Anthony B. Robinson

Tony is a writer, teacher, speaker and ordained minister (United Church of Christ). He served as Senior Minister of Seattle’s Plymouth Congregational Church for fourteen years. His newest book is Useful Wisdom: Letters to Young (and not so young) Ministers. He divides his time between Seattle and a cabin in Wallowa County of northeastern Oregon. If you’d like to know more or receive his regular blogs in your email, go to his site listed above to sign-up.

Will we Miss the Pandemic when it’s Gone?

While I would like to think that the pandemic has taught us to slow down, I’m skeptical.

Has Seattle Become a City that Doesn’t Work?

It does appear that the Council is more a staging ground for the nation’s culture and ideological wars than for civic leadership on local problems.

Seuss Saga: Time to Stand Down the Culture Wars

Right now, the Democrats have (more or less) called a retreat or moratorium on the culture wars and are actually facing into and solving the problems people care about.

Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. Agreed, So Then What?

It was a wise Jewish mother who had said, “Men marry women with the intention that they will the stay the same. Women marry men with the idea that they will change.

Christianity Is Not a Religion. So what is it?

Growing up, I thought Christianity was really — boiled down — about being a good person. Actually it’s not about that.

Have Seattle Parks Become a Permanent “Solution” for Homelessness?

Seattle’s politics and our City Council mirror national trends of short-term thinking and using one’s office as a platform to draw attention and for self-promotion.

Why Watch a Trial that’s a Kangaroo Court?

Republican senators have made the trial a mockery of justice. Why be interested in a trial when the outcome is baked in before the opening gavel?

Wintery Dispatches from Nez Perce Country

So, what do you do when dining outside in White Salmon at 29 degrees? Order Margaritas of course! Dinner was great.

Safety First: Why We’re so Preoccupied with it Now

Social media, Yuval Levin notes, intentionally blurs the lines between pubic and private, between inside (think “safe” inner circle) and outside (the whole damn world), as well as between formal (situations of some gravity and sensitivity in which restraint and decorum serve to protect us) and informality (let it all hang out).

Inauguration Theme: ‘We Have Been Humbled’

We were humbled on Inauguration Day by the need for so many troops and so much security, such that the Capitol was turned into a “fortress,” in the words of a news reporter. And, finally, we had been humbled by the Trump presidency itself, by how close we had come to a subversion of our institutions and of our collective sanity. Humbling has, however, had positive effects.

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