Bill Tammeus
Commentator
Bill Tammeus, a Presbyterian elder and former award-winning Faith columnist for The Kansas City Star, writes the daily "Faith Matters" blog for The Star's Web site and a column for The Presbyterian Outlook. His latest book is "Jesus, Pope Francis and a Protestant Walk into a Bar: Lessons for the Christian Church."
Stories by Bill Tammeus
Purge In Turkey Worries KC Emigres
The brutal, imperious reaction of Turkey’s dictatorial government to a failed coup attempt last year has turned life into a nightmare for most, if not all, Kansas City-area residents of Turkish nationality. “I don’t know of anyone here from Turkey who is not affected,” says Selahattin Aydin, executive director of the Dialogue Institute of the…
Christianity Faces Another Tempest
As the world marks the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation in October, lots of Kansas City’s Protestant churches know that today they’re in another major theological upheaval. This one isn’t as violent (yes, the Protestant Reformation turned viciously violent for decades) as the one in 1517, but it may be as…
Vietnam War Refugees Succeed — and Struggle — in Kansas City
When American troops made a chaotic, embarrassed withdrawal from Vietnam in April 1975, the flood of terrified Vietnamese refugees to Kansas City began. Ty Bui, who had spent seven years in the Vietnamese military, escaped his country in August that year and, after staying in a refugee camp in Arkansas, came to Kansas City in…
Clergy Group Looking To Improve Education In Kansas City
After decades of frustration over education in Kansas City, area clergy are joining together to try to fix it. “We need the community to help us,” Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent Mark Bedell told me, “because the failure of this school district is a community failure. We understand that we can’t do it alone, and…
KC Clergy Stood Fast With Anti-War Stance
He’s 84 now, and has been retired since 2003 from his role as pastor of a United Methodist Church in northern California, but the Rev. Phillip Lawson vividly remembers all the trouble he stirred up in Kansas City in 1970 by speaking out against the Vietnam War. He went to Hanoi and, in a radio…
Using An Old Custom To Lure New Parishioners
For the last half century, membership numbers in Mainline U.S. Protestant churches have gone mostly in one direction — down. Protestants once constituted a large majority of the American population. And Mainline churches — the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Church of Christ, the Christian…
A Community Rebounds, Copes After Targeted Murders
Since that bloody Sunday in April 2014, when a neo-Nazi targeted Kansas City’s Jewish community, this area’s 18,000 Jews have been adjusting to the reality that evil forces still want them dead. The three people he murdered — two at the Jewish Community Center, one at nearby Village Shalom — turned out to be Christians,…
Rev. Adam Hamilton Strains to Prevent Schism in United Methodist Church
Forgive the Rev. Adam Hamilton, founding pastor of the 20,000-member United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, if his attention seems divided these days. One minute, he’s celebrating the opening of a new $81-million sanctuary — complete with a breathtakingly large stained glass window — at its main campus in Leawood. The next, he’s worrying that…
Listening With Respect: Discussion Tackles Century-Old Issues
This year’s 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation raises two questions, in local terms: What, after all this time, still divides Kansas City’s Protestants and Catholics? What common ground is marked by the Venn circles of beliefs and practices of these two huge branches of Christianity? Leaders of my own congregation, Second…
Hospital Chaplains Deliver Spiritual Care
Right from birth, this baby was sick, in trouble. “Her mother immediately asked for prayer and was very optimistic,” Kathie Knehans, then a chaplain at Children’s Mercy Hospital told me. So Knehans prayed with the family. And even when no family members were present, Knehans, now retired, visited the child and prayed. When the still-hospitalized…