Works 1-30-2026
Jeff Gill

Community warmth in a frigid landscape
___


It's worth a little review of how we got an Emergency Warming Center in Licking County.

This is the eighth winter season volunteers have put these together. That first winter, in January of 2019, it was a community response to a predicted -10 degree pair of nights in a "polar vortex" which actually reached an air temperature of -13. By March, six nights were operated between two churches, and we had at least 35 guests overnight between the locations when both were open.

Quickly, the churches & groups & programs involved worked to organize what had been an ad hoc effort. The first couple of winters the threshold for opening up was 0; the task force that organized the work as we shifted locations & tried to improve our coordination moved the threshold to an overnight low of 15, which only lasted two winters as that increased the number of nights we activated to just beyond our ability to staff the overnights. Since 2022 we've set our threshold at an anticipated 10 degree overnight low; the task force gives itself latitude for special circumstances, like extreme wind warnings on nights still above 10 degrees, or a series of nights where a night or two is below 10, one night bumps above, then back to subzero.

We have had four church locations host our program; Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on W. Main got involved early and has been the only location the last five winters. Changes in insurance carriers, denominational affiliation, and in one case closure, have all had an impact on where sites have been located.

This past week over 50 people sought refuge with this community effort (and a number of pets; pets have been welcome since the beginning of the warming centers here). A variety of circumstances bring unsheltered people to the Emergency Warming Center: a surprising number of guests are people who until recently had housing, have a plan for housing relatively soon, but are caught in between and are sleeping in vehicles until a new lease or arrangement is ready. A regular percentage of those the last few years have been senior citizens. A hotel for a few weeks is beyond the budget of many who are caught in the housing crunch.

This past week has been the longest period of continuous operation done by this effort, likely ten nights in a row all below 10 degrees. And there are likely to be more nights later this winter at that degree of cold.

Again & again, people ask me, what does the warming center effort need? And yes, there are practical issues we deal with, and some materials we have to go get, but the core need is for volunteers. Without at least some 26 people confirmed each night to assist, the center can't announce they're open.

The United Way of Licking County (UWLC) provides volunteer coordination for the Emergency Warming Center effort; if you go to their webpage, scroll to the EWC section (or you can volunteer for the daytime Drop-In Center, held in the same building, with a link on the same page) and sign up. You will get the volunteer emails, and can respond as you are able; signing up here does not automatically obligate you, it simply puts you in a place to know when & where you're needed. The last step is up to you.

Many thanks to the UWLC team, the meal support from Licking Memorial Hospital, and Licking County Transit's help, and the faith community at Holy Trinity along with many churches' volunteers. Training is mostly on-the-job; no one serves alone. And for the most part, you are needed to smile, stay present, and often say "I don't know, let's find out what the answer to that is." Someone on your shift has done this before.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he appreciates the many people who come together each winter to make this all happen. Tell him about your volunteer experiences at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.


Link I mentioned:
https://www.unitedwaylc.org/get-involved/

Notes from my Knapsack 1-29-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 1-29-2026
Jeff Gill

Sports and our body politic, active or not
___


Having the Winter Olympics start before the Super Bowl seems odd, but so does noting the latter is happening in February. Meanwhile, we're only two weeks and change away from pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training.

As sports guys go, I'm not much of one. I watch more than I should, less than most. I played some football, was manager for high school basketball (a nice short cut to get three varsity letters), but I've never been that athletic.

NFL rules about kickoffs today make sense, except I don't understand them; something about reducing injury which is quite creditable, but there's a "landing zone" which I could look up, but haven't. And when the ball goes where for extra points…

Even though I'm from Indiana, I'll admit to looking past basketball for the most part to baseball, which I played in youth league forms to no good end. My church league softball years are behind me, and probably always were. Designated hitters and infield fly rules, though, I don't get. I knew enough about obscure rules to be amused and prescient when they introduced a character named Tom Wambsgans in "Succession."

When we get into March Madness, which lapses into April before it ends, I'll likely have a bracket online somewhere. I have opened accounts at ESPN and CBS Sports and elsewhere; I probably won't find my user name and password making me do it all over again. Yeah, I pick my mascots as much as by my knowledge of the players or coaches (I do know where Gonzaga is located, which puts me ahead of some).

