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The Stranger and the Moral Life of a People

A recent Vox interview with psychologist Gillian Sandstrom, timed to the release of her new book Once Upon a Stranger , offers a modest and welcome claim: talking to strangers is usually better for us than we think. We tend to overestimate the awkwardness, underestimate the rewards, and allow a nervous inner monologue to keep us from simple acts of human contact. Sandstrom’s larger argument is that small conversations can widen a life, ease loneliness, and strengthen human flourishing.   That is sensible advice for an anxious age. But the biblical tradition has always pressed the matter further. In Scripture, the stranger is not merely a possible contributor to our well-being. The stranger is a test of public morality. That is a stronger claim than modern therapeutic language usually permits. We prefer to talk about social connection in terms of mood, confidence, resilience, and mental health. Those are not unimportant matters. But the Jewish and Christian traditions have long un...
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When Strangers Interrupt Us

A recent Vox interview with psychologist Gillian Sandstrom, occasioned by her new book Once Upon a Stranger, makes a simple claim: talking to strangers is usually better for us than we think. We tend to overestimate the awkwardness, underestimate the rewards, and forget how much ordinary human contact can enlarge a day. Sandstrom’s research-based counsel is practical and humane. Most of us, she suggests, are carrying around a nervous inner narrator that warns us not to speak first, not to risk embarrassment, not to cross the little invisible boundaries of modern life. And so we pass one another by.   That is sound psychological advice for an age of loneliness. But the religious tradition goes further. In Scripture, the stranger is not merely a missed opportunity for self-improvement. The stranger is a theological event. That may sound like too much weight to place on a passing encounter in a waiting room, a coffee shop, or a church narthex. But the biblical imagination has always ...
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When Strangers Interrupt Us

A recent Vox interview with psychologist Gillian Sandstrom, occasioned by her new book Once Upon a Stranger , makes a simple claim: talking to strangers is usually better for us than we think. We tend to overestimate the awkwardness, underestimate the rewards, and forget how much ordinary human contact can enlarge a day. Sandstrom’s research-based counsel is practical and humane. Most of us, she suggests, are carrying around a nervous inner narrator that warns us not to speak first, not to risk embarrassment, not to cross the little invisible boundaries of modern life. And so we pass one another by.   That is sound psychological advice for an age of loneliness. But the religious tradition goes further. In Scripture, the stranger is not merely a missed opportunity for self-improvement. The stranger is a theological event. That may sound like too much weight to place on a passing encounter in a waiting room, a coffee shop, or a church narthex. But the biblical imagination has alway...
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When Work Becomes a Religion

AI may not only disrupt labor markets. It may expose how much modern people have asked work to do for the soul. A recent essay by Sam Lessin argues that AI’s deepest danger is not mainly unemployment, but meaninglessness. The real threat, he suggests, is that AI may automate enough “useful” labor to weaken one of modern society’s central moral stories: that effort leads to contribution, contribution to dignity, and dignity to a life that makes sense. Public debate, in his view, is tracking the wrong metric. Economists measure wages, productivity, and job displacement. Lessin thinks the more consequential question is what happens when people no longer feel needed. “Meaning is not some luxury layer on top of life,” he writes. “It is the critical input.”   That diagnosis is sharper than much current AI commentary. We have become accustomed to asking economic questions: How many jobs will be lost? Which sectors will grow? Will abundance increase? Those are real questions. But they are ...
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After the Argument

What Julia Minson’s research on disagreement may have to teach the church Churches often say they want honesty. We ask for feedback, invite discernment, and speak warmly about community. We tell ourselves that the church should be a place where people can speak the truth in love. Yet anyone who has sat through enough vestry meetings, parish forums, search committees, or pastoral conversations knows how fragile that aspiration can be. Julia Minson, a Harvard Kennedy School professor who studies what she calls the “psychology of disagreement,” has spent years examining why arguments go wrong and what helps people remain in conversation when they do not see eye to eye. Her work is timely in a polarized public culture, but it also names something painfully familiar in congregational life: the subtle ways people stop listening long before a conversation officially ends.  One of Minson’s key themes is an older psychological insight called “naive realism.” We tend to assume that we are se...
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Taxes and the Moral Architecture of a Just Society

Taxation is part of a robust religious ethic since it can reduce inequality, preserve dignity, and define care for the vulnerable as a shared responsibility.  https://martycenter.org/sightings/taxes-and-the-moral-architecture-of-a-just-society
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Thinking about Palm Sunday and the Power It Confronts

Christians worldwide entered Holy Week by celebrating Palm Sunday, the day Jesus entered Jerusalem for the final time before his death and resurrection. To mark the day, many congregations reenact his entry by processing with palm branches, often beginning outside and moving toward the church in joyful anticipation.   But behind this familiar celebration lies a deeper, more unsettling truth. Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was not merely a triumphal gesture or a moment of religious pageantry. It was a deliberate act of confrontation—both theological and political. His procession was not a celebration of power but a challenge to it. [1]   In the Jerusalem of that time, there were two processions. One came from the west: the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, entering the city on a warhorse, accompanied by armed soldiers. Each year during Passover—a feast remembering Israel’s liberation from Egyptian bondage—Rome made a calculated display of strength, reminding the people of who held a...
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