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.

     

 

Go Away, Get Away, Be Away Before Summer Fades

“Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” – Sam Keen

It’s breezy here this morning, about 11 am now, high thin clouds above, broken up by glimpses of a bright blue August sky.  Families walk by me with their beach implements in tow, on the way to spend the day by the sand and the surf. The laughter and chatter of children is everywhere, as kids ride their tricycles or glide by on roller blades, or take a walk with Meme and Papa so mom and dad can get a break.      

I am away.  

For the past four days I’ve gone away to a modest cottage on Cape Cod, a weathered abode, covered in grey shingles, with plenty of windows to let the sea breeze in, neighbors close by, enjoying their time away too.  There are bikes in the shed for long rides and board games in the closet for rainy days, and a list of recommended places for the best seafood and the tastiest ice cream nearby.  

We all need to get away. We need to escape, retreat, run off to…a seaside bungalow, or a lakeside cabin. We need to get away to a just big enough efficiency apartment in the heart of the city we love and then go to a show or the museum. We need to go away to the mountains and hike, to the plains with their stark beauty or the prairies with the grass that sways in the wind. We need to find our unique away place, a special and singular place where a visit renews our souls, rests our bodies, and resets our spirits.

Away.

It doesn’t have to be wicked expensive or overly chichi, or a destination touted by travel sites or a place made viral when promoted on TikTok, no. Away can be your family’s farmhouse up in Vermont that you’ve spent so many summers at, that makes you feel like a child again when you return.  Away can be as close as a day trip to a favorite local beach or to munch golden onion rings at the clam shack down the street or to sit in the stands at Fenway and watch a ball game on a warm summer night.

Everyone needs to go away on regular basis. As a discipline.  And not just in summer.

In a world where we are constantly bombarded by the ding of cellphone notifications and the click clack of our laptop computer’s keyboard, we just need a break. A chance to catch our breaths.  To sleep late or take a nap in the hammock mid-afternoon. In these times when TV and the “news” are on everywhere we go (home, restaurant, bar, on the gas station pump, above the dentist chair!) we need to step away from the storm and bluster of it all. Turn away from and turn off all those empty-headed talking heads that make us despair.

With no “away” we risk becoming zombies in life, overworked, numbed up and zoned out because the pace and the volume of modern life is just too much to take. Doesn’t matter if you work for UPS or at Market Basket, or as a teacher or banker or stay at home parent. The only people who do not need to get away and take a break are….well, no one.

God did take the seventh day of Creation off, to rest, after all. No doubt God was exhausted by the effort of lighting the fuse on the Big Bang, then making everything from aardvarks to zebras, then going into overtime to make us cranky, pain in the tush, human beings. Talk about a divine effort!  After that job even the Creator of Everything That Is needed some zzzz’s, precious time to do, well…absolutely nothing.

I write this essay in the first week of August which means if you’ve yet to enjoy a summer get away, if you have not escaped somewhere, to anywhere but here, times a wasting. We’re going to need all the energy we can muster come September and the new school year and summer’s end and more of the continuing chaos being sowed by the folks in D.C. (I for one wish they would go away! Often too!)

So, here’s some unsolicited life and spiritual advice. Just go. Get away. Find your away place. Pack a bag.  Hold the mail. Put down the phone for the day. Trade wingtips and high heels for flip flops.

And then enjoy. Really enjoy that place called…away.    

(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.

 

Kindness ALWAYS Wins The Ride and Race of Human Life!

"It takes courage to be kind.”   --Maya Angelou

Kindness is an amazing and oh so needed virtue in our world now and always. Kindness happens when we treat another person with love, with care, with respect, honoring their dignity and worth as fellow human beings on the earth.  For folks of faith like me, kindness is at the heart everything we believe and everything we do.  You see, if I say I love God but then fail to love a neighbor, well, kindness loses. God loses in a way.  

We’re living in times when it might be tempting to conclude that kindness is somehow out of fashion now. Kindness is too risky, or it feels scary in practice. Kindness is even a sign of weakness on our parts and not strength. Kindness just does not have the fortitude to survive in our sharp elbowed all too cynical world. 

