Desmond Tutu, True Christians, and Christmas

As often happens at this time of year, I have been thinking about how much I have in common with people who consider themselves committed Christians.  A couple of events have recently happened that have made me more reflective about the common values I share with progressive people of faith (I’m leaving fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals out of the equation just now).  I’ll talk about one of them here.  It happened during my recent trip to South Africa (which ended just yesterday). Sarah and I decided to take two weeks off to go there, just for fun, no work involved.  Incredibly, as much as we travel, we haven’t had two weeks alone together for fifteen years.  The trip was amazing, between all of the things to see and do in Cape Town, to the scenic drive through the Garden Route, to the game drives/safaris we took up near Kruger National Park (a game reserve the size of Israel!). A friend of ours helped us set up the trip; she had been to South Africa a [...]