The Toxic Culture That Dominates Our Civic Life: HELP!!!!

 

Tox​ic (adjective) 1. containing or being poisonous material  2. extremely harsh, malicious, or harmful                 --Merriam-Websters Dictionary

It’s a website called NextDoor and was begun in 2008 to connect people in their neighborhoods, towns, and cities.  Kind of like Facebook for Main Street. Time once was you could visit NextDoor and see items and news that make a community, a community.  Posts about the Scouts, Little League games and the bake sale at church.  You could ask for contractor recommendations and promote your non-profit.  Some folks posted pictures of cute critters that make nocturnal visits to their backyards.

NextDoor was about as local and relatively innocuous as it could get and yet….

The challenge on NextDoor was and is how to temper discussions that get out of hand, neighborhood squabbles that dissolve into very public spats. Volunteer moderators once did this well.  Now? 

Last week I went on NextDoor to look around, see what’s going on in my little town, when I viewed a link for a YouTube video designed to anger people. To troll folks. To raise the communal temperature. To tweak the sensibilities, in this case, of “the libs” as some folks like to say with derision.  It was a video about crime in Boston, and the unspoken but apparent need for the President to send in National Guard troops, like in Chicago and D.C.  

And then the toxic tennis match began.

Folks posted about the danger of ANTIFA, and others posted that fascism wasn’t on the streets of Boston, it was in the White House.  Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.  My neighbors, sitting with their laptops or phones, viciously tearing one another down, toxic language and behavior on display.

And not just on NextDoor.

It’s toxic at School Committee as folks line up for the public discussion so they can get someone fired because of a Facebook post. This while cops stand by just in case. Toxic at some churches as folks literally take their side of the pews, left or right, and if the pastor is too lefty or righty, well, let’s just fire them!  Toxic at work. “Please don’t bring up politics!” Toxic at home. I know two couples whose marriages ended because one loved the President, and the other could not stand him.

Makes me wonder…do we even know what civility looks and feels like anymore?  Can we agree to disagree without being disagreeable?  Can we engage with the other and just listen and not immediately point a digital middle finger at anyone who posts something we don’t like? Can we have an open enough mind that it might actually be changed?

Or are we now addicted to swimming in the toxic sea that is drowning our culture? Toxicity has now become “normal.”

This has largely come about because of the example set by political leaders in the highest of offices and yes, the highest office of all.  When you call all immigrants rapists, talk about grabbing women by the ______; when you refer to African countries as ____holes and brag about how much you hate your opponents while speaking at a funeral, the vitriol and violent rhetoric flows out and flows down, infects everyone. 

Toxic language and actions give folks permission to treat others terribly.  To insult.  To deride. To threaten. To yell at. To rage. To live in a constant state of agitated righteousness.  Don’t they ever get tired of living such grievance-based lives?

Do all of these folks who post and protest and attack and consume news 24/7,on the right and the left: do they have anything else going on in life? You know…bowling league or potluck supper at the temple or maybe just a pastime that brings them joy?  Baking cookies. Walking the dog. For the sake of the millions who are now so disgruntled…will they ever find peace?  

I hope so.

My faith tells me that toxicity and wanting to see others suffer, especially an opponent: it’s just plain wrong. It’s an insult to the God of love, who is so full of grace that we all get to be forgiven when we are at our worst.  I know I need God’s mercy every day.  I don’t have all the answers.  My “side” is not 100 percent right, not even close, nor is the faith I practice.  And I don’t want to see the one I disagree with get hurt or humiliated or exiled or deported.   

Toxicity practiced always leads to toxicity experienced within, and that is a really, really sad way to live.  The life God gives us can be hard but also so beautiful.  But to know this we have to raise our eyes up from the mud and dare to look at the stars in the heavens.

I’m done with toxicity, next door and everywhere else. How about you?

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

               

In the Midst of the Chaos and Cruelty: Take a Break. Breathe. Be.

"Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” – Anne Lamott

I always get melancholy the day after the baseball season officially ends for my favorite team, the Boston Red Sox. That happened last night (October 3^rd) at 10:38 pm when first baseman Nathaniel Lowe popped out in the top of the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium to end the game, and the BoSox 2025 campaign. 

I loved this team and season as so many other fans did, and for reasons you’d expect. 