All these sports, and yet we're all getting out of shape, eating too much, and needing some kind of magic pill to lose weight. I'm sure wiser people than I have pointed out this irony, but here deep in the winter of 2026, it feels particularly sharp. We need to go bundle up and take a walk, not cocoon up and double our television time… but will I watch all the curling I can find, to be perfectly honest with you. It's soothing, pleasant, understandable even when I don't quite understand it.

Thwack. I just like how the rocks sound when they hit. Whooosh, plock, thwack.

All of which makes sports another form of passive entertainment, again not a unique thought on my part. What I wonder about is how we can turn this into something useful, beyond the usual "connect your TV to a treadmill" idea. Fans of pickle ball like to talk about how they're a fitness movement with a social benefit, and I salute them for how they're downright evangelical about their sport. The LCCC has a Pathfinders group that takes hikes a couple times each month in different locations. What I think we might benefit from is some kind of creative interweaving of, say, NCAA brackets and power walking, but I'm afraid we'd just end up with people striding down paths while looking at the Olympics app on their phones.

My own winter fitness routine tends to be walking while listening to podcasts on my ear buds, but my tendency is to political subjects, a sport of a different sort. It does keep the heart pumping these days; the politics, I mean. Audiobooks are an option for some; they don't work for me, but I hear plenty of good things from my spouse about them as an adjunct to exercise.

Walking isn't a sport, but it is activity. You can watch plenty of sports and not be active. My goal this year is to increase my activity, and that might require watching less sporting events. Odd, isn't it?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's trying to keep moving this winter. Tell him how you stay physically active at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 1-23-2026

Faith Works 1-23-2026
Jeff Gill

Faith, politics, and compromise in this America 250 year
___


We are celebrating as a country the semi-sesquicentennial of the Declaration of Independence this year.

1776 was the year, and during the summer a committee of five was called to work on a draft for the Continental Congress to declare their intentions towards Great Britain. Some few still hoped for reconciliation, Samuel Adams wanted a clear and clean break, but all wondered how a collection of colonies could justify their "separate and equal station" to the mother country, and independence from their King.

Of that committee, Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert Livingston of New York fade quickly into the background, not because of their lack of interest in the subject, but because of the press of other business the assembly had to deal with.

Thomas Jefferson of Virginia was quickly elected chair and chief drafter, some say at the strong encouragement of John Adams from Massachusetts, while Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania anchored the group with his notable wisdom, and relatively speaking, great age (I sigh to note the "elderly" Franklin was 70, which doesn't seem that old to me these days).

Obviously, they represented different parts of the emerging United States of America, and they also represented different perspectives, on politics and about faith.

Walter Isaacson has been speaking for years about the drafting process in June of 1776, and just released a book titled "The Greatest Sentence Ever Written," about the Declaration of Independence's key line, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

Jefferson's original draft had early on the phrase "we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable." Franklin, ever the pragmatist, suggested the truths they were describing were "self-evident," the result of reason and wisdom more than from revelation.

But the more religious Adams said after "all men are created equal," where Jefferson states "from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable" the Massachusetts Unitarian asked him to put instead "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

All of this talk of inherent & inalienable rights stems from a document almost a century old when the Declaration was being drafted in 1776. John Locke wrote "Two Treatises of Government" in 1689, in part to defend Great Britain's "Glorious Revolution" of the preceding year, where William and Mary ascend to the throne, deposing King James II (second son of the late King Charles I, who was executed in 1649, Great Britain having had a pretty tumultuous second half of the Seventeenth Century).

John Locke was a major influence on the Founders' generation, as he articulated views of how the social contract between the governed and the government should work, including the assertion that legitimate governments will always be "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" — a line which goes directly into the Declaration.

Locke's fundamental rights for every individual in a properly governed state in 1689 include "life, liberty, and estate" which becomes "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" in our 1776 telling of the tale.

Locke and the Founders argued for the essential starting point of free and equal persons under the law, whose roots could be found in Nature, and in Nature's God. Franklin eased back Jefferson's assertion's about the sacred, while Adams leaned into our Creator's endowment of creation, while Jefferson used Locke's formulas to describe how the consent of the governed brought this new nation closer to divine intentions.

