Russell E. Saltzman

My home state of Missouri is one of the most aggressive in carrying out the death penalty. So far this year, Missouri has executed two men, Walter Storey, forty-seven, on February 11 and, most recently, Cecil Clayton, seventy-four, on March 17. Since 1989, Missouri has executed eighty-two people. Continue Reading »

The eleventh chapter of John opens with Jesus across the Jordan, away from Judea, laying low after having escaped being stoned to death at the Temple. It is there that he receives word from Bethany—from Mary and Martha, Lazarus’s sisters—to hurry and aid his friend who is sick. Continue Reading »

We just had a revolution—a polite one. Continue Reading »

Let’s get right to the point. Why are Catholics such poor hymn singers? Continue Reading »

It all started when a guy told me in a Facebook post that if someone tells him he is humble, it is a certain sign he isn’t. Though I told him he should just be humble enough to take my word for it, nonetheless, I decided to consult the New Testament, if only to straighten out a few things. The short of it is, I’m pretty sure humility is overrated, at least as preachers tell it. Continue Reading »

I don’t go all gooey over royalty, especially British royalty, but that didn’t stop my daughter, when in middle school, from becoming an anglophile. She attended British-American high teas in Kansas City several times and, in company with a woman actually from London, sang God Save the Queen. Once, when we visited New York, she overhead English accents and made me go over and ask them to join our table. The couple did and we had a pleasant time, though they didn’t drink tea as she thought they should have. Now twenty-two, I think she’s mostly over it. Continue Reading »

New Year’s Day has never been my favorite day off. What does it in fact celebrate? Continue Reading »

He was born into the silence of this world. Because there was no room for him in a proper house the night he was born, the Gospel of Luke reports, he was born of his mother with Joseph nearby out there in the stable with the animals. Probably there was no one interested. That was the silence of that night. Who would care, anyway? Just one more peasant child, and who celebrates or notices or marks the birth of yet another peasant arriving in this world? Have you ever heard a prayer of thanks for the children born in a United Nations refugee camp? The children of peasants are always born into silence. Continue Reading »

One April night thirteen years ago, a police sharpshooter killed Jake. Continue Reading »

The contemporary music that best appeals to me falls into a folk or urban folk genre, and I like it most when it voices alienation and loss. When it touches faith, as it frequently does, it nudges up against a faith that is absent or mislaid and one hears a wistful grief for its absence. Continue Reading »