Baseball has been a part of my life since I was seven so for 57 years I’ve enjoyed the sport, how it entertains and brings me some joy. This season was awesome because the team was actually competitive and a blast to watch, really for the first time since at least 2021, maybe even 2018. The times I went to Fenway Park this year the place was alive again and just rocking. This spring, summer, and fall’s games, as always, gave me a way to measure the seasons, to witness the passage of time and to know comfort in the dependability of a game that always returns next year, no matter what.

But what really drew me in as a fan this season was the how the game allowed me to escape, for a few minutes in the morning sports stories, listening to the radio at night, and talking about the Sox with other fans. Baseball allowed me to consume news that was actually good, interesting, and something to look forward to, and follow.  Baseball let me cheer for the good guys and against the bad guys in games on a field of play that ultimately had nothing at stake, save for bragging rights and championship rings.

Boy, did I need baseball. Do I need something, anything to lean back into for rest, for comfort, for recharging, for life. Maybe you do too.

Because the part of my life I live as a citizen and an American? That’s mostly filled with bad news, really bad news, since last January in particular. Each day now seems to be filled with too many horror stories of the powerless being treated with such cruelty. Bad tidings about the high-jacking of our democracy in a movement marked by mediocrity and mayhem. The country I love is feeling less and less like my home these days.

Baseball helped me take a break. 

We all need such pauses and retreats from the intensity of day-to-day life. God does not make us to fire on all burners 24/7. To just keep going and going. Our devices may scream at us, “PAY ATTENTION TO ME!” and the news cycle may demand of us “YOU MUST CONSUME THE LATEST NEWS NOW!” Too many of our leaders now act as if politics is the center of everything, as if it is a new kind of religion, with a new god and gods, who demand absolute fealty and devotion.

Not me. I absolutely won’t worship at that altar or before that idol. 

I am just trying my best to be a part of the good now, to build up rather than to tear down and to make the world a little better every day by how I live. I often fall short, but I have to keep on keeping on, as do many of us. At its best that’s what religious faith tries to do as well: inspire believers to embody the good, and then to do God’s good, for the common good. That hard work happens every day in houses of worship and soup kitchens and prisons and nursing homes and schools and small towns and big cities. 

To do the good and to push back against the bad.

But everyone needs a break from our work, the intensity of daily life, and the chaos that some create for their own amusement or profit, or both. That’s why I needed baseball. Why I need to go the movies and to ride my bike. Why I need to write. Bake bread and make a home cooked meal for my 90-year-old mother. Why I need to spend more time with the folks I love and who love me right back, without condition.

You do too. We all need to regularly refill our spiritual wells and to be renewed for the living of this day. 

What is your baseball, the pastime, the hobby, the escape, the retreat, the ritual, the game, the craft, the sport that feeds and renews your soul? Who are the people in this life that make your heart sing and give you the strength to carry on, and make life worth living? 

My hope for all of us is in these tumultuous times is that we each find our joy, and whatever makes us feel more alive. May we embrace more often our loved ones and just take good care. Life is a marathon after all, not just a sprint. This race has a ways to go.

I’ll pray for you, and I hope you’ll pray for me and others and our country and the world too.

And take a break, ok?

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

  

     

 

The Online Firestorm Tearing Us Apart: THINK BEFORE YOU SHARE!

"No one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse people, made in the likeness of God."   --James 3:8a-9

In late May 2020, just a few days after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, I faced into an impending Sunday worship service. I struggled with what I would say and what the gospel of Jesus Christ might have to say as well. This one precious life ended by police brutality. But as that Sabbath approached I just wasn’t yet sure about the right words to preach to the congregation I served.  I wasn’t ready to speak yet. I included the tragedy in my welcome and my prayers and the prayers of the people but not in the sermon.

Which angered one of my members so much, it eventually led, in part, to him leaving the church.  He accused me (at least it felt like) of pastoral cowardice. In the days and weeks to come I spoke about Floyd and racial injustice from the pulpit and wrote about it online. Our church renewed and went much deeper in our relationship with an African American Church in Boston, one we’ve partnered with for more than thirty years.

And I’m still sure I made the right choice in 2020 to not speak until I was confident that what I had to say was relevant, thoughtful, constructive, and Godly. I’m remembering that time now as I witness the social media, political and national firestorm that’s exploded in response to the assassination of conservative icon Charles Kirk last Thursday.  Before his tragic death had even been officially confirmed, literally mere minutes after those shots rang out, the opinionizing began in earnest. And yes, much of it was and still is stupid, harsh, violent, vengeful, righteous, thoughtless, and self-promoting. 

