An Invitation to Elsewhere
Theology, Politics, and Culture from the Margins
Liturgy isn’t just what happens on Sunday morning, even though that’s where most of us first encountered the word. Liturgy is any repeated action that forms who we are. It’s the rhythms and rituals that shape us, often without our conscious awareness, into particular kinds of people. The church taught me this, even if they used different language for it. Every week we stood to sing the same hymns, recited the same creeds, took communion using the same words. We practiced these things until they became part of us, until we knew them without thinking, until they shaped how we saw the world.
But liturgy extends far beyond sanctuary walls. There’s liturgy in how we practice democracy, in the civic rituals that form us as citizens. There’s liturgy in what we consume daily, the media we scroll through each morning before coffee, the shows we watch to unwind at night. There’s liturgy in our political engagement, in who we trust and who we dismiss, in what outrages us and what we ignore. All of these are repeated practices that form who we’re becoming, whether we’re paying attention or not.
The question isn’t whether we have liturgy. The question is whether we’re aware of what our liturgies are making us into.
And what happens when the institutions that promised to form us in truth and grace fail? When the church that advertised open doors shows certain people the exit? When the democracy we were taught to trust reveals itself as something else entirely? When the culture that promised to make us whole leaves us fragmented and exhausted?
This is where “elsewhere” comes in. Elsewhere isn’t exile, though it can feel like it at first. Elsewhere is what happens when you can’t stay in the institutions that formed you, when you’ve been pushed to the margins or when you’ve walked away because staying would have required betraying something essential about who you are. Elsewhere is where you discover what you’ve actually been practicing all along, beneath the official liturgy, in the spaces the institution couldn’t control. It’s where you build new practices or recover old ones the institution abandoned or create liturgies the institution was never brave enough to imagine.
I’m writing from Elsewhere. And if you’re reading this, you’re probably sitting in Elsewhere, too.
Let me tell you briefly who I am, because it matters for understanding why this project exists.
I grew up in the United Methodist Church in Columbus, Ohio. Three generations of my family were formed by that place. I was baptized there as an infant, confirmed as a teenager, married there in my twenties. The church was home in the deepest sense, until it wasn’t. The contradictions between what the church advertised and what it actually practiced became too large to ignore. I eventually found my way to a progressive congregation that I loved, but it was never quite home. Once you’ve been pushed out of the place that formed you, you can’t fully trust in the same way again.
I also grew up politically conservative. I was deeply involved in politics as a teenager, attended Boys State and Boys Nation, met presidents and senators, believed I understood how the world worked. I campaigned for Republicans, voted Republican, identified as Republican. And then, slowly, my understanding began to shift. It’s not that I rejected everything I’d been taught, but because I started asking questions that led me to different conclusions. I voted for Obama in 2008 and have voted Democrat ever since.
But here’s what matters: I didn’t turn on the people I grew up with. I grew, and my convictions changed, but I still understand the worldview I came from. I know what it’s like to believe what conservative institutions teach you, to trust that framework, to see the world through that lens. I feel genuine kinship with people who still vote Republican, even as I disagree with many of their conclusions. There’s no animosity, just different paths from similar starting points.
I’m also not neatly liberal. I care deeply about social justice, but I’m also a gun owner who supports the military and takes my Christian faith seriously. I don’t fit cleanly into either political tribe, which means I’ve learned to think for myself rather than defaulting to whatever my team is supposed to believe.
I’m married to my high school sweetheart. We’ve been together since she was fourteen and I was sixteen, married now for over twenty years. We have two kids who are teaching me more about courage and authenticity than I ever taught them.
I’m working on a book called Reclaiming Christianity: A Companion for the Wounded, the Weary, and the Wanderers. It’s an attempt to recover Christian faith with historical rigor and pastoral honesty, to discover what’s worth keeping and name what needs to be left behind. This publication is where I work out ideas in public, where I test arguments and explore questions and think through what it means to practice faith and politics and culture when you can’t trust the institutions anymore.
Here’s what you can expect from Liturgy of Elsewhere: essays that explore theology, politics, and culture through the lens of practice and formation. What are we becoming through the things we do repeatedly? Are we okay with that? And if not, what should we practice instead?
On theology: I’ll write about prayer and doubt, about what faith becomes when certainty collapses, about how to practice Christianity when the church has failed you. I care about Scripture and tradition, about what the early church understood that we’ve forgotten, about how theology actually matters for living. But I’m done with the kind of faith that demands you choose between your integrity and your belonging, that treats honest questions as threats to be managed. I’m interested in theology that makes space for complexity, that acknowledges mystery, that trusts people enough to tell them the truth.
On politics: I’ll write about how our civic practices form us, about what we’re becoming through our political engagement. How does the way we consume news shape us? What does it mean to practice democracy when democratic institutions feel broken? How do we hold together love for neighbor with principled disagreement? I know what it’s like to change political convictions, to arrive at different conclusions than the people who formed you. I also know what it’s like to still understand where they’re coming from, to feel connected to people whose votes look different than mine, to refuse the tribalism that demands you demonize everyone on the other side. I mourn what American politics has become and the ways it’s destroying our capacity for genuine disagreement without hatred.
On culture: I’ll write about the everyday liturgies that form us without our awareness. The phones we check compulsively, the shows we binge to numb ourselves, the social media platforms that train us in outrage and comparison. I’ll explore how pop culture functions as civic religion, how consumerism shapes desire, how the things we pay attention to determine who we become. Culture isn’t trivial. It’s the water we swim in, shaping us constantly through practices we rarely examine.
These three tracks overlap constantly, because life isn’t neatly divided into religious, political, and cultural compartments. The way you practice faith affects how you practice citizenship. Your political liturgies shape your spiritual life. Your cultural consumption forms both your theology and your politics. I’ll move between these domains fluidly, following the connections wherever they lead.
This space is for people rebuilding faith when the church has failed them. For people rethinking politics when democracy feels broken. For people reclaiming their imagination when the culture they trusted reveals itself as something else entirely. It’s for people figuring out what to practice when institutional liturgies betray their advertised values.
If you’ve been pushed to the margins of institutions that claimed to be about love, if you’re tired of the gap between what institutions say and what they do, if you’re trying to figure out what practices will actually form you into who you want to become, this is for you.
I don’t have all the answers. I’m not sure anyone does. But I’m willing to do the work, to sit with the questions, to try new things and see what forms. And I’m inviting you to do that alongside me.
I aim to publish weekly. While some essays will be deeply theological, some will be cultural criticism, and some will wade into politics, all of them will ask the same question: what are we becoming through what we practice, and are we okay with that?
Read when you can. Reply when something strikes you. Share what resonates. This project works when it’s a conversation, not a broadcast.
Welcome to Elsewhere. I’m glad you’re here.