Re: earthworks column

Newark Earthworks column for the Newark Advocate – Summer 2023

Jeff Gill

 

Pieces adding up to a whole

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There's a piece, or pieces of an ancient mechanism that's back in the news recently, thanks to that fictional archaeologist Dr. Henry Jones, Jr..

 

His so-called "Dial of Destiny" is loosely in some ways and very closely in others based on an actual find of the last century in the Aegean Sea, opposite the island of Kythera, or Antikythera as they called it.

 

Something over two thousand years ago, a mysterious Greek workshop created an amazing bronze mechanism, about the size of a hat box, with gears and a crank. You could set the device to your current date, or any future (or former) date, and see on the analog display where the planets were, when the next Olympic or Pythian games would be held, and even calculate when eclipses would occur, along with the more everyday (or every year) events of solstices and equinoxes, and the phases of the moon.

 

The Antikythera Mechanism is the name of this object, discovered in dives on a Greek shipwreck that was carrying treasure and attractions to Rome for a parade to honor Julius Caesar. The statuary was the main attraction, and the corroded pieces of bronze gears were considered an anomaly until their possible practical uses were considered in just the last few decades. Once looked at closely, these linked gears constitute a device of which a lead scientist said "This device is extraordinary . . . The astronomy is exactly right . . . in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa."

 

It did not point one to fissures in the space-time continuum; its reality as a means to understand what was known long ago is to me even more interesting, and a time machine in its own right.

 

Built about the same time as the Antikythera Mechanism, and only truly appreciated about the same time as scholars realized what that gadget was really good for, was the geometric complex of earthen enclosures we call the Newark Earthworks. And in many ways, they are two means to the same end.

 

Not small and compact and metallic, but encompassing over four square miles and made of basket loads of earth, the earthen geometry was doing for observers in ancient Ohio much the same sort of calculation and prediction and recorded observation they were doing at that time in Greece. With better metallurgy and some inscriptions, the Antikythera Mechanism could be carried in a knapsack, or on a boat. The Newark Earthworks aren't portable: you had to come to them, make a pilgrimage of sorts, in order to work the "mechanism" and monitor the places now and upcoming of the sun, the moon, and perhaps other astronomical phenomena as well.

 

One other interesting parallel: the Antikythera Mechanism is today in about seven fused chunks, two of them big. We don't have all of it, and those gaps are a challenge to fully understanding what it was for, and how it was used. Likewise, the Newark Earthworks is no longer intact, and while we know mostly the two big pieces (Great Circle & Octagon), there are small bits and chunks which help us understand the whole all the better.

 

My landscape tours, one of which will happen again in October, are a chance to take people around to see how there are "gears" and fragments of the whole complex still hiding in plain sight along the streets and alleys of Newark. No fissures in time, other than the imagination that takes us back to when they were built here two thousand years ago.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he leads tours as a volunteer with the Newark Earthworks Center at Ohio State Newark and for the Ohio History Connection, and is a World Heritage Ambassador.

 

Faith Works 7-21-23

Faith Works 7-21-23
Jeff Gill

Klans, concerns, and lasting questions
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Back in February & March I wrote a series of columns marking the hundred years since Ku Klux Klan activities in Licking County and Ohio made the front pages of papers like the Advocate.

I tried to set the stage by noting two things: clearly the size of some of the public events and mass rallies meant the Klan had been quietly working for some time, so January 1923 is kind of an arbitrary date, and the Klan of the 1920s was different in some very confusing ways from the post-Civil War Klan in the South during Reconstruction, and the Klan some of us remember in resurgence responding to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s & 1960s.

Historians refer to the "second era" of the Klan, which I think is accurate, in the sense that it was a very distinct sort of movement from the Klans which arose, or lurked, before and after the period of Klan activity in the 1920s. Nathan Bedford Forrest led a Klan in the 1860s & 70s which was a resistance movement, rooted in terror and assault and murder, against giving civil rights to people formerly enslaved, and Confederate officers led the group in a secretive, underground organization. The anti-Civil Rights Klan of the 1950s & 60s was a more decentralized movement, also highly secretive, also deeply invested in both psychological and physical terror, along with murder on many occasions.

The 1920s Klan was, well, more public. Yes, they wore hoods, which their literature called "helmets" and on some occasions they would hear the order "visors up" and the face of the hood might be pulled aside for parades. Their surprise appearances in church services were almost always fully masked, but there were times the Klan would strategically unmask to show off their support. Either way, they loved public events and staged their cross burnings with theatrical care.

And they ran for office. Which is where this ongoing centennial is going, and why I continue to think there are relevant issues for us in 2023 about what we said to ourselves and others about this community in that perhaps not so long ago era.

Rallies and parades and programs and statewide gatherings called, inevitably, Klonklaves, were aimed at building up membership and support towards political control of communities. Ohio and Indiana were arguably the core of this second Klan; the headquarters nationally were in Atlanta, but the Midwest Klan had the biggest numbers and the state organizations reported in the early 1920s to Indianapolis, and the Grand Dragon there, D.C. Stephenson.

After my earlier series ran, in April a book was published by noted journalist and author, Timothy Egan, titled "A Fever in the Heartland." For the Midwestern context of the second Klan, there's no better single read to get your head around the reality that, as Stephenson said before his fall in 1925, "I am the law." The Klan, Egan notes, owned the state, and Stephenson owned the Klan. He's talking about Indiana, but Ohio was in his hip pocket.

In the fall of 1923, the Indiana governorship was contested between Republican and Democratic candidates, but both were Klan endorsed: Stephenson couldn't lose. In a number of other states, Klan endorsed candidates won; in Ohio, the Klan choice for governor failed, but in dozens of cities and counties their slate won, including Newark and Licking County.

Having a rally for the state Klan, a Klonklave, at Buckeye Lake, with as many as 75,000 Klan members in attendance that July of 1923, certainly helped ensure the outcome three months later at the ballot box.

To what end? That's what I will come back to next week.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been hearing stories about the Midwest 1920s Klan his whole life, and is still trying to make sense of them. Tell him what you've heard at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 7-20-23

Notes from my Knapsack 7-20-23
Jeff Gill

A pause that refreshes in more ways than one
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If you get a chance to take a walk, and it's further than your mailbox, there's something I'd love to invite you to do.

It only really works in the late spring through early fall, five months at most, but right now it's an opportunity waiting for you.

This is a practice that requires just two things: a path that gets you away from homes and traffic, ideally into the edge of a forest or creekside (but a grassy meadow will work, just not a mown lawn), and a place to sit.

You can sit cross-legged on the ground if you're comfortable with that, a log or stump if one's handy, and you can carry a bag chair of one sort or another if that's best.

Here's what I'd love for you to get the chance to experience. Walk your path into a quiet grove, or down alongside the stream bank. Find your place to sit, and do so.

For the rest of this experience, you only have to do one thing, which is I admit very difficult. Just sit still.