Millions of public figures, online influencers, Facebook posters, X tweeters, so many people all rushed in to declare, “Well, this is what I think! Listen up!” Thank God there was and is a minority of folk who responded well: with compassion, sincere grief, thoughtfulness, calls for peace, but sadly these are few and far between.

I have been in the opinion sharing business for a long time, 35 years as a preacher in church, 25 years as a weekly newspaper columnist, and a blogger since 2007. I trained for and get paid to think and pray about big issues, big ideas and God, and then to share my opinion publicly about these things. It is a privilege and a joy, but it also carries a deep responsibility.    

When you have a public pulpit, secular, religious or political, from which to express your opinions, I believe you must always strive to be wise and care-filled in the words you speak, the declarations you make, the tone you take, and the response you hope to evoke in your readers and listeners.  You can do this and still be clear, courageous, and honest in sharing your convictions with others. 

But too often folks, especially online, share opinions impetuously, or with intentional vitriol, or all to rile up and insult, even to strut. These firebrands make matters worse by what they say and write. And what I have seen in many public statements, posts and speeches since last Thursday, is recklessness from all parts of the political, media and social universe. No one is innocent.  

The tongue (and the pen) is two edged in its effect.

It can build up, comfort, inspire, heal, and bring people together. It can destroy, threaten, hurt, and divide people.  So…my plea is this. Please think, THINK, before you speak or write or post or tweet or text or opine. And for those who lead and influence us? Commit more to contributing to the common good in our civil discourse and less to how many likes and views (and yes money and power) that you covet, in offering your opinion.      

Or, maybe even, say nothing. Write nothing. Not one word.

Yup—that’s an option too.

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

  

The Online Outrage Machine and Joy of Self-Righteousness

Schadenfreude (noun, from the German) 1. enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others --Merriam Webster’s Dictionary 

At professional baseball games there is an unspoken tradition concerning fans catching foul balls, baseballs hit out of play by the batter at home plate. According to Major League Baseball, 54 balls a game go foul on average, many of those into the stands where a lucky ticket holder just might snag the best of souvenirs. 

The tradition?

“Give the ball to the kid!” In other words, if you are a teen, young adult or adult and catch a foul, the kind thing to do is not to claim it for yourself but instead to hand it over to the nearest kid and/or youngest kid in the seats around you. It is the classy thing to do and worth the price of admission to see a little girl or boy’s eyes light up when they get a baseball! 

Or not.

Because there are also times when an adult, for whatever reason, won’t hand over the ball, and keeps it all to themselves. That’s when the chant “GIVE THE KID THE BALL!” breaks out around that less than magnanimous baseball snatcher. And if they refuse to give it up? Here come the boos.

Which brings me to a story about a scene that played out last Friday at a game in Miami where the Marlins were hosting the Philadelphia Phillies.  Phillie slugger Harrison Bader hit a home run to left field and one intrepid dad jumped into the scrum of folks scrambling to grab the ball and came up with it, then handed it to his young son, who beamed with joy.

But then….

A visibly irate Phillies fan marched over to Dad and insisted that she was entitled to the ball, as it had landed right next to her seat.  She was so vociferous in her visible anger that the father finally just handed the ball over to her.  Marlins employees saw what happened and delivered a baseball gift bag to the little boy and after the game, Harrison Bader gave him an autographed bat.  Alls well that ends well? If only…for a social media uprise began almost immediately and it’s gotten pretty nasty, as video of the altercation has gone viral.

Google “Phillies fan steals ball” and there are more than 8,000,000 results. Multiple videos are on YouTube, one with 221,000 views and counting.  The identity of the woman has not been revealed but that has not stopped internet stalkers from feverishly looking for her, and in at least two cases, misidentifying the person, causing two women to be bombarded with vitriol, contempt, and self-righteous anger.  As of today, September 9^th, the story still has legs. 

Online, folks can’t stop talking, opining, raging, ranting and complaining about it, and often clearly intimating they’d never ever do anything like that! When I was a kid me and the neighborhood boys played a stupid and sometimes injury filled game called “pig pile!” where we’d capture one of our gang, hold them down on the ground then everyone would pile on top.  Yup: that’s as dumb as it sounds and is a good metaphor for what happens so often now in social media land. 

On Tik Tok and Facebook Reels and Twitter and everywhere in cyberspace: there is so much energy unbridled often anonymous, often holier than thou, protest. And all over a dumb or thoughtless social faux pas or mistake that any of us could make on our bad days, when we use faulty judgment or let our emotions get the best of us.

