Ron Miller's Blog: Ron's Reflections, page 4

The Great "Rechurching" Hits Home

We had a fantastic Easter service at our small nondenominational church in the back of the shopping plaza in mid-town Lynchburg. We thought the guests that always come for Easter would make up for the regular attendees, particularly our college-age students, who might be out of town on an extended Easter weekend break. However, we had most of our congregation present and a healthy number of guests, and we nearly ran out of the free coffee we offered during the mid-service break. Our guest speake...

Confessions of an almost-Christian Nationalist

My smartphone news feed was invaded this week by images of Donald Trump hawking the God Bless the USA “Bible” for $59.99 as Christians around the world commemorate Holy Week. His sales pitch was a classic appeal to the persecution complex of white evangelical Christians disturbed by the prospect of not being the primary cultural influence in American public life:

This is very important, very important to me. A lot of people have it. You have to have it, for your heart, for your soul…. All America...

Hated for the right reasons

Note: I am re-hosting some of my previous work from another blog. As we celebrate Holy Week, let’s strive to be known, for better or worse, as imitators of Christ rather than the world. People see the difference, and being hated for the former is a badge of honor. Being hated for the latter dishonors our Lord and Savior by disrupting our witness and his commission to make disciples.

April 2, 2021

I wrote earlier this week about the theology of suffering and how I came to understand and embrace it ...

NOVID no more

February was a challenging month in the Miller household. As I chronicled previously, we lost my father-in-law on Valentine’s Day, and we mourned his loss while celebrating his life and the lives that came about because of him. However, before receiving the news of his passing, I contracted COVID-19 for the first time. Annik and I went out for an early Valentine’s Day dinner on February 13th, and I recall feeling out of sorts at the time - not ill, but not right. The next day, I was as sick as I...

Mythology masquerading as history

Last week, the Republican president of the Florida Senate killed a bill that would have punished local officials who oversaw the removal of Confederate monuments from their municipalities. The bill was just one of many promoted by Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who prides himself on remaking Florida into the state “where woke goes to die.”

The bill might have made it to the Senate floor for a vote were it not for a public hearing of the Community Affairs Committee, where a witness, attorney Char...

Home is where the work is

My standard social media one-line bio reads, in part, “Christian, husband & dad, educator, veteran, nerd.” While that last word conjures up a specific image in many people's minds, the dictionary defines a nerd as “a person who is extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable about a particular subject, especially one of specialist or niche interest.”

Yes, another definition, which the dictionary labels as “derogatory,” is “an unfashionable person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious,” whi...

Monica, #MeToo, and #ChurchToo

I consume a lot of news online, free and subscribed, so I check my smartphone’s news feed multiple times a day; it's almost a default move for me the moment I pick up my phone.

Imagine my surprise last week to see Monica Lewinsky back in the news. Her name dominated the headlines in the late 1990s; it’s sobering to realize that Generation Z may not know who she is until now. The reporting on her recent endeavor led to a surge of attention from Gen Z social media influencers:

"I'm not going to li...

Human shield

Donald Trump has been accused of many things, 91 of them quite recently, but one thing no one has ever said about him is that he lacks brazenness. His obliviousness to the cringe-worthy nature of his statements is a feature or a bug, depending on where you stand on him. As a former Black conservative activist, I found his pandering for the Black vote last week astonishing in its racialized assumptions, and it led me to ponder why it took me so long to see how some people use their associations w...

A remarkable love

In a few hours, my wife Annik (ah-NEEK if you’re a stickler for proper pronunciation) will be landing in France, an unplanned trip so she can reunite with her sister Brigitte in the French village of Hegenheim, nestled on the border between France and Switzerland, and lay my father-in-law, Henri Rene Aeschbach, to rest and settle his earthly affairs. He died last week at the age of 90, and I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been battling with COVID-19 for the first time and I’m just now coming ou...

My first book review

I subscribe to Current, “an online journal of commentary and opinion that provides daily reflection on contemporary culture, politics, and ideas.” One of the founders, Dr. John Fea, is an exemplary scholar and writer who has personally encouraged me when confronted with the cultural and political idolatry prevalent in American evangelical Christendom. I jumped at the opportunity to support his work when he launched Current, and I’m pleased that he’s been able to give many writers and thinkers a...