Supposedly Pascal said "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." If it's hard for most of us to do this indoors, outside requires even a bit more of us. You need to keep your swatting at bugs or moving about to a minimum. Yet if you can, your stillness will be met with some new activity around you.

You may not notice it on a trail walk, but nature takes notice of you, and bird song and animal life changes as you pass. And normally, you two-legs person you, you pass on by. If you stop, and sit still, they slowly begin to go back to their business.

First, listen to the birds. You will notice the songs change. That's because they aren't letting each other know on down the line "trouble's coming." As you sit, they go back to chat about . . . whatever birds chat about. Food, weather, the birds and the bees?

Then you might even see some birds start to hop and glide past your position, where you're being still and unthreatening. They perch closer, or fly nearer. The bugs? You may have some that are persistent whether you're moving or not, but some now will be visible you hadn't noticed, dragonflies and butterflies and glossy green beetles. If one lands on you, stay calm.

Sit long enough, and you might hear the chatter of squirrels and chipmunks change. One might skitter past you; other movement in the undergrowth nearby can turn into a groundhog dragging some bedding back to their hole. Shuffle a foot in changing position, they scatter again; wait long enough, and they go back to their usual occupations.

You may think you know a stretch of woods, but you don't know it until you've sat very still in it for fifteen minutes or so. And then you start to realize how little you know about all that's going on around you.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes to sit by creeks when he can. Tell him what catches your attention when you sit still at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 7-14-23

Faith Works 7-14-23
Jeff Gill

Thinking about the unthinkable, unimaginably
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Jeff Goldblum played Dr. Ian Malcolm in "Jurassic Park," a theorist of science and philosophy who gets invited to the ill-fated soft opening of a theme park filled with dinosaurs, and says to the over-optimistic impresario of the facility: "Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."

There's a level of metaphor I'd argue running through the whole "Jurassic" franchise about the role and use of nuclear technology, specifically weapons. If you find that a bit of a stretch, go back and watch that first one. On the side of one of the control room computer terminals is a classic photograph of J. Robert Oppenheimer, pipe in hand, formulas on a chalkboard behind him, gazing almost too calmly at the viewer.

On Sunday, July 16, we mark 78 years since the Trinity test in the deserts of New Mexico. What Oppenheimer and his team of Los Alamos scientists put together as the first atomic bomb went off hundreds of miles to the south, but the light visible even on that northerly mesa for those not on the scene in the south. Top secret to the rest of the world, but much debated among the nuclear scientists rushed into seclusion and work as the world war raged: what are we doing? Is it right? The fictional Dr. Malcolm challenges Jurassic Park's designers, "your scientists were so preoccupied… they didn't stop to think." Not so for Oppenheimer.

That's what makes the human and technological drama of the Manhattan Project so compelling. In fact, they did stop to think a great deal about whether they should. It tormented all of them to varying degrees. There's a movie coming out later this month which centers on Oppenheimer, brings in the Los Alamos community, and sweeps through American society and government into the 1950s, asking again "should we?"

Except of course we did. Convinced by threats from Nazi Germany & the Japanese Empire that it was an existential necessity, they decided to complete the work. After Trinity, two were used on Japan to end the war. A few key spies made sure enough details got to Soviet Russia that the USSR was able to set off their own effective replica atom bomb four years later. From 1949, the Cold War was off with a vengeance, and we live still with the reality of hundreds of nuclear weapons, and decisions to made about their use.

Oppenheimer later recounted how at the Trinity site, on seeing the first atom bomb go off, "we knew the world would not be the same; a few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent." And he recalled a line from Hindu scripture, where Vishnu says "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." His personal faith was obscure, inscrutable in many ways, but he thought deeply about the larger implications of the science he was engaged in. The name of the Trinity site he took from a poem by John Donne, and he requested at his funeral George Herbert's "The Collar."

Christian or any other religion, there are ultimate questions for the individual, and then there are individual questions with implications for our families, our communities, our nations, and today it can be said without exaggeration, for our world. Are we being Oppenheimers as we decide how to use resources, purchase goods and services, simply to interact in our technologically complex world?

And what if we are wrong, for all our well-intended thinking? I will be curious to see how this movie deals with that inevitable question.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has often thought about what Oppenheimer was thinking. Tell him your thoughts as you like at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 7-7-23

Faith Works 7-7-23
Jeff Gill

Things they never told you
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"They never taught me that in school!"

It's a common enough refrain. Certain events, grim or ghastly, discreditable or discriminatory, you hear about as an adult and think "they didn't cover that in U.S. History class."

This comes up in discussion about media, including the paper you're reading whether online or in print as a paper paper: why wasn't such and such an event or program or celebration in the coverage? Is it just bad news that gets ink or pixels?

And church life has its own version of the problem. I was recently at an educational talk for ministers where someone said "the problem is people don't hear about that in their congregations."

So who is keeping the good stuff away from us? Which gatekeepers are controlling the flow of information? Why don't we hear it all, straight up?

This is where I'd be tempted to put a picture of someone drinking, or trying to, from a firehouse. You know the old saying. You can't. The force of the flow means you just can't get your sip of water from the foamy blast (plus risking having your lip ripped off). You want a drink of water, find a fountain or squirt bottle.

In reality, all education or news coverage or preaching and teaching in faith communities requires someone make some decisions about what gets covered in what order over which period of time. Call them teachers or administrators, editors or publishers, parsons or bishops or seminary teachers, but they all have to make choices, and to make choices includes what to not cover.

The word "decision" comes from a Latin root, "de-cisio" which is related to our word scissors. It means to decide is to cut off. Making a choice to do one thing always and necessarily means to not do other things. Decisions about teaching and training and narrative, even in a sermon, means as much work around what you won't get around to saying as it does to decide what to emphasize.

For a number of years, I taught at a small university the intro to American history course. Like most at the time, it was in the catalog as "From Columbus to Reconstruction." I struggled every semester I taught with both ends. To start American history without dealing with the Native American context that is most emphatically in place before 1492 is to miss out of sources of our Articles of Confederation and ultimately the U.S. Constitution (you can look it up!), and share in the injustice of describing North America as "wilderness" when the first colonists arrive, which is simply and sadly not true.

At the other end, I love to teach Civil War history, and I could spend a week of class time just on Antietam and Gettysburg. The period after Appomattox, from 1865 to 1877, usually got the short end of an already very short stick. But class after class I wrested time out of earlier portions (each edit I pang in my historical heart) to make sure I gave due credit to the significance of Reconstruction, and today I wish I'd done even more.

Preaching? How do you discern what to cover when you know you have a constant influx of new believers who still don't know Galatians from Genesis, Junia from Jonah, immersion from intinction? You are constantly teaching an intro class even as you try to encourage and inspire long time members who know their Bible.