That’s wrong. Dead wrong.

Kindness still matters. Kindness is the most powerful energy to change this world for the good.  Just ask folks like me who in less than two weeks will participate in the Pan Mass Challenge (PMC) charity bike ride across Massachusetts, the weekend of August 2-3^rd. Thousands of us PMC folk—riders, volunteers, and donors—we will dare to be kind. To practice kindness that moves us to help those in need, folks battling cancer, people who love someone with cancer and neighbors and strangers who lost someone to cancer.

Thousands of riders from all over the country and world will get on their bikes, cinch up their helmets, and then ride tens of thousands of mile to be kind. To show folks who have been hurt by cancer that someone is on their side, pulling for them, praying for them and riding for them. 

I’m a sixteen-year rider, been a church pastor for 35 years, and on this earth for 64 years, and I have never experienced such a huge and wonderful gathering of kind folks as I do in the PMC.  We’ll try our best to both talk the talk of kindness and ride the ride of kindness too!  If you’d like to donate, please follow the link for my ride at the end of this essay.  

Here are some of the amazing numbers which mark the PMC.

$76 million: 2025’s fundraising goal to support research and care at Boston’s world class cancer institute, the Dana Farber (DFCI). 

One-billion dollars plus: total money raised by the PMC since its first year, 1980.

One-half, as in fifty percent of all the new cancer drugs developed in the United States in the last five years came from the Dana Farber.

One hundred percent: when you give a dollar to the PMC, ALL OF IT goes directly to cancer care and research.

186 miles: the distance from Sturbridge to Provincetown, Massachusetts, the longest of the PMC rides this year.  

78,000: the number of pedal strokes for an average rider like me to go that entire 186 miles, from the hills of central Mass to the dunes at the tip of the Cape.

6,800: the number of folks who will ride this year.

3,000: the number of volunteers who will support the PMC riders.

Priceless: with each mile pedaled our world gets closer to a cure for cancer and becomes a kinder place. So, on this upcoming August weekend, if you see PMC riders cycling the highways, byways, and hidden corners of the Bay State, please wave, smile, say a prayer, and remember that the main fuel which gets us all the way from start to finish is simple human kindness.  

To donate to my ride: https://profile.pmc.org/JH0352

To make a general donation: https://donate.pmc.org/

(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 a Time of So Much Human Cruelty, What If God Is One of Us?

"I was hungry and you fed me…thirsty and you gave me something to drink…a stranger and you welcomed me…naked and you gave me clothing…sick and you took care of me…in prison and you visited me….whatever you do for the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you do for me.’”       --Matthew 25, parable told by Jesus, excerpt

What if whenever we donated groceries for a food insecure family or provided free medical care to an indigent person, or whenever we showed mercy to a lonely senior, or visited someone in prison, we were actually caring for God? Actually loving God directly? Seeing God in that hurting person?    

That’s the question Joan Osborne asked in her self-titled 1995 song, “What If God Was One of Us” when she sang, “What if God was one of us, Just a slob like one of us, Just a stranger on the bus, Tryin' to make His way home?”  That’s a pretty radical idea. That God: the creator of all that exists; God, who lit the fuse on the Big Bang; this God is also in you, me, and everyone, but especially in the hurting of our world. God in folks whom society far too often ignores or worse, even hurts, neglects on purpose.

What if God is one of us?

What if God is with the hungry and the thirsty, the tens of thousands of Gazans, waiting in a mile-long queue to find food for their empty bellies? What if God is the stranger, an undocumented person, dragged away by masked agents, stripped of all legal and human rights, detained in an inhumane prison? What if God is one of the 16.9 million Americans who will lose their Medicaid health care coverage under the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” championed by the President and his followers?

I’d say God is “one of us” in a very real ways way. Each of us has inherent worth and dignity because we are made in the image of God. Whenever one of us is treated without mercy, or thrown out on the streets, or deported to a nation where they might be killed, or denied health care, we are doing that to a child of God.

Maybe even to God.