In 2026, we weave history and theology and political philosophy into our more immediate understandings of how we vote, and what we expect of our elected officials. There may be compromise in our common work to those ends, which is not a concession when it brings clarity of purpose.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been looking forward to 2026 and America 250 for some time. Tell him your perspectives on history at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 1-16-2026

Faith Works 1-16-2026
Jeff Gill

A message for anyone & everyone to hear
___


Imagine we had a fellow going around door to door, talking fast and smiling large, claiming to be a cousin of Prince William who had a plausible if unlikely argument for why you needed to loan him a few hundred or thousands of dollars.

And that this hypothetical person had done this scam successfully not dozens, but hundreds of times, perhaps upwards of some thousands of fleecings, always getting away and never getting caught.

We'd be asking hard questions of law enforcement and the prosecutor's office, who would have done something (in all fairness) after just a few repetitions, but in the case I have in mind are still helpless to respond.

Because I'm talking about messaging or text or email scams, and the perpetrators are almost without exception in Russia or Myanmar or Nigeria and the like. Overseas criminals with a talent for electronic larceny.

We have pages for crime and legal matters, and this sort of thing has been covered by the Advocate and Dispatch before. What I'm most exercised about though is the way faith communities get targeted by these approaches. They're nauseatingly similar in all their forms, but if this is news to you, or at most a vague recollection, let me spell it out.

Somehow, these vile malefactors get ahold of email rosters, cellphone records, or just cull membership lists and are adept enough in online skills to correlate the names of a church's most active members to the correct phone numbers.

They then send emails or texts, but texts are most common, and the frightful characters are well up to speed on how to make the incoming message appear to be coming from a local phone number by area code and even exchange (email scams often can be caught by simply hovering your cursor over the name, and finding the address for what claims to be Spectrum or Amazon or CVS is suffixed "btzplk54.com" or the like).

What is truly vile to me is how they all say they're your minister. They play on your desire to help, to be of service, and use just the right whiff of urgency mixed with a smidgen of how they're busy doing good themselves, so if you could just…

Friends, let me speak as I rarely do for ALL my fellow faith community leaders, whether priests or parsons, rabbis or imams, evangelists or bishops: we are NEVER going to ask you to buy a gift card denominated hundreds of dollars, then scratch the foil off and take a picture and send it to us. NEVER. Not once. It ain't us. Period, end of report.

Then the impostor-criminal will often ask us to only get, say, $200 on the gift card, but then get three or four or eighteen of them. They know the amount which triggers the manager to come out, or loss prevention to step up to our frantic tapping on the kiosk. But never mind all that: texts asking you to buy gift cards and then photograph numbers off of them and send back? THOSE AREN'T US. I promise you. If you get a text asking for an emergency pound of ground coffee, maybe. But gift cards? IT IS A SCAM.

But a bright spot. I was recently near a person who said at a gathering they were in the middle of one such scamming-in-process. I was immediately aware (don't even whisper "gift cards" and "minister" within 50 yards of me), rudely intruded into the conversation, and here's the hope. These scams are industrial scale in size wherever they are being done. We called the person's credit card company, and the numbers hadn't been processed, and the transaction was blocked. Once they do, you can't get the money back, but they get backlogged. We moved just barely fast enough.

Better yet? Don't get sucked in. Your minister is not texting you for gift cards. Tell your friends.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's rethinking his opposition to the death penalty for this particular offense. Tell him about scams you've avoided at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Notes from my Knapsack 1-15-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 1-15-2026
Jeff Gill

America 250 in Ohio has much to celebrate
___


In 1976, President Gerald Ford oversaw a grand national celebration of our Bicentennial, the two hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

People then pointed out we had begun to act independently before the document was approved by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and long after Thomas Jefferson had left the country to represent us in France, the Constitutional Convention in 1787 really established our nation.

You could even get bogged down in John Adams writing down that July the Second would be the future celebration of national independence, after the bulk of signatories had put their, um, John Hancocks onto the formal declaration he had helped Jefferson and Ben Franklin to draft. But no matter.

July 4, 1776 has long been the day we celebrate as our nation's birthday. The centennial was an occasion all over the still not-quite coast to coast country; our 38th state, Colorado, came into the union in the middle of the year 1876, though after the Battle of the Little Big Horn in June. Licking County's new courthouse still has tall bold numbers on four sides to hearken back to the founding even as we celebrated the centennial that year.

And yes, I remember the bicentennial quite well. (Sigh.)