Like that woman who stole the ball.

I guarantee you there are death threats roiling online towards her. That’s the norm in 2025.  One of the greatest of human sins is taking pleasure, even joy, in the suffering of others. We get to say “GOTCHA!” Point a finger of judgment. Take a moral inventory on another child of God while forgetting that we also do dumb, unthinking stuff too. 

I also think this cyber cruelty is born of the callous and mean ways we now go at one another in public. Like it’s okay to cross boundaries of simple human decency. And yes, we are led in example by our current President, who daily revels in bullying, insulting, threatening, attacking, and condemning anyone who dares to get in his way.

In my faith tradition, Jesus offers a merciful alternative to the human sin of self-righteousness.  “…first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5) Wise advice to consider before we are tempted to trash someone for sins that we just might be guilty of too.

I’d like to think I would have been glad to let that kid keep the ball, but who knows?  As humans we all have within us the best and the worst of intentions and impulses. 

When it comes to the online outrage machine, “FOUL!” is certainly an apt description.

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

In D.C. a City Under Siege and History Itself Under Attack

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”            George Orwell

Letter from Washington, D.C., August 2025

The thing that struck me was how like a ghost town Washington, D.C. was on my visit there last week, my first in almost 25 years. You could cross the wide and expansive Pennsylvania Avenue without a walk light, so sparse was traffic.  It was the emptiest I’ve ever seen the nation’s capital on my many trips there, starting way back to my first visit to the city on an eighth-grade field trip in 1975.

Where was everyone?  The crowds in long lines at museums and memorials…foreign tourists taking in American history for the first time…families from all over the United States enjoying a living civics class, America 101.  

The food trucks and t-shirt vendors lined up on the curb in front of the National Mall. But there were very few folk to buy sparkly red, white, and blue hats or orange popsicles or an all-American hot dog.  The double-decker tourist buses that ride up and down the streets were mostly empty. At the FDR and MLK memorials I toured on the Tidal Basin, the beauty and poignancy of those places seemed like it was reserved for just me.   

What happened to this so alive city of history and politics and power? 

I roamed the vacant halls of the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and took in  Julia Child’s full Cambridge, Massachusetts kitchen preserved for the ages. I entered almost unaccompanied the hushed space that houses the original “Star Spangled Banner” flag. I got a bit teary when I looked at that historic remnant which symbolizes our nation’s aspirational ideals of sacrifice, courage, and resilience. The flag was still there! But few to witness it.

What is keeping folks away?

Doesn’t help that the current occupant of the White House labels the city a den of thieves and place of uncontrolled crime, even though crime is actually down in D.C., historically speaking. Facts do not matter to our ever-performative reality TV President, who ordered the National Guard to patrol the streets, subways stations and parks. It felt like there were more khaki clad soldiers at so many corners, than out-of-town visitors or federal workers. 

And the feeling on the streets of our Capitol was one of fear.

Deep fear about what’s next from the chaos creating, revenge seeking, attention addicted commander in chief.  Would more federal employees face job loss, in addition to 300,000 people already laid off? More federal prosecutors fired because they dared to indict January 6^th insurrectionists? The current regime continues to slash and burn, with no plan really. Just torch it all down. A nihilistic fever has overtaken the folks in power in D.C., and the chaos shows no sign of slowing.

Even the exhibits I enjoyed at the Smithsonian museums are under siege. As the President wrote on Truth Social recently, “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was….Nothing about Success…Brightness…the Future. This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE.”

The exhibit voting and free and fair elections and another on the tapestry of immigration that makes America, well, great—are these on the chopping block? The African American History Museum taught me more about the story and legacy of slavery in America than I’ve ever learned before. How soon might it be censored, altered, or even erased in the days to come?  Like that history didn’t ever happen.

I love the Smithsonian museums because these try to tell the whole American story. Good, bad, ugly, everything. A story that includes everyone, no one left out or silenced. Maybe that’s why select exhibits anger some so much, those who would whitewash any history that discomforts them, contradicts their view of American greatness. I love America for its humanity and its flawed and beautiful nature.  Our American story is tragedy and triumph, and it is a story that is still being written and that is wonderful and amazing.   

My advice is to get to D.C. very soon.  We’ve no idea what is to come next for the Smithsonian, or for any of the repositories and landmarks of American history in the District of Columbia.  Our shared history and how that is told and what is being told is under attack.  And that is sad. And that is scary. And that is such a shame. 

And that is history in the making that I for one wish was not true.

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.