Choosing what to include always includes hard choices about what to cut out. Otherwise, you never get around to teaching or preaching or communicating anything in particular.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he'd preach longer if he could. Tell him where something could be cut at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 7-6-23

Notes from my Knapsack 7-6-23
Jeff Gill

While the days are still long
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While I've not shied away from personal statements here in this space, I want to make a particularly personal plea. Or a number of them.

Yes, we've passed the summer solstice, and since June 24 days are getting shorter, first in seconds, then by minutes per day, to the shortest of all come December 21. Then from Christmas the days begin to lengthen again.

For now, though, the days are long. The sun rises around 6 am, our evenings still stretch with dusk past 9 pm. There are things we can do.

Friends, please, if you can at all, go take a walk. This is not a command to exercise, or a warning of losing muscle tone, though those all have their place. I'm just saying you need the air of the outdoors, the light of the sun (sure, hats, sunscreen, caution in exposure, but still…), the song of the birds. Please, take a walk. When it gets dark earlier, when the cold winds blow perhaps a bit too chill, you won't want to as much and I'll feel guilty about pushing you out the door. So do it now, please.

If you say "I'm not up to miles cross country" have no fear. Backpacking is a wonderful thing, but I've not done it for too long myself. This isn't about setting records. If you can walk around the block, but no more, do that. You're giving yourself a gift. Just to the mailbox and back? Good on you. Pause at the curb, breath it in, and back inside if you must.

And drink some water. Yes, hydration. No, not eight glasses or ninety-two liters or whatever the latest health craze is. Just drink some water instead of a bottle or can or jug of whatever. It's amazing, water is. I do put some lemon juice in my big bottle I take on the road, so I get wanting some flavor. But just consume a bit more water than you do now. Yes, you.

Finally, if you have someone you want to thank, or even more crucially, someone you have a grudge against, say something now. Maybe it has to be to a third party. But I'm in the middle too often of the sad situation of how a grudge can be one of the last things that leaves a failing mind. Sort it out, now, while you can both reason and perhaps be reasoned with. Do not wait.

Nor should you wait for that thank you; I am blessed to have been able to attend some special 90 and 95 birthdays and 40 or 50 and even 75th anniversaries. This summer, I'm missing the retirement celebrations for a number of friends and associates I'd really like to be present for, but pen and paper will have to do. And I have the memory of a thank you or two that I waited too long for, and now have to aim them at heaven for delivery.

One last such: Monsignor Paul Enke is retiring from Saint Edward the Confessor Catholic Church, and while I'm not one of his flock, I've been proud to count him as a colleague in ministry. He has built much in Granville, and I don't mean in architecture alone, but in human hearts turned towards heaven. Bless you, Paul, and thank you!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's thinking about simple gifts and small wonders these days. Tell him what you're thinking at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-30-23

Faith Works 6-30-23
Jeff Gill

Traditional values and Biblical lifestyles
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In Christian circles this summer we've been dealing with open splits and angry divisions both within church bodies and in a more ongoing sense between religious traditions. Many of the disputes have been framed as liberal perspectives versus conservative traditions, and the Southern Baptist Convention tension around women in leadership, or the United Methodist Church divisions over LGBT affirmation, have been intensified by political overtones.

I'll be honest. Both politically and theologically I'm a homeless moderate. A friend online suggested once there should be a "Homeless Moderate Party." That opens up the question whether such a movement would fill a stadium, a conference room, or a phone booth (old man, what's a phone booth?). It's an interesting question, and one I can't answer other than to say I run into a fair number of HMP sympathizers. But that could be observer bias.

What I can say is that I have tried in my stewardship of this space, aimed at a general audience as has been my editorial mandate since the beginning of this column, and in truth during my time as a parish minister in multiple church settings, to advocate something rather old fashioned, even traditional. I would speak up in favor of chastity, fidelity, and continence.

Chastity in that one should be chaste, which can be read in a number of ways. It has an association with purity, and there's a socio-political overtone that gives it an awkward ring today, but I'd like to restore it. Chastity simply means restraint, a simpler view of how one expresses oneself, emotionally or intimately.

Fidelity as in you keep your promises. Do people break promises? Between pastoral ministry and work in the court system, I'm pretty well aware of how common that is. But you try with all your might to let your yes be yes, your no be no, and your word is your bond. Trusting grace to carry you through the times you fail, and work to restore trust in your fidelity. But fidelity doesn't stop being a value when it is broken. Call it an aspiration worth fulfilling as much as you can.

Continence has all sorts of complicated associations in the modern era, not the least being better known in relation to incontinence. Perhaps it's too archaic; like fornication, auto-complete and spell check are momentarily baffled by those two words on some platforms. Again, I'd like to renew and restore continence as a value worth affirming: it means self-discipline in all things, not being seized by impulse or compulsion, but knowing the right time or place to speak or act. There is perhaps a reason why the word now is only used about a very narrow aspect of bodily life. We are too used to incontinence as a norm in how we say what we think or feel in the moment the thought occurs. To stop and wait for a better moment is not what society teaches, but it might be a good idea all the same.

I'm interested in how we as people of faith can best affirm what I would call Biblical values: chastity, fidelity, and continence. Really, there's nothing moderate in speaking up for those values, and they challenge all of us, single or married, female or male, LGBT affirming or traditionally oriented.

Gospel means good news, and my faith says that good news is the proclamation of God's love for each and all, made known in Christ Jesus. I believe chastity, fidelity, and continence are tools that make us better able to share that gospel in a world that needs hope and healing.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he trusts in grace for many things, including from his readers. Tell him what you can't forgive at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-23-23

Faith Works 6-23-23
Jeff Gill

Churches and culture in times of change
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Any attempt to make general statements that include church bodies like the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the United Methodist Church (UMC), and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (DoC), let alone adding a few more, is probably a fool's errand.

That's what you come here for, right? Okay, all kidding aside…

I've asked you to think and theologize along with me about the stresses and splits going on within some major Christian traditions in the last year, and I teach history and polity for my own tradition, which had a major split in 1968 which is both not over for us, and started long before that year. So there are aspects of church division in the US I see through certain lenses.

One factor is that there's a common story in the history of groups like the SBC, UMC, and my own DoC. They all came about more as a rural, and frankly poorer body, demographically, than the earliest Christian groups that dominate the colonial history of the US. Presbyterians and Anglicans, who become Episcopalians after the Revolution, are usually the more established, literally and figuratively, Christian traditions, with Congregationalists in New England, now the United Church of Christ (UCC) having an actual state sponsored or "established" role. Baptists began in American history as Congregationalist heretics; the DoC were apostate Presbyterians; Methodism is a revival movement from within then breaking from the Anglican church.

These rural rebels went their own way, but grew fastest and furthest on the frontier, the SBC into the Deep South and then due west into Texas, the UMC with circuit riders into all the gaps on the map between county seats, and the so-called "Disciples crescent" marks the highwater mark of this movement following their western Pennsylvania and Ohio and Kentucky beginnings across the Midwest and curving down into Missouri and Oklahoma and into north Texas, founding Texas Christian University among other institutions in their heyday.

