Robert S. Turner's Blog

“Hey, Libertarian! Get off our sidewalk!” is a saying I like to use to mock the hollowness and hypocrisy of the Libertarian movement. After watching an episode of American Experience called “The Poison Squad,” I may add this nugget to my repertoire: “Hey, Libertarian! Shouldn’t you be home inspecting your beef?”

Libertarians, in case you hadn’t guessed, give me indigestion. Their claims to champion freedom are little more than a thin veil over an essential selfishness that says, “You go your way ...

Last night I finished watching the Netflix limited series “Waco,” about the events leading up to the destruction of the Branch Davidian compound in 1993. In case you are not familiar with the situation, here’s a quick summary. A religious group led by a charismatic leader named David Koresh lived in a communal setting near Waco, Texas. Koresh had some unusual teachings and practices. For one thing, he believed himself to be the Lamb who is mentioned in the book of Revelation, the only person fo...

On Tuesday morning the Department of Justice announced that it will not bring charges against Daniel Pantaleo for violating Eric Garner’s civil rights. Pantaleo is the NYPD officer who administered the chokehold that led to Garner’s death in 2014. He joins a long line of police officers and civilians, mostly white, who have killed black men and not faced prosecution.

On that fateful July day on Staten Island five years ago, Garner was selling untaxed cigarettes on the street, a misdemeanor. In...

The recent dustup between Nancy Pelosi and the four liberal firebrands—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley—in the House’s freshman class, as well as the confrontation between Kamala Harris and Joe Biden in the recent Democratic debate, reveals something troubling about the state of our politics in the US in 2019. The demand for ideological purity bodes ill for the prospects of bipartisan agreements of any kind. Not that those prospects were all that bright...

Okay, so I’m back in my hometown visiting my mother, right? And we drive by the church where I grew up. It’s a Southern Baptist church, and my mom is still a member there, but I have moved in a different direction over the years, and it doesn’t feel anything like home to me anymore. Anyway, we’re driving by and I see that they have a message up on their sign. It reads: THE FUTURE OF OUR NATION DEPENDS ON GODLY DADS or something like that.

Two things strike me when I see this. First, the word “...

I was looking at my brother Mike's Facebook page last night and I found an old post about Trump's disastrous press conference in Helsinki. There was a guy on the thread named Tim, whom I don't know and don't particularly want to know, who kept backing Trump and presenting a lot of what Mike aptly called "junior high BS"—slogans and cliches, ad hominem attacks, regurgitated talking points from the Drudge Report or Breitbart, and so forth. When Mike challenged him to provide some genuine docume...

In the wake of President Trump's disastrous press conference after his meeting in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin, and his ham-handed efforts to walk back some of the things he said there, something has begun to dawn on me about his approach to the presidency and why his supporters are still so maniacally devoted to him. It's because they share a distaste, even a loathing, for professionals and experts.

I was watching the PBS NewsHour last night, and I heard the analyst Mark Shields express his d...

March proverbially “comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” Since most of the Lenten season takes place in March, it can be instructive to remember the vision that guides our worship and practice during Lent: the peaceable kingdom where the lion lies down with the lamb.

"Lion-and-the-Lamb" by Veronica Romm is a Creative Commons image, licensed under CC BY 2.0

That is, after all, the goal of our journey and the object of our longing during Lent. Not just peaceful coexistence in the an...

(This is a poem I wrote for Ash Wednesday 2017. I'm re-running it today even though I had to leave the service before the Imposition of Ashes, so, this year, no smudge for me.)

"Golgotha–Mt Calvary–Israel" by R. Orville Lyttle is a Creative Commons image licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Once more the cross stands
    at the Place of the Skull.

Every year I come here, dragging my load
of cares and failures and dashed hopes,
all singed and smoking,
snatched out of the fire of my waywardness.

Every year...

For my money, one of the most resonant metaphors for the kingdom, or reign, of God in all of Scripture is that of the banquet table. Jesus makes reference to it more than once, and each time the implication is that we may be surprised, perhaps even dismayed, at who is seated around the table. He says that people will come from the north, south, east, and west and take their places at the banquet table in the reign of God, whereas the self-righteous will be shut out (Luke 13:28–29). On another...