Bob Welch’s book ‘Cross Purposes’ sizes up current culture vs. religious toleration

During a sailboat trip to spread his mother’s ashes, former Register-Guard columnist and and editor Bob Welch — that rare blend of journalist and evangelical — committed to telling a story he knew could rankle some of his fellow believers but he felt had to be told. Because, he realized, we become what we tolerate.

So, amid the insidious shoals of Trump, COVID, and race, he plied the cultural currents to answer a question theologian Henri Nouwen so eloquently asked: “To whom do I belong? To God or to the world?”

At stake with the answer, Welch believes, is an evangelical faith that has drifted deep into troubled waters — and whose hope lies not in presidents, political parties, or patriotism, but in the One who’s been overlooked amid the rancor and the rage.

The book is available through his website at www.bobwelchwriter.com.