What this all means, in brief for this installment, is that these movements were both countercultural on one level, but deeply aspirational, culturally, in others. We all were outsiders struggling to build farms and workshops and stature, culturally; class aspiration was a huge part of the history of each of these movements in ways Presbyterian or Episcopal church members never had to worry about. Work hard, do well, behave properly, move up.

Which has, I would argue, come back to bite us, after we so closely tied ourselves to the culture around us as the Civil War ended, and through three more martial eras of American life, Spanish-American and World Wars I & II.

As has been exhaustively discussed in many other venues, the "mainline" Protestant churches which for a long time held a hugely disproportional role in leading American culture have dropped far back in cultural significance. What I think that facile analysis misses is that in fact those Christian communions never really "controlled" the main flow of American culture, but they did intersect for a few generations. Somewhere in the wake of "The Ten Commandments" (1956) & "King of Kings" (1961) as mainstream Hollywood products, the culture shifted. We can debate how or why all day, but they did. It's usually shorthanded as "The Sixties."

Many churches had effectively handed their Christian formation over to the culture, because the culture of the country and of their church were seen as roughly the same. When the national culture changed, many churches tried to grab at the steering wheel, and at varying points realized "we don't drive this bus anymore, do we?"

To which many Christian bodies had different reactions, including those we're seeing play out this summer. I'll have one more installment of this series next week.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's seen a split or two play out, never in a good way. Tell him your experiences with division and separation at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-16-23

Faith Works 6-16-23
Jeff Gill

Methodists and Baptists and Disciples, oh my
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My second big church fight (you do not even want to hear about my first) was in the 1970s, when I was a sort of ministry intern at my home Disciples of Christ church for the summer, and we were putting together a directory. I was the stalking horse, as it were, for a question a number of church leaders had been asking.

If you're 60 or older you'll nod, I think; if you're much younger you may not believe it. But the battle was over women's names. Apparently a few years earlier the step had been taken, but not without controversy, to go from Mr. & Mrs. John Smith, to Mr. & Mrs. John Smith (Jane). A great many older women, mostly widows, were listed as Mrs. John Smith, period, and they wanted to keep it that way.

The goal was to list everyone with their own name, with couples as Mr. & Mrs. John and Jane Smith. The result was chaos. A faction wanted to go back to Mr. & Mrs. John Smith let alone adding (Jane), and a few wanted to put all names in on separate lines: Mr. John Smith, Mrs. Jane Smith, etc.

I smiled one day and asked "what about using Ms. for adult single women?" It was not a smile I got in return. It would not be until 1983 that women would be allowed to serve as elders in that congregation.

Southern Baptists are in conflict this June at their annual meeting over women in leadership; the interesting thing to me is that while some frame this as a test of ancient tested principles, in 1960s there were as many women in Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) seminaries as there were in mainline Protestant seminaries.

It wasn't until 1984 the SBC passed a resolution asserting "women are not in public worship to assume a role of authority over men." In 1998 an official teaching passed saying a woman should "submit herself graciously" to her husband's leadership, as "the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ."

And then in 2000, SBC teaching was amended to say "the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."

Some will argue the new statements were because among 47,000 SBC churches, there had been by that point just a few hundred that had women serving in a pastor's role, so the issue had not been a public problem before. The rule was understood, and unstated; now it needs to be stated. I'd qualify that by noting there are many hundreds more women in the SBC serving as youth pastors or women's pastor positions. But the import seems to be when it was a .5% occurrence it was okay, but if it looks like it's heading towards 2%, it must be stopped.

As I've said in this space before, I'm the result of the powerful witness and work of women in pulpit ministry. I won't recount the whole story, but for me to agree that women shouldn't preach or be parish ministers would be to erase my own faith history. Rick Warren, the SBC minister in the middle of this debate, is using many such stories out of his tradition to make a similar point: when there weren't too many of them, we didn't really care. It was only when enough women came into those roles there was pressure to put up hard barriers across the board.

What Southern Baptists and United Methodists and my own Disciples have been dealing with are complex issues with common roots. I'll try to get to some of those in my next column.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's thankful for Rev. Myrtle Park Storm, ordained in 1908 to preach the gospel, who baptized his mother & married his parents. Tell him who indirectly shaped your faith at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 6-22-23

Notes from my Knapsack 6-22-23
Jeff Gill

Just another Granville Fourth of July
___

It's coming again, the Fourth of July. The day we celebrate the birth of the United States of America, from the formalization of our Declaration of Independence in 1776.

We do well to note as we celebrate that birthdate that in fact we didn't have it all figured out at the start. It took until 1787 for us to cook up a Constitution; we had Articles of Confederation but they didn't get the job done. A committee on canals and waterways at Annapolis exceeded their brief and went on to Philadelphia, and we can all be thankful they did.

Yet they didn't get the job fully done, either. Who was included in "all men are created equal" wasn't sorted out for many years, let alone both men and women. Declaring our independence was a first step, and even once they had organized us "in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty," the Constitution required amendments, and we're likely not done with those.

What we celebrate is the idea of America. In the same year Denison University was established in the still rough settlement of Granville, Ohio, back on the Atlantic coast in Boston a Baptist minister named Samuel Francis Smith wrote in 1831: "My country, 'tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty, Of thee I sing…"

Those words were meant to displace the lyrics of "God Save the King." Keep in mind it was just eighteen years since Great Britain had burned the White House and Capitol building, and shot up Navy ships in Boston harbor. Loyalists had slowly come back to Massachusetts but there were still hard feelings with the old school Patriots, and patriotism needed reinforcement, or so Rev. Smith believed.

"I love thy rocks and rills," we sing with him, the very fabric of the country from stony shorelines to inland ridges, even to "Thy woods and templed hills," the prominences of our natural skyline all the worship architecture we need, to compliment simple American meetinghouses in the valleys below.

"My heart with rapture thrills," sounds very 1831, but it's a level of enthusiasm we might want to carry forward from that era. Denison's alma mater still sings about their school "The name that sets our souls on fire/ And makes our senses thrill."

We can be very modern and cynical and dispassionate, but I would submit there's something to letting our hearts thrill with rapture over the ideals of freedom and equality our nation was established to advance. Have we always made the most of those initial promises? Is there a ways yet to go? Certainly. No fair analysis can dispute either challenge.

Yet for all the drama and pageantry of the recent coronation, God save King Charles, but God send he not rule over me or mine. We left that behind, or at least for the tabloids to cover. We pledge allegiance to an aspirational symbol with stars of a new constellation and stripes of thirteen colonies willing to launch that experiment in liberty, not to a person born of a particular royal lineage.

I welcome a time and a community festival to celebrating my country, which is for me, a sweet land of liberty, and may yet be for many more, and would sing with deep emotion, rapturously or in rap or musically however, that I am thankful the experiment continues.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has a special relationship with the Granville Fourth of July parade. Tell him what makes you rapturous at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-10-23

Faith Works 6-10-23
Jeff Gill

Getting specific about challenging things
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Over the last decade I've been asked if I have anything to say about the challenges facing the United Methodist Church, both asking me personally and also often hoping I might offer some thoughts in this column. Long-time readers will know I've basically avoided the issue like the plague.