My faith tells me that job one for a Christian is to seek out, see, love and care for the least among us, our brothers and sisters in the family of God.  Now not everyone in my tradition feels or acts this way. Not long after shepherding the “BB Bill” through the House, Speaker Mike Johnson posted on social media.

“‘All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.’” …Then commenting on that Bible passage, Johnson wrote, ‘soli Deo Gloria,’ Latin, meaning ‘glory to God alone.’”

So, let me get this right.

We “glorify God” when we fund a tax cut for the wealthiest by slashing health care for the poor and food stamps for the hungry? The government can choose to give away billions to folks who already don’t pay enough in taxes, but please, PLEASE, don’t attribute such heartless acts as being “of God.” Or blessed by God. Or somehow reflecting God’s will.

God has and will always, be on the side of the powerless, those who have had few powerful friends on Capitol Hill lately. The Bible is very clear about our responsibility as people of faith and humans, to our neighbors.

Deuteronomy 15:11, “For the poor will never cease from the land; therefore, I command you, saying, ‘You shall open your hand wide to your brother, to your poor and your needy, in your land.’ Exodus 22:20-26:”You shall not oppress or hurt the poor. Leviticus 19:9-10. “A portion of the harvest is set aside for the poor and the stranger.” Proverbs 31:8-9, “Speak out in defense of the poor.” Luke 4:16-21, “Jesus proclaims his mission: to bring good  news to the poor and oppressed.” 1 John 3:17-18, “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees one in need and refuses to help?”

And my favorite, Matthew 25:34-40, “What you do for the least among you, you do for me, Jesus.” But when we turn our backs on the lost, lonely, and neglected, we turn our backs on God, in a way. Turn our hearts away from God.

Too many Christian leaders use faith like a fig leaf to cover over the shame of their actions towards the poor. I don’t revel in judging fellow believers, but I cannot stand by when they use the language of faith to justify actions that do not at all reflect God’s love and mercy.

What if God is one of us? What if every time we fail to help the helpless, we fail God? What if when we show mercy and love, we love God?

Something to think and pray on in these troubling times.

(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.

 

 

     

Good or Great? America: What Will It Be?

 

"America will be great if America is good. If not, her greatness will vanish away like a morning cloud".     --The Reverend Andrew Reed, English Congregational minister, 1830

Are we the good guys anymore? America?

My God I so want to believe in this ideal, this myth, this civic self-understanding and shared aspirational dream. I think we might have once seen ourselves as good.  

Good. As in decent, humane, merciful, and generous.

The kind of nation that takes good care of its own, especially the poor and vulnerable, the unhoused, the ill clothed, the unemployed, and the sick. Can we claim that truth? Are we a nation that can be depended upon by our allies, that when freedom is on the line in some far away place, America will always stand with those peoples who seek to be free?  

Is that us?

Are we a country that still remembers that so much of our cultural vibrancy and economic strength comes from migrants and immigrants, folks who travel to our shores and borders seeking a new home and new opportunities? My paternal great-grandfather Edward believed that when he came here in 1876 from Ireland as did my maternal grandfather Armand, who immigrated from Canada in the early 1930’s. Both sought work and a new life.

Would those men be welcomed today? Or maybe turned away? Or who knows? Tracked down by masked government agents, arrested without a court hearing, thrown in an anonymous black van, then whisked away to some secret prison, maybe even never to be heard from again.

I still want to believe that America celebrates religious diversity, that our country is a place where you can believe what you want, and you can choose not to believe too. Whether Christian or Jew or Muslim or agnostic or atheist, America is supposed to be a place that honors and respects freedom of religion and freedom from religion too. Our founding forebears, the ones who put their signatures on the Declaration of Independence on July 4^th, 1776: do we really imagine they would have favored a Christian theocracy, or Christian nationalism? Seriously?      

Freedom of thought and speech and freedom of the press: those still apply here, right? That you or I can be flag waving or flag burning patriots and trust that those rights are both guaranteed by our Constitution.  How amazing is that?

I mean I think that the press’ job is still to be a bulldog when it comes to the government, to cover Uncle Sam without fear or favor.  I don’t think our press is supposed to be like a fawning little puppy or fox, yapping out “HURRAH!” anytime those in power pass this law or approve that budget. 

