Russell E. Saltzman

My only goal was to select the candidate who would be most subject to the constraints of power under our constitutional system. Continue Reading »

Whatever variety of outsider populism Trump awakened, he’s walked all over it. His collapse in early polling heralds a Republican debacle. Nothing like it has happened since Goldwater. Continue Reading »

My life as a restaurant host. Continue Reading »

My oldest son once spent a summer on staff at a Scout reservation. Underneath his tent platform lived a family of skunks. They would amble by, mama and her kits (baby skunks are kits, as baby goats are kids), with nary a hint of animosity and rarely a spark of curiosity. Who knows how many summers . . . . Continue Reading »

The man to whom I was pastor, 1988 thereabouts, owned and operated an Amoco service station (long before it became BP Amoco). To his surprise he learned the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), to which he belonged, along with several mainline denominations, had called for a boycott of . . . . Continue Reading »

For the longest moment driving home two days ago, I was convinced that my next birthday, then just days away, would be my seventieth.I cannot think what trick of mind swayed me to that conclusion. True, I have been looking forward to being seventy, perhaps enough mentally to add a year to my tally. . . . . Continue Reading »

The message the women heard from the “young man” is found in St. Mark (16:5-8). Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome carried their spices to the tomb, thinking to anoint the body of Jesus. Apparently, none of them gave much thought to removing the stone from the entrance, except . . . . Continue Reading »

Mulling my Lenten way through the Apostles’ Creed, I have come to see that in defining what we do not believe, we come to know better what we do believe. While the Creed positively summarizes what Christians believe, it equally fences out what we negatively do not believe. I have been walking the . . . . Continue Reading »

This Lent has me digging through the Apostle’s Creed. Viewed in a certain direction, it not only says what we believe; it lets us in on what we do not believe. The first article of the Creed, my last column, says Christians believe in one God and this one God is the Father who made both heaven and . . . . Continue Reading »

I’m spending time this Lent with the Creed. I hadn’t gotten further than the first sentence before remembering something St. Peter said.“False prophets,” complained Peter, “appeared in the past among the people, and in the same way false teachers will appear among you. They will bring in . . . . Continue Reading »