That's on me, and as with many things in my life I'm trusting in the grace of Jesus for all the mistakes I've made, sins of omission as well as commission. There's quite a pile of 'em, but Jesus says it's all covered and carried away, for which I'm thankful.

Having said that, I have been torn in many ways, for multiple reasons. First, I'm not a Methodist, but I'm deeply invested in Methodism. I've taught on and off for years at MTSO, the Methodist Theological School in Ohio over in Delaware, a seminary a number of Disciples of Christ students have attended since we don't have one in Ohio. I teach, ironically, history and polity, but for my own tradition. Occasionally I'd get Methodist students signing up out of curiosity, but it was the Methodist ethos the students were immersed in that's ensured I've kept up with United Methodist Church (UMC) polity over the last two decades, along with my own.

And if you are any sort of Christian in central Ohio, you are working alongside of Methodists, I guarantee it. I've told my classes that in the Midwest, at least, when Methodists catch a cold, other churches get pneumonia. Most of the reading audience here is in the judicatory called the West Ohio Conference of the UMC.

Last week, Bishop Gregory V. Palmer presided over their first in person gathering for West Ohio's Annual Conference since 2019. His Episcopal Address is available on Facebook and well worth watching. When he said "Five minutes in the narthex of a church, and I can mostly name its health," I said an "Amen" out loud. He knows.

But last year there were around 950 congregations "in full connection" with the West Ohio Conference, but there were 80 congregations who asked to disaffiliate in that year; the 2023 Annual Conference just ended approved another 172 disaffiliations, leaving about 700 congregations. That's 26.5% of the conference's congregations choosing to depart, and looking at nationally reported figures, I'd suspect that will total around 30% or a bit more of membership.

However, looking at patterns nationally and in the Annual Conference book of reports for West Ohio, it was pretty clearly indicated that churches which were choosing to leave already paid their share of the conference budget at rates lower than "continuing" churches did; United Methodists know all about apportionments as their means of supporting their wider church structure, while the Global Methodist Church, where most of the disaffiliating churches are going, is making much of their not having an expectation of apportionment support, and it will be interesting to see how that works out in practice. The remaining UMC churches in West Ohio Conference may be losing 30% of their people, but it could be as little as 20% of their giving.

None of which deals with the hard reality that over the last few decades, United Methodist numbers in general, and for many Protestant denominational bodies, have been sliding south. If there was already a 5-10% decline per year in some categories, these losses intensify an already existing challenge for Methodism, but also for organized church bodies in general. We will be hearing later in June about divisions and separations in the Southern Baptist Convention, a church body formerly thought to be immune from some of the problems of the old-line Protestant communions.

Why are churches disaffiliating from the UMC? That and Southern Baptist divisions will both have to wait for the next column.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he tends to avoid specifics until he absolutely has to. Tell him about your specific concerns at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 6-8-23

Notes from my Knapsack 6-8-23
Jeff Gill

Flag etiquette from my point of view
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Coming up is a modest holiday which no one gets off that I know of: Flag Day.

It was on June 14, 1777 that the Continental Congress included in its business a motion reading "Resolved, That the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation." In other words, the original Betsy Ross version of Old Glory.

Often Flag Day falls during Cub Scout Day Camp, and it has always been both a pleasure and an honor to teach young Scouts how to properly fold the flag into the unique triangle that sets it apart from other banners and bunting stacked upon a shelf.

We also work on the protocols of raising and lowering the flag. Certainly that it should not touch the ground, and our nation's standard goes up briskly in the morning, and down at a slower, stately pace at the end of the day.

Just covering the basics takes all the time I usually have, so that's what we practice. Flag folding, and how to present, raise, and lower the flag (then folding it for stowage overnight). There's some history about how we got the star spangled banner we have I often start with.

Where I don't go is the borderline between opinion, preference, and symbolism where I actually have some pretty firm sentiments. After all, these are nine and ten year olds. But you, dear reader, deserve to learn a bit more.

For instance, I really dislike big clumps of flags. You know, the kind that have broken out like a rash in political rallies? The pledge, which we also discuss with the Cub Scouts, notes we are honoring "the republic, for which it stands." The flag stands for the United States of America, in the way the King stands for Great Britain, and they swear allegiance to the Crown. We have the flag.

So I think — this is just one guy's opinion — there's never a good reason to have two, or twelve, or dozens of U.S. flags up on a stage. It confuses the symbolism and meaning. Doesn't bother you? Swell.

But I also deeply regret the sea change we've gone through with 24 hour flag displays. The U.S. flag should go up in the morning, dawn or not too long after, and down at or before sunset, and if it rains, somebody runs out to respectfully take it down.

There used to be just a couple of places (Mackinac Island had one) where guides noted by act of Congress they were allowed to have the flag up with a light 24 hours a day. Yeah. So now, with modern fiber technology and a token spotlight we have all sorts of flags whipping themselves into shreds as they fly all day, all night, all the time. I don't like it.

Flags with gold fringe? Don't like 'em. Backwards patches indicating "we're always moving forward?" A general's whim during the first Gulf War now enshrined on car logos. A flat display flag points right, to its own left.

And unless you're armed, take off your hat, please, when it passes by. My opinion!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; if you read these columns, you knew he had opinions. He's happy to read yours at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 6-2-23

Faith Works 6-2-23
Jeff Gill

A semi-annual exhortation for summer
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School is out, Memorial Day behind us, and the summer sprawls on ahead.

Granted, like so many things, summer ain't what it used to be. With so much going back into action not after Labor Day but on or just after August 1, it does seem as if summer is shorter. If you have school age kids, that's definitely true.

However you mark the warmer months, whatever you do to get away, I want to suggest something I know I've said many times before, but bears repeating. Try going to worship on vacation.

There are fine folk who are religious, if you will, about their church attendance through the year, but see summer break time as an opportunity to take a break from all kinds of routine, including attending services.

I get it. I really do. My own religious tradition is not rooted in any beliefs that you must be in church for God to pay any attention to you, or your prayers, we just say along with many Protestant Christians that the Hebrews 10:25 instruction means we really oughta.

Preachers can put a bit too much weight on that one verse; again, I don't mean to say that missing a Sunday (or Saturday, or Friday depending on your practice) is the same as leaving God out of your life. I would say, along with every gym director and coach on the practice field, that missing a regular routine can quickly turn into no routine at all.

What I do want to suggest is that attending a worship service, especially for those who are deeply engaged in their own faith community, somewhere that's unfamiliar to you can be a revelatory and instructive experience.

Just like sitting in a distant hotel room watching the evening news, and noting what's the same, and what's different, it makes coming home a new experience. The same thing about any vacation getaway: you see your own life in a different light when you return from it.