So we come to the Semiquincentennial, or Quarter Millennial observation, if you are willing to be that optimistic about our future. 250 just looks significant, and while I like to celebrate history all the time, in any quanta, a 250th feels right. Denison University has a 195th anniversary coming in December of 2026, and a bicentennial in 2031 I trust we'll mark in Granville.

The America 250-Ohio effort has been present and active in Licking County, and around the state, for some time; their executive director Todd Kleismit has been at various meetings in Granville to help encourage us to prepare for this year, and so we have. In the village, we've been working with the Licking County Historical Society on a 250 Passport project that Howard Long has put good work into, and he's been present as Billie Zimmers has helped chair our community efforts, which you'll hear about all year and then some.

The Newark Earthworks nearby got to be one of Ohio's earliest events around America 250 on January 2nd, and with the Granville Historical Society, I get to talk a bit about the interesting question of what was going on here 250 years ago, in the years directly leading up to 1776. Wyandot and Shawnee and Delaware indigenous people were here, and a few others you might not have expected, but I'll talk about that on Wednesday, Jan. 21st in the Granville Historical Society Museum at 115 E. Broadway. Please consider attending!

They will be distributing some of the materials our Granville group for America 250 have developed for this entire year, with special themes and programs each month, with January about "firsts" logically enough. In June, I get to offer some programs about our history with parks and preservation, and you'll hear more about that soon enough, along with all our other monthly themes in 2026.

Like the best history, it will be both fun and educational!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has a deep and wide love of history in many forms. Tell him what times past most interest you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 1-9-2026

Faith Works 1-9-2026
Jeff Gill

More questions than answers as a new year starts
___


January 9th is the 113th birthday of Richard Nixon; my brother Brian shares the date, if half the years with him.

Brian also often reads my columns to our mother, which gets complicated if I write about her and the living situation we're working with, so I find myself trying to put a signal in pretty early that this isn't one you want to be reading to her. Like this one.

Mom had been living with our sister Debbie for almost five years when one year ago we teamed up to move her into a memory care facility. It was a difficult decision, but a necessary one. We knew from the start that our mother was having cognitive issues after our father's death in 2020, and one of many things I've learned about the last few years is how the horizon between cognitive decline and outright dementia is a jagged and trackless landscape.

Over the last two years, I went from my father-in-law's last decline, which included a fair amount of visual and auditory hallucinations, to my mother's slide into mental hallucinations of facts that are demonstrably not so, but firmly held by her. Yes, the conventional wisdom is to agree at almost all costs, but some assertions are harder to agree with than others.

What's morbidly fascinating is how our mother's particular form of dementia is convincing. If you don't know her, she can still convince people she's still teaching classrooms full of children, under the direction of her father as school principal (my mother is 90, so do the math), and driving. Sadly, she's also convinced she can catch a bus or train right outside that door, the door over there, if you'll just hold it open one moment…

In some ways, I've been more ready to deal with the oddities of cognitive issues because of some forty years of pastoral ministry. I've had all the conversations, about whether someone should still drive, when you continue treatment, how to handle care provisions in various forms of insurance and benefits, Medicare or Medicaid. Yet it's different when you are dealing with your own parents, no matter how familiar.

And the fact of the matter is that many of these frameworks themselves have changed over the last few years. I knew enough over time to check in with trusted doctors and nurses about what "everyone knew" about how long you could stay in rehab, or what was covered by which; by the time I had to leave full-time ministry in 2020, some of those wise advisors were saying to me "I can't answer that, it changes so quickly now."

I've talked about pieces of all of this through the previous year, and I know it has a certain quality of repetition to it, but I wanted to walk through this to make the same point, especially to the many readers I know I have who attend worship services and look to ministers for answers about practical matters. It's not just them: none of us are entirely clear about how this all works. Hospitalization and rehabilitation and palliative care and hospice, insurance coverage and Medicare options and Medicaid involvement: it all changes so quickly now.

So what's the answer? First, leave assumptions go for the most part. Second, listen closely to what you're being told. Third, keep notes (in whatever form works for you, but a small notebook & pen are invaluable). Fourth: ask questions, ask questions, ask questions. And when caregivers or staff get impatient with your questions? Ask more.

This subject isn't going away, and not just because I'm in the middle of it myself. We all need to learn how to be people of faith working within often blind and unhearing systems. Clergy and church leaders don't have answers, but we can and must help ask questions.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; he's got questions, as you can tell. Tell him what your questions are at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow him @Knapsack on X.

