Category Archives: Uncategorized

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 →

By Philip E. Jenks Actually, there’s no one around who remembers the Great War. It has been a hundred years since the United States joined the cataclysm in April 1917, and that generation is long gone. The anniversary is historically … Continue reading →

I was a very young and very low-ranking airman when I first arrived at RAF Bentwaters/Woodbridge in Suffolk, England, in January 1965.  The convenient thing about the Air Force was that you always knew who was more distinguished than you: … Continue reading →