Worship in a different place, where no one knows you, can trigger all sorts of useful reflections on your own habits and assumptions back home. I've seen people come back and talk about their having visited a service and been told "you're in my seat" and now they want to tell everyone why that's a terrible horrible awful thing to say to our visitors here at home. And trust me, preachers smile because we can say that from the pulpit at length and convince no one, but that lived experience re-told first hand can turn a congregation around.

The songs that are sung, the instruments that are used, the style of preaching you hear, and even odd details in the architecture or decor: you gain something by seeing a place fresh, and finding your way into worship in that new setting.

And depending on where you are vacationing, sometimes after the service as you deal with the fascinating experience of being the visitor in a church, you learn from the locals who tell you about things or suggest options you never would have heard about as just a tourist sticking to the tourist stuff and touristy places. That's not why I recommend the practice, but it's a nice fringe benefit.

I'd love to hear about anyone's experiences this summer visiting worship in a place they're traveling!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher around central Ohio; he's taking an extended vacation of sorts this summer going nowhere. Tell him where you're going to church on the road at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-26-23

Faith Works 5-26-23
Jeff Gill

Appreciation all the year round, especially summers
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We are four months from October, which long ago was established as Clergy Appreciation Month, with the very best of intentions: but after the end of that month is a steady rain of can't miss events on most ministerial calendars, from Thanksgiving & Advent through Lent & Easter to Pentecost.

So please allow this involuntarily inactivated parson to proclaim out of season: if you want to appreciate your ministerial leadership? Encourage them to take their time off, both some rest & personal time each week, and their leave time every year.

Here's the hard part. It's nice to say to your preacher "make sure to take your vacation time!" But what's more important is how you affirm & defend that time to others in your church. Speak up when the nit pickers say "didn't they just take off a Sunday?" Support that time away when a friend or fellow parishioner says "how many days have they been gone, anyhow?" Don't just nod or chuckle when someone says "they only work one day a week, what do they need time off for?"

I could add something about helping make sure they don't get contacted a dozen times when they're away for six days; I'd also remind anyone still listening that if your minister leaves after preaching on Sunday, and preaches the morning after they get back, any PRC or elders or trustees who say "that's six days away off your total for the year's vacation time" is not doing accurate or compassionate math.

Rev. Willard Guy, who in 1990 was retired but working part-time where I was in my first full-time position, made quite an impression on me as I believe he did everyone who had the honor of knowing him. I had started the year before with two weeks' vacation in my letter of call. I hadn't taken all of it, having done three weeks of camp, but in my first review was recommended for a third week in my contract "which I should try and take all of this time!"

This proposal went to the board for approval, and at that meeting someone said "when I started working I got no vacation, and had to work for years just to get two weeks." Much rumbling, and it looked as if the third week was going to be removed from the motion. Rev. Guy spoke up: he'd been a chaplain in Europe with the Blackhawk Division, earned a Silver Star, feared God alone having faced armed Nazis and helped liberate a concentration camp or two on their way to Berlin. "In that job, how many holidays did you get?" Grudging reply, "Ten." Willard went on: "And how many weekends did you get off?" Long angry stare, which bounced off of Rev. Guy, then "All of them."

Calmly he replied: "So that's 104 plus 10 days you got off when you didn't have vacation, a hundred and fourteen days. Your ministers work literally on most holidays, every Sunday unless we give them time off, and with regional and district events, almost half the Saturdays. I think four weeks should be a minimum, but that's just my opinion since I don't have a vote." Silence, for a bit, then the chair moved the motion as stated through. Thank you, Willard. I got my three weeks.

That's my contribution to any church member thinking ahead to Clergy Appreciation Month. October's too late, but May is when the rubber really should be hitting the road on this subject. Be blessed and renewed and God grant you lack of cell coverage as you get away!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher around central Ohio; he's on a sabbatical of sorts these days. Tell him about how your support your preachers & leaders at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-19-23

Faith Works 5-19-23
Jeff Gill

Renewing your vows on an ongoing basis
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An opportunity I had when just starting out in parish ministry was to do a renewal of vows ceremony before I did my first wedding.

It was a couple celebrating their fortieth anniversary, and wisely as it turns out they chose to do a renewal of vows then, and not wait for a 45 or 50 (he was ill then and died a few years later). At the time my wife and I had been married just over a year and I couldn't imagine forty.

They invited friends and family, we held it in the church after worship, inviting people to stay if they wished, and a fairly full sanctuary watched as they repeated to each other the vows they'd shared just after World War II ended, as they began their married life together.

I've heard of people doing a renewal of vows at Disney or on a golf course; one year I floated the idea of a group renewal of marriage vows on a Sunday in June and we tried it as part of the service, since there were a number of fiftieths coming up anyhow.

And there are people who choose to renew their vows every year on their anniversary, wherever they happen to be when it rolls around (there's an amusing misuse of this idea in the 1945 "Christmas in Connecticut"). It has no legal standing, nor is there any canon law guidance in liturgical traditions around what it means or whether you should. It's a nod to memory, like many of the baptisms done these days in the Jordan River by life-long Christians, who know they are baptized in God's sight, but want to have the full immersion experience there.

Joyce and I spend enough time facilitating ceremonies and programs for other people and institutions that we've never discussed the idea of doing a renewal of vows. To simply repeat the words from that day in 1985 would seem a bit odd.

What I would say about being married not quite forty years (but I can see it just ahead) is that you both are going to be renewing your vows quite often if you're going to make the long haul a committed couple. Maybe long, long ago when George was a farmer from childhood to old age, and Martha was a mother and homemaker beginning to end, the shape of your vows, official and unofficial, printed in the bulletin and unspoken in your mind, would never need to flex. If the times and conditions within which the marriage operates are mostly the same, I guess you just count on the initial vows made and let it go at that.

Today, as people change careers multiple times in their lives, and movement is usual, not strange, the relationship of the marriage to the lived experience will change even if the basic relationship between the two people will not. Couples deal with distance as a common occurrence, not a strange turn of events; we were working in two different states, two homes, when our son was born, and there have been other geographic complications for various stretches. As I say that, I recall funerals I did years ago for elderly church members where family would ask me to say "they never spent a day apart their whole marriage." All I can reply with is "wow."

Renewing is not quite rewriting, but there is a revisioning to be done in most modern marriages, literally: to re-vision, to see anew how the way you thought it would go has gone, and how we proceed, together (even if sometimes apart).

And I'm glad we had the wisdom and vision to put atop our wedding program Browning's line "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be."


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been married a while, but not as long as some. Tell him about your enduring relationships at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-12-23

Faith Works 5-12-23
Jeff Gill

Pastoral care intersects with political debate
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Just about any minister will tell you that the hardest pastoral care situations are around the death of a child. Far and away, those events are painful for everyone involved, and the simple answers are often those that create new pain as much as easing loss.