Faith Works 1-2-2026

Faith Works 1-2-2026
Jeff Gill

What you've envisioned might be the problem
___


Well, here we are.

2026 is upon us, and if last year was any indication, it will come along quickly. Let's climb aboard.

There's a tricky maneuver I need to engage here: I'm about to quote a scene from a television program that I am not, in any way, shape, or form recommending you watch. Not from this platform, anyhow!

If you want profanity and violence and the occasional dash of adult content, there's plenty of it out there. And I'm not often thinking I need my entertainment, broadcast or streaming, to give me of it than the world already provides.

However. I ended up watching the opening a year or so ago of "Landman" with the always interesting Billy Bob Thornton, and it sucked me in good. Based on a podcast series I'd heard parts of called "Boomtown" it's set in Midland, Texas and it's about the oil business, and the economy, and family life in these United States in all its brokenness and possibility.

Anyhow, a ways into the first season, Thornton's character Tommy is getting back together, maybe, with his ex-wife Angela, who moves into the oil company rented home that already had some other staff living there, including Nate, a corporate lawyer, whose background appears a bit more buttoned up and middle class than the Norris family.

As part of this attempt at reconciliation, Angela makes a very fancy dinner for her husband, two adult children, plus Nate and Dale, another oil rig supervisor living in the house. No one gets home at the time she had announced, but finally everyone is assembled around the dining room table, and she launches into a prayer which, I have to admit, had me thinking "I need to use this in a column" pretty early on. It was sincere, heartfelt, and incredibly inappropriate as well as longer than a preacher's grace.

Just as I was thinking about that, Nate leans over to Dale and whispers "First time I've heard blasphemy in a prayer."

Look, Nate wasn't wrong. But I have to admit, my thinking was actually how Angie's self-absorption is less unusual than it seemed to Nate. She was being pretty upfront about it, but I have heard my share of at least self-centered blasphemy-lite in prayers before.

Which becomes clearer as the meal proceeds, as Angela displays increasing anxiety & frustration with the reality that things around the happy family table were not turning out the way she had envisioned. Before she has a complete meltdown, Tommy follows her out into the kitchen, and frankly does a remarkably good job of laying out for her that while she had a very clear picture in her mind how that dinner was supposed to go, they didn't all see the same vision.

The point being, not sharing the vision in every detail is not the same as disrespecting the person who holds it tight, even when it might feel that way. They liked her meal, they said so, and asked for seconds, which as Tommy points out is the highest praise Dale knows. They just kept calling it spaghetti and not "bolognese."

What Tommy was trying to tell her was she was being appreciated, but her vision was getting in the way. And — remember I am NOT suggesting you run out and watch "Landman" — what it made me think of was how prayers that are focused on our wishes, our desires, can get in the way of being in communication with God, which should be the actual point of prayer. How we want things to go can blind us to what God is already doing.

Which is not a bad thought for heading into Epiphany. Like the wise men, be ready to return home by another way. (You CAN look up that reference. Matthew 2.)


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he thinks about how all sorts of things can fit into columns & sermons. Tell him where you hear God nudging us at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Xwitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 1-1-2026

Notes from my Knapsack 1-1-2026
Jeff Gill

Welcome to a new year, he said grimly
___


My, my, my.

The first time I submit copy with the new year on it, things get real. It's usually a ways before the New Year's Eve celebrations, deadlines being what they are and all.

But 1-1-2026. Yikes.

Here's to a new year, and I say that knowing that like many of us, I really don't have that much to complain about, but like Joe Walsh famously said, "Sometime I still do." (You can look it up.)

My home is warm, my vehicle runs, my family is doing fine, all things considered. There are too many who have inadequate shelter or worse (hey, any are too many, but a few dozen at minimum in our area alone), and there are all sorts of ways life could be non-ideal, let alone worse. Worse is a relative thing, right?

I could get into details; I have friends and associates of long-standing who have lost loved ones in the 2025, had dire diagnoses and/or surgery from which they're still recovering, seen workplace issues snowball for some. None of that is my lot, and I'm at a point where I just don't feel superstitious about saying so.

Yet I admit to not looking forward to 2026 as much as I know I should. Not hunting for sympathy here; again, there are plenty who deserve it and need your direct and practical support.

