After thirty-seven years in parish ministry, a career chronicled in my book, Voices from Pulpit and Pew: A Memoir from Retirement (Westbow Press, 2023) and fifteen years of retirement, I started this blog to give voice again to my understanding of how the Christian faith helps us to address challenges in our lives. Our nation is haplessly divided and hopelessly partisan. Two colors dominate our map, red and blue, and both are filled with the enthusiastic and hostile. Our politics operate under banners of all types from the extreme right to the extreme left. We are characterized and grouped by identity such as nationality, gender, race, economic status, educational level, religious affiliation, citizenship, and political party, to name just some but not all. Social media has become a powerful tool both to inform and misinform, to reveal the truth and spread lies, to keep us connected and make us distrustful and drive us apart. In addition to all this, the church is experiencing a diminished role in American life, except as a political force willing to compromise its integrity for a seat at the so-called power broker’s table. Indeed, challenges confront us daily, and sometimes threaten to overwhelm us. My purpose in writing and promoting this blog is to identify the challenges we face in real time and offer a Christian perspective on how best to address them, biblically, morally, prophetically, pastorally, and humanely. I believe, as the Good Book says, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life; that He came so that we may have life and have it abundantly and that His hope is that we all may be one. I will use my voice to make His Word and wisdom known, which leads to a growing, relevant faith and an improved national, communal, and personal sense of abundance and unity.
Bruce J. Johnson is the Pastor Emeritus of the First Congregational Church, Coventry, CT., the church he served as pastor for 37 years. (1973-2010) His educational resume includes a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bucknell University (1970), a Master of Divinity (1973) and a Master of Sacred Theology (1975) both from Yale Divinity School and in 1989, a Doctor of Ministry degree in Pastoral Psychology from the Boston University School of Theology. He is a husband, father and grandfather and lives in Coventry with Lois, his wife of 52 years.