Sometimes, you simply sit with the parents and family, and grieve with them. The time for words will come, but you can't and shouldn't force it. The questions will come, and they will be hard, and call on your faith as much as the grieving mother or father's trust in love at work, even in the midst of death.

When the time comes to talk, you need to be able to say something. You will pray, and think, and even rehearse a bit in your mind what to say, but the dialogue when it comes is going to follow it's own pattern, and the direction of the conversation is going to be guided by their needs. I can't sum it up better than that.

A close second, in my own experience, is a sort of situation where current events have me reliving, and rethinking those confessions and responses I've been through with people torn up in grief.

It has been when someone comes to me after a suicide by firearm, and they provided the weapon in question, usually sold or given to a friend or family member, not long before the act.

This isn't about law. In the cases I've been involved with going back across forty years, I'm fairly certain no legal line was crossed. The pastoral problem is when the survivor, the person who provided unwittingly the tool by which the deed was done, is asking themselves how they could have known, or even how they could not have known. "He seemed fine, we were talking about plans for this summer, I had no idea."

You may well have heard that in the first four months of 2023, one-third of the year thus far, over 13,900 gun deaths have occurred in the United States. That includes thirteen shooting events which took lives in K-12 schools, out of 184 "mass shooting" events which the Gun Violence Archive defines as four or more people shot not including the shooter. There are a fair number of criminal events mixed in with those 184, crooks shooting each other, which is sometimes used as a way to dismiss that figure, but in sum those too have an impact on the wider community.

What I fear is too often overlooked is that 60%, around 7,920 deaths in that grim total, are suicides. Those are the massive iceberg undergirding the tragic and horrible pinnacle which is that so many of the public mass shootings, such as in Texas recently, Tennessee before that, and on and on, are seemingly in the end a means to a particular kind of suicide, but an intention to die by one's own hand or to force another to do the shooting.

I have no simple policy prescription or political response. I do know the Founders with muzzle-loading black powder rifles longer than your arm would be utterly baffled by the idea of 8,000 citizens shooting themselves. It's a further problem in the larger question.

And I pray I do not have to find a way to comfort more people whose anguish is over having provided the weapon not just for a friend to self-harm, but to take many with him on the way. That's grief I have no easy answer for.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in central Ohio; he has many and complicated feelings about firearms. Tell him how we can reduce the number of suicides at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 5-18-23

Notes from my Knapsack 5-18-23
Jeff Gill

Thinking about Aunt Esmerelda
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Over the last few months, I've been thinking about Aunt Esmerelda quite a bit.

Demographically, I mean.

The name is uncommon, picked for that reason. If there's an Esmerelda who reads this, my apologies, but I had to name her something with an echo of days gone by.

Aunt Esmerelda, in my formulation here, is that "maiden aunt" who becomes, largely by default, the family caregiver. She was the youngest daughter of the twelve children or something like that, and when Grandma got sick, she tended her. By the time Grandma passed, Esmerelda was too old for marriage, and anyhow, she was needed at Aunt Endorra's house, where she moved into the spare room.

Once that situation resolved, usually at the Grover's Corners cemetery, she went home to tend her mother or her father.

Seriously, if you do much genealogy, you recognize "Esmerelda Syndrome" pretty quickly. There were lots of kids, people died at home - heck, they had the calling and the funeral at home usually - and while the menfolk shoed horses and shot bears, and the women churned laundry and scrubbed butter, end-of-life care was taken care of "all in the family."

Plus, this is back when un-ironically people called pneumonia "the old person's friend" because it was the usual end of suffering, before morphine drips and other medications took over. And since some of those medications actually cured pneumonia, we all had to find something else to die of, and that list has been shrunk considerably.

So we live longer, and that's good, but by the time we get to the last few years of debility (if we're fortunate), our children and our prospective Aunt Esmereldas are older, too. This gets called "the sandwich generation," about the large numbers of us adults who have ailing parents and children needing care all at the same time, but if you're thinking about calling Aunt Esmerelda… well, we didn't have her. There aren't many youngest of twelves around.

Smaller families, shorter spans of childhood within a household, and you cut down on the sandwichian overlap, but you come up short when the elderly are no longer 60 or 70, but 90 and pushing up into the centenarian cohort.

Obviously, this is where assisted living facilities and home care aides come in for many families, and when well run and fully staffed they can be a blessing and a good solution to some of these questions.

But they aren't all that. They aren't all well run, and guess which have openings when you need one in a hurry? And fully staffed? Yeah, right. COVID cut a hole through that whole model we're still sorting out, as the elderly are still the most vulnerable to the virus continuing to make ripples of mortality through vulnerable populations. Plus they cost money, which makes for a grim calculus in many families. And I'm no good at calculus.

The situation of an Aunt Esmerelda was not good, and the fact that women aren't shoehorned into such roles as often as they once were, as even Jane Austen feared might happen to her as a "dependent woman," is an improvment. What hasn't improved is how we deal with such situations, as a society or in most families. It's a subject we're all likely to deal with at some point, all the more reason to consider how to handle it now.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; his middle name is not Esmerelda but it might as well be. Tell him how you've seen caregiving challenges dealt with helpfully at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 5-5-23

Faith Works 5-5-23
Jeff Gill

Allegiance is a word I have to look up
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While I am pretty sure I know what it means, allegiance is a word I have to think through before I type it. I don't use it often in print.

The "Pledge of Allegiance" I know quite well, even if I don't write it out much. I'm in school buildings of a morning fairly often, and it is still said by standing students every morning in pretty much every district of this county that I know of.

Even if you're there for a meeting that started early and you're in a conference room, when the voice on a PA starts the Pledge, everyone stands up, puts a hand over their heart, and looks around for a flag that isn't always in evidence, but we all say it, then sit down as the announcer goes on to tell us what today's lunch menu is.

This has been true since my earliest days in school, which to be fair only goes back to the middle 1960s, but I think it's been the case for quite a while. Which is why I was as surprised by Joyce Carol Oates tweeting her shock at learning this was true as quite a few other Twitter followers of hers.

I mean no disrespect to her; she's a fine novelist, short story author, reviewer and essayist, and has been a hoot on social media. But she's just enough older than me (I won't say how much, but enough) and clearly has not been around public or parochial schools below the post-graduate level much to not know the "Pledge of Allegiance" is a common feature of the educational morning.

With deep respect to Jehovah's Witnesses and other freethinkers who sadly have suffered to achieve this freedom, I acknowledge that there's a Supreme Court precedent that clearly states no student has to participate, and I've seen a fair number choose to do so, or rather not do so. It's a tricky thing, that: if almost every other student and the teacher is putting a hand over their heart and saying the Pledge, it's very hard to not do so. And again, I acknowledge that there are people who have a principled reason to not say that public affirmation, and support them in not saying it even as I do so. There's a school of thought that says a better solution is to not have everyone say it, to which I reply, and where does that end? I'm more interested in helping everyone allow exceptions rather than ensuring no one ever has to be one.