2026 is the year of our nation's 250th anniversary of independence, and there's much to celebrate, no matter what your political orientation. I get to do some fun things as part of this year-long celebration. Wednesday, Jan. 21st, I will talk at the Granville Historical Society about our county in 1776, which is more interesting a time than you might realize, even if the evidence is scattered and piecemeal. In June, on the 17th and 20th, we celebrate our national history around parks and preserves, starting at Opera House Park in our historic center of Granville, and for those willing and able, a bit of mountain climbing. (Okay, a hike to Sugar Loaf…)

We have a full slate of events shaping up at the Octagon Earthworks just west of our village limits, and plans for more at the Munson Springs Preserve just inside of them. History, heritage, community, and I'm already looking forward to a return of the mile-long picnic at summer's end, let alone the usual Fourth of July that won't be too usual given the 250th.

I plan, God willing, to write more columns in 2026 about John Locke. Yeah, John Locke. Because Locke is there in the notes and edits and final draft of what Franklin and Adams and that Jefferson fellow wrote, which has become marked with July 4, 1776. Don't worry, I'll make it interesting, and there's no test. There's a whole range of history over our 250 years of independence to date that I plan to share with you, and I enjoy that.

So plenty to look forward to. Which is good, because there's a few things I worry about looking ahead. None of us are getting any younger, and some situations are just gonna get worse before they get better. Sound familiar? Yeah, I know.

Balance. That's the key. I'll keep looking for it in 2026, and I hope you'll join me in the search. Onwards!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not saying he's unbalanced, not exactly anyhow. Tell him how you keep your equilibrium at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 12-26-2025

Faith Works 12-26-2025
Jeff Gill

Summing up, looking ahead, holding to hope
___


One of the stock themes a columnist has to consider every December is the year-in-review piece.

It's a classic. You mull over what's been, recycle a few thoughts you've already expressed (hey, it's the end of the year, take a break), and voila, there's a column.

More risky is the predictions schtick for 2026. You can offer your most profound, or trivial ideas, or both, for what the new year has to bring. You can stick with evergreens ("Ohio State will make a strong run at the national championship…") or try for some revelatory insight ("…their sixth in pistol shooting!"); there's the global angle, which may not play well in central Ohio if you talk too much about geopolitical trends, or stick with local forecasts on getting a Culver's in Heath, that kind of thing.

Or you could wax profound about Intel, which no one really knows about for sure.

But this is "Faith Works," a column which is supposed to engage the eyes and minds of those interested in religion, whether of an organized sort or not. And too many of us rise up to say about our own religious heritage "organized religion it ain't!"

Ryan Burge, the noted scholar and analyst about religious trends, has a new book coming out in January titled "The Vanishing Church." I don't have a review copy, but I subscribe to his Substack, and can tell not only that I'm sure to read it, but it's basically about a subject near to my heart as a fellow pastor: Ryan expresses some concern about the erosion if not outright disappearance in many places of small to medium sized churches with moderate views on faith, life, and politics.

If you've been reading me a while, you know I come back to this subject often. My own experience is that of a moderate, and I've pastored small and medium sized churches. Mega I ain't. (Okay, I'm tall, but like Dick Van Dyke, I'm not as tall as I once was.)

I may focus too much on that space, but I think it's still the heart of American religious experience, and Ryan Burge looks to be saying much the same. As I keep trying to point out, the logic of "big contemporary churches are growing and smaller traditional ones are dying" being a causal relationship has some holes in it. We are adding big box type non-denominational worship centers, but the net percentage almost anywhere, including our corner in the center of Ohio, attending worship any given weekend is down, drastically.

In this new year, I will be talking about this subject, and not just to review Ryan's new book. Traditional worship is definitely declining in absolute numbers, even if there are individual bright spots; contemporary services are growing, but they are not only catching fewer in sum than faith communities are losing, they are tending to shuffle the sheep. I grant that approach gets more unchurched people in the doors than hymnals and choirs, but they aren't getting many of them. The Nones are continuing to grow.

My atheist friends say "this is a healthy sign, Jeff, of rationality and free choices." I will continue to look closely at that answer, I pray with a fair and open mind, but looking around me, I wouldn't say our culture is getting healthier. So it's complicated, you know?

But I pray I have something to say in 2026 that's worth your time to read, and consider. Happy new year, one and all!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's never been good at forecasting. Tell him what you expect in 2026 at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.