Author Archives: Philip E Jenks

Dick Gregory was a lean, mean running machine in 1974 when he came to the first annual Communication Center at Green Lake, Wis. The Center was a week-long seminar in interfaith communication planned by the American Baptist Division of Communication, … Continue reading →

Thanks to daughter Lauren Jenks for uncovering this long-lost response from Eleanor Roosevelt, pasted 55 years ago in a book to keep it safe. The topic was an interview I conducted with her through the mail. The elaborate adolescent signature to the … Continue reading →

Even before Ancestry.com, my family was steeped in genealogical lore. Grandpa Addison Jenks and his sister, Aunt Ava, spent their lives searching courthouse records for birth certificates, wills, and deeds that bore the Jenks name. Addison liked to do family … Continue reading →

NOTE: This essay was written June 14, two months before President Trump’s vainglorious efforts to justify Neo-Nazi and white supremacist violence in Charlottesville on efforts to protect a statue of Robert E. Lee. Statues of Civil War generals and politicians … Continue reading →

Mishaps on the New York subway are relatively rare, but when they happen they tend to shed light on the true nature of New Yorkers. This month a middle-aged man fell onto the subway tracks in Manhattan and a ballet … Continue reading →

His biographers can’t find the actual quote, but theologian Karl Barth is credited with the advice to read the bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Today, he would advise us not to watch CNN unless we … Continue reading →

November 22, 2017 – President John F. Kennedy would have been 100 last May 29.. For those who lived through his presidency, it is singularly impossible to imagine the smiling young chief as an old man. He is frozen in … Continue reading →

The Americans, the FX series about a Soviet spy couple posing as American travel agents in Reagan-era Washington, has reignited a lightning storm of ecumenical history that had all but calmed. This week’s episode is blatantly titled “The World Council … Continue reading →

War is contrary to the will of God. – World Council of Churches, 1948 When I was a professional ecumenist, I lived in a rarified milieu in which Memorial Day – so beloved on Main Streets all over the USA … Continue reading →

All War is Sin. The Church of the Brethren did not equivocate in 1970 when it characterized the nature of war. This generation has seen enough of war to sense the truth of the declaration. Big wars and little wars … Continue reading →