This has become an issue for the coronation, which you are welcome to not care about, but is in the news more than a bit. May 6, 2023, Westminster Abbey, King Charles III is anointed and crowned and formally installed, and the monarch in Great Britain is for them what the flag of the United States is for us. This means a pledge of allegiance to the new king, which has traditionally been delivered by the peers (dukes and lords and such) but is being opened up this time to, well, anyone.

Since I agree with George Washington that we don't need a king, this is not technically my event, but as an English speaking Protestant, and as a Christian in general, I'm interested. Trust me, I don't plan to "swear that I will pay true allegiance to Your Majesty" but the debate over who can or should is of interest.

Psalms, prophets, so much of Biblical religion uses imagery of kings and monarchs to communicate something of who God is, and how God reigns (such as, "reigns"). This symbolic language needs interpreting, which means work for preachers. This preacher will be watching, and reflecting, and making notes.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's taught the Pledge and flag folding to Cub Scouts for years. Tell him how you understand allegiance at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 4-28-23

Faith Works 4-28-23
Jeff Gill

Rising to the occasion, including resurrection
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Yes, I affirm bodily resurrection as the heart of what I celebrate in the wake of Easter.

I don't just say that because fellow Christians expect it. In fact, there are Christians who have a variety of views on the nature of resurrection. This bothers me less than I'm told it should.

There have been people who've dismissed belief in a bodily resurrection as . . . well, I'm not quite clear what the inference is, and some have said this minister's views have been mangled or misrepresented. The line "My faith is not tied to some divine promise about the afterlife" seems sum it up well enough.

What's kept this going in social media is the question of whether or not one can be a Christian and not believe in the actual resurrection of a dead Jesus. Now, as a congregational pastor, I've had this conversation many, many times. And will again. People tell me that, while they honor Christ, they just can't quite accept the idea of Jesus's resurrection from the dead. And I'll tell you what I've told them all: I believe that faith in God's ability and willingness to raise up Jesus from death should be our goal as Christians. You may not be there yet, but if you are following Jesus, you're likely to end up there, so just keep on going. But I also come from a tradition that has historically been very unwilling, and I believe wisely so, to spend time telling other people they are not Christians.

I've been tangled up in these sorts of debates around all sorts of variants of Christian belief and practice. Christians do have internally substantial disagreements with other traditions, and that includes my own. Two of our movement's key founders, Barton Stone & Alexander Campbell, debated back and forth from 1821 to 1827 their view of trinitarian and unitarian understandings of Jesus Christ, and while many called on Campbell to reject Stone's "Socinian" views, his response was to go out of his way to say to Stone "I will call you brother."

So if someone affirms that they would follow Christ, intend to fellowship with others as a Christian, and will grant me the same, I'm not going to say they aren't Christian just because their beliefs don't track exactly with mine. Of course, I'm right, and they're wrong (#irony), but if I only claimed fellowship with people who agree with me on everything, I'd have a quiet time of it on Sunday morning praying by myself.

I think a casual statement that "you don't have to believe in the resurrection to be a Christian" is problematic, but it doesn't make me mad; a parallel line I've seen is that since this is the majority view, it's important to affirm for those on the outside looking in that there's room for those who believe differently. Perhaps belief in the bodily resurrection is still a majority belief within most fairly orthodox Christian bodies, but my push-back is more because I think such a faith is, in fact, NOT the majority view in the world at large. I think most people in general don't believe that resurrection is possible, has happened, or could happen in any meaningful way for the rest of us at some future point.

Hence my belief that it's important to speak up in defense of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. I do think it's at the heart of my faith; saying that isn't my way of saying someone without it has no faith at all, nor do I believe such a person isn't a Christian. What I'd like to do is keep teaching and preaching and discipling such a person into why this counter-intuitive, improbable, unlikely event is, in truth, a way to understand this world, let alone the next . . . and our place in it.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has a number of non-majority beliefs, but you probably knew that already. Tell him your odd affirmations at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 4-21-23

Faith Works 4-21-23
Jeff Gill

A theology of holistic education
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If you follow much of the discussion and debate out of the Statehouse, and in a number of school districts with levies up on the ballot next month, you are hearing a vocal constituency is concerned public education is getting too much money, and that parents need more choices with less interference in how they educate their children.

Some of this discussion is around how homeschooling is managed in Ohio. As a parish minister, I've preached at least once in every church I've ever served this: I firmly believe every parent should homeschool their children.

Watching the shocked expressions on more than a few faces, I let the tension hang a bit in the air, and then add: many, probably most of us, will supplement that with our public schools.

I mean that, not just as a rhetorical device. Most of the problems we think we have, or are told exist, in the public school system, are because not enough parents are homeschooling. Another point that always gets some pushback when I make it is that between birth and age 18 the typical child will spend 9% of their time in school.

After some puzzlement, folks put the pieces together and then say "wait, you're counting the time they spend asleep." You bet I am. Sleep is perhaps the number one issue educators are struggling with, in public, parochial, or higher education. They aren't getting enough of it, the students or their parents, and the educational process is seriously harmed by that lack.

You might also object to including their first five years of life, but how a child enters and experiences kindergarten and first grade is shaped profoundly by whether or not the student is prepared with basics like letters, numbers, and colors before Day One in the little red schoolhouse.

Summers? Yeah, I'm counting that. If June, July, and nowadays the first half of August, anyhow, are filled with stress, conflict, anger, uncertainty, the teachers and bus drivers and administrators know it in the first weeks of school.

I am quite serious. Every family is, or should be, homeschooling. The education and development of a child, a student, a young citizen, is not just the responsibility of the school staff. And here's the thing: homeschoolers, legit doing the real deal homeschoolers, of which there are many in Licking County and God bless them for taking that on, know that their children need rest and solid nutrition and encouragement and a supportive structure all around them for learning to happen. I love actual homeschoolers; they are brave and devoted and their children learn and succeed in their lives.

If someone deals with their child's problems in school by saying "I'm going to homeschool" but puts no time into looking at what they intend or getting that approved, which in Ohio and Licking County is indeed quite simple: that's the kind of "homeschooling" which gives homeschoolers an unfair bad name.

For the vast majority of us with kids in public school, or even the rest of us who don't have school-age family anymore, but interact with and encourage and coach or counsel or in any way work with children: everyone should be homeschooling. Otherwise, we are wasting the money that goes into our school districts and public education. Because they can't with their 9% of a child's life, no matter how committed they are, change the 100% of a student's experience.

As for public education, I'm in and out of all ten districts in Licking County, and there's not one where I see they are wasting time, money, or your student's capacity. Parochial schools I see less often up close, but their outcomes are consistently amazing. Bless them all, but just keep praying for the rising generation of youth, who are facing challenges none of us could imagine when we were young.

They need us all to teach them well.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher; he's also become a full-time caregiver so he's interested in all ages. Tell him how you've learned to teach our children well at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.