From the Desk of Luke T. Bitzkie

No music touches me quite like Gospel music.  When I sit down at my piano in the dark hours of the night, I can't help but play the opening notes of Brother Wilbur's favorite gospel tune. Upon hearing the B-flat drop a tone, I am transported to a praise service with all the saints of South Oak Cliff. I hear the heavenly declarations of Sister Saundra's beautiful voice, the artful licks of Brother Anthony's alto sax, and perfectly timed hits as Dee plays the drums. I hear all of this while enveloped in the heavenly choir that is the community around us - the grandparents long-weathered in church tradition, the adults praising for the first time, and the stray children playing with their friends in the back. I smell the freshly cooked meal that sits still-upon the serving tables, and I watch as folks continue to pour in from the open porch outside. Though it may seem to the onlooker that I am alone at my piano, I am surrounded by a memory of ecclesial community and the pr...

The history of the Western world is one tainted by the ever-presumed existence of violence. From the ancient conquests of fourth-century Hellenism to the twentieth-century development of nuclear warheads, violence has been endemic in the existence of the Western world. This violence has existed perpetually in a variety of forms, from horizontal chaos and relational violence to the state-executed killing of condemned individuals. However, the latter is endemic to the West in a specific way – it lies at the center of its central religion. In this ethical study, I will explore the relationship between the religion of Christianity and the existence of state-mandated capital punishment. Specifically, I will engage in careful study of conceptions/depictions of salvation in both (1) capital punishment at the behest of the state and (2) historical soteriological understandings of the death of Jesus Christ. Through this, I aim to demonstrate the inextricable relationship that exists between th...

I remember the first time that I encountered "self-immolation." I was in high school, studying in an empty science lab for a test, when I came across a picture that was forever imprinted on my mind. The picture was of a man sitting cross-legged and meditating silently, but he was completely engulfed in flames. Initially, I didn't understand that at which I was looking. I couldn't process the picture in front of me. I was filled with shock. What led to this horror? Why was he burning? Did he do this himself? What would bring him to do such a thing? These questions rattled my mind; I was unable to understand this harrowing photograph, this paradoxical burning. What forces could ignite such action? On June 11, 1963, Thích Quảng Đức self-immolated in Saigon, South Vietnam. [1] An elderly Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Quảng Đức lit himself on fire to protest the persecution of Buddhists in South Vietnam by the Diệm regime.[2] Under the then-current regime of Ngô Đình Diệm, Bu...

Like Augustus McCrae, I'm partial to the evenings. I love to sit, relax, and watch as the sun trails its way to the horizon. Sometimes, I imagine my dad and grandpa in the chairs around me, talking about the weather as we wait for the beer-can chicken to finally be done. To these evenings, I am quite partial. These evenings are my safe space, my refuge from the world around me – the world around us. Yet, as I sit in the escape of these simple evenings, I know that I must soon return to the world, like my father and his father before him. I've come to realize these evenings don't last forever. The sun sets every night. Reflecting on these evenings, I have realized what an escape they truly are. Though they let me escape the rat race and exist without consequence, they are only a temporary release from the chaotic reality of the world. My evenings are only a speck of peace in the universe's conflict. My escape seems to be nothing more than a willful ignorance of the world...