People from around the world have contributed commentary, humor, poetry, prayers, and images to VCBC, including clergy, laity and seminarians from various faiths as well as skeptics, professors, teachers, students, pacifists, a nuclear weapons designer, a retired grandmother, a policeman, a limo driver, and maybe even you!
Be that as it may, I started VCBC, and have so far provided most of it's content, design, and editorship. My title comes from what one does to maintain a site with a dog on it.
By profession I'm a physicist working for a US Government defense contractor.
By religion I'm Christian (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), although I was born Jewish, raised Episcopalian (Anglican Communion) in the USA's Bible Belt, and I spent 20 years as an atheist before being recalled to faith. I'm also a former Stephen Minister, and Stephen Ministry Leader.
When my atheism disintegrated, I explored various faith traditions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Taoism. I learned that revealed religion is among other things a mode of knowledge, a way of knowing. However, so are science, psychology, history, philosophy, literature, etc. When we humans confuse religion with other ways of knowing, we distort God's Revelation to us, and all too often use that distortion as a pretext for conflict, with increasingly powerful weapons. In other words, we make our world ever more dangerously insane.
Hoping to do something about it, I founded VCBC. It's like trying to change the course of an aircraft carrier with an oar, but physics has taught me patience.
In closing I remind you that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a permanent attitude." I ask you to take that attitude toward me and all the contributors to this site.