Should we be worried when a major news outlet pays $16 million to the President because his feelings were hurt by a new story? You’d think “No way!” That could never happen. Certainly not in a news organization whose forebears include Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.

And yet this week that’s exactly what happened.

Can we be good, America, without a free and courageous press? I don’t think so.

And as the Declaration we’ll all celebrate on 4^th says, “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Translation: no Kings in America, then, now, or ever. And also, no dictators, no tyrants, no despots, no bullies, and certainly no civilian head of government with too much unchecked, unchallenged power.

Two hundred and forty-nine years ago, we left behind the monarchy and all the tyranny that always comes when too much power is given to too few, or to the one. Some may think that is great. But not me. Wannabee royalty is never good for America.

Not in 1776. Not in 2025.

Good or great?  What will it be America? Thank God that choice is still in the hands of we the people. Happy Independence Day!

(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.

 

    

Political Assasinations in Minnesota: Public Service Turns Deadly

“…America soars when we look out for one another and we take care of each other, when we root for one another's success …and try to build something better for generations to come, that's why we do what we do. That's the whole point of public service.” --President Barack Obama 

I write this essay on an overcast humid Saturday afternoon in Minneapolis, where just hours ago, at the majestic downtown Basilica of Saint Mary, Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark were remembered and laid to rest.  The Hortmans were assassinated two weeks ago by a gunman posing as a police officer. The shooter had  just come from the home of Minnesota Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman, where they were also shot. They are still recovering from their injuries.     

There are so many awful details that surround this heartbreaking event.  The Hortmans leave behind two adult children, who’ll now be without their parents, no mom or dad for the years ahead. The killing took place in a relatively quiet suburb town of the Twin Cities.  Is any place safe from gun violence? The accused stalked his victims for weeks, surveilling their homes, noting their movements.  The killing was pre-meditated and meticulously planned.

But to me, what is most chilling and frightening about these cruel acts, is that when he was apprehended the shooter was found in possession of a “hit list” with the names of several dozen other state and federal public officials. 

Why did these office holders and agency heads and government workers deserve death in the warped and cruel mind of the assassin? What united the dead, killed, injured, and threatened, in life and in death? 

They were public servants.

They dedicated their professional lives to serving the public and contributing to the common good. They practiced public service, the call and vocation to serve the people. To work not for some extravagant amount of money, stock options or six figure bonuses. They worked in and for the government. And even though there are plenty of loud-mouthed pols and grandstanding pundits who love nothing better than to tear down and demonize government, the truth is we all need government and its public servants.

We need services like healthcare, first responders, public schools, and universities. We needs laws to shape a civilized society. For at its best government is a direct reflection of the will of the people it serves. Government helps to provide a social framework for what it means to be in community, in a town or city, in a state or a country.

And when our culture produces psychopaths who take it upon themselves to assassinate and threaten public servants, we are all in very big trouble.  Because government, and representatives like Hortman and Hoffman: they aren’t “they.”

Public servants and the government: these institutions and folks are finally us. Our neighbors and friends. The person we share a church pew with on Sunday morning. They coach Little League baseball and volunteer at the soup kitchen.

Like Liz, my local town librarian, who provides a place and space for folks of all ages to expand their minds and hearts through knowledge. The government is found in two public servant in the church I serve, Kate and Angie, who for years have served tirelessly on our local school committee, and with great devotion to the kids. Government is police officer James who parks his car at the end of the church driveway and helps to keep our town safe. The government and public service is you and me and us.

When a reporter asked our current President if he would call Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and offer him the full support of the federal government and condolences, this is how our commander in chief answered.

"I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out. I'm not calling him,. Why would I call him? ….the guy doesn't have a clue. He's a mess. I could be nice and call, but why waste time?"

Why waste time on compassion, goodness, and basic human decency?  If the Oval Office occupant doesn’t know the answer to that question, he doesn’t deserve to be a public servant, at least in this citizen’s eyes. 

Rest in peace, Melissa and Mark Hortman.  God bless you both.

And thank you for your public service.

(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.