On the Lost Art of Letter Writing

The First Snow of Winter, December 14, 2025

“Time moves slowly but passes quickly.” These words by Alice Walker are ever so prescient the older I become. As another year ends, and as the first snow of winter has come and gone, I am astonished by the passage of time.

A few years ago, I boxed up my dad’s papers from two old filing cabinets in the garage of the house he and my mom shared during the final fifteen years of his life. In them were notes of all my dad’s sermons from fifty years of ministry as a Lutheran pastor, several folders of correspondence, news clippings that captured his attention, and a collection of his letters to the editor that were published in the local newspaper in Hendersonville, North Carolina, where my parents retired in the summer of 1991.

I did not get around to looking through these files until the day after Christmas, when my attention was immediately drawn to several file folders that covered the years 1997 to 2008. My dad apparently saved a copy of every letter he wrote and received during that time frame. I imagine my dad sitting in his study for two hours each morning, taking the time to draft just the right note of thanks, congratulations, friendly advice, concern for one’s loss, or a simple note to say “I was thinking of you recently” followed by three or four paragraphs of memories, updates, and encouragement.

While looking through these files, it occurred to me that letter writing is a lost art. Entire books have been written about the approximately one thousand letters that John and Abigail Adams shared between them during their lifetimes, letters that expressed their love for each other and documented the founding of a new country. The famous correspondence between Jefferson and Adams during the final years of their lives from 1812 to 1826 allowed them to discuss the unfinished business between them and to explain how and why they came to fundamentally different conclusions about the meaning of the American Revolution. Great letter writers in history also included, among others, Voltaire, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, Queen Victoria, and Emily Dickinson.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is one of the most impactful letters in American history. In it, he explained why civil disobedience and nonviolent demonstrations were so important to social and political progress in the movement for racial equality. It also explained his frustrations with the moderate white clergy who were sympathetic to the cause of integration but unwilling to risk action. And it expressed King’s “hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all of their scintillating beauty.” Fifteen months later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law.

I do not suggest that my dad’s letter writing skill was equivalent to any of the historic figures cited above, but he took it seriously. In reading these letters, I gained insight into his thinking, his friendships, and the care and concern he had for so many people. Each letter he authored provides a glimpse of his extraordinary outreach to the people he knew and touched throughout his life.

The letters included correspondence with his close confidants—the Lutheran pastors I met during my high school years, when my dad was Bishop of the New Jersey Lutheran Synod. These letters brought back memories of the people and places of my youth, meaningful conversations about life, social concerns, and laughter. My dad laughed with special ease when he was around his close friends and colleagues, who all made it a point to include me and express genuine interest in me as a person. Today, sadly, so many of these people, including my dad, are no longer alive. But their impact on my life and development as a young man searching for guidance and answers to life’s big questions stuck with me over time.

Many of my dad’s letters are notes of thanks and encouragement, sent to people he had known over the years. It is incredible, really, to see how thoughtful and careful he was with each letter. With few exceptions, all were typed, single-spaced, filling most of the page and sometimes more. In each letter, he made sure to uplift the other person, impart his individual touch, and express his admiration for them.

I found a few letters to people my dad met through me and, until now, I did not know he had ever independently corresponded with them. One such letter expressed gratitude to a young woman who had encouraged me to serve on the Board of the service organization she directed. “You were indeed a major part in [Mark’s] motivation to serve in this important way during the years he lived and worked in Washington. Thanks for being that kind of ‘witness’ to him.”

Other letters discussed issues of social and political importance, such as one he wrote in September 2008 to the then Bishop of the Virginia Lutheran Synod: “This is just a quick note to express my personal gratitude to you for your comments which I read on the ELCA News Service last evening—as part of the ‘fighting poverty’ prayer vigil on the Capitol steps.” Attached to the letter was an article quoting the Bishop’s remarks as part of an interfaith coalition of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian leaders calling on members of Congress to address poverty through enhanced funding for food stamps, unemployment insurance, child support enforcement, health care, and home energy assistance. My dad thanked him and said he had “needed to hear some prophetic words from a bishop whom I know and respect.” Many letters to others were similar expressions of thanks and gratitude for acts of service and “witness” to people in need.

In the late 1990s, like many mainline Protestant denominations in the United States, the Lutheran Church debated resolutions that proposed making the church community more open and inclusive to the LGBTQ community, and which eventually moved the Church to ordaining openly gay and lesbian pastors and allowing clergy to perform gay marriages. My dad heartily endorsed these resolutions, which caused at least three close friends to consider leaving the church. One of these friends, who my dad had known since they attended seminary together in the early 1950s, told my dad he could not be friends with anyone who disagreed with him on this issue. In a series of heart-felt letters to this person, my dad passionately defended the necessity of the resolutions, shared deeply painful stories of two young men he had counseled over the years who later committed suicide, in part due to their inability to reconcile traditional church teachings with their sexual orientation. In one case, my dad painfully acknowledged that he had mishandled his counseling of the young man (in the early 1960s) and he blamed society’s and the Church’s lack of compassion and misunderstanding of sexual orientation for much of the suffering experienced by the LBGTQ community. He explained that he came to more fully understand that one’s sexual orientation is pre-ordained and the application of outdated biblical precepts was profoundly contrary to God’s love, compassion, and understanding of all humanity. I am proud of my dad’s compassionate advocacy for a more welcoming and inclusive church community and his willingness to risk long-standing friendships over such a critical issue years before the Lutheran Church and society fully evolved on the issue.

My dad also was a prolific writer of letters to the editor, in which he sometimes praised and frequently criticized an opinion expressed in the Op-Ed section of his local paper. The theme underlying most of these letters was anger at insensitivity, injustice, and self-righteousness, a genuine concern for humanity, and a lifelong pastor’s frustration with people misunderstanding what Christian witness is all about, especially in the Bible Belt South.

In one such letter, he responded to a previous letter writer who claimed that “the choice between rich and poor is ours for the making” and that those who “choose to be poor” deserve the consequences they suffer. My dad would have none of it:

Can you imagine how those folks on the lowest end of the economic scale feel when they read that kind of ideological trash? Can you imagine how single mothers, working a 40- or 50-hour week at minimum wage, struggling to pay for the children’s day care … and living in substandard housing, must have felt when they read [that letter] in the Sunday newspaper? What about the elderly living only on Social Security, struggling to pay rent and medical bills? Imagine how the hardworking family breadwinners, also earning just above minimum wage, wondering how they will pay the rent, feed their family, and gas up the car to get to work, must have felt in reaching such an insensitive letter?

God forgive us for our self-righteousness in the midst of our plenty. …

On another occasion, my dad wrote in response to a heartfelt commentary from one of the paper’s regular columnists, who had courageously revealed his struggle with alcoholism. In a letter praising the columnist that also reflected Dad’s frustrations with those who had been critical of him, my dad wrote:

This letter is to express thanks to [Stephen Black] for sharing, with both his admirers and his critics, his struggle with alcoholism over these many years. He has truly shared with the readers of the Times-News the story of God’s loving grace in a much more convincing way than all of the nasty and self-righteous letters (often with biblical quotes totally out of context) which often are printed in the “Letters” section. He understands what it means to have been “through the valley of the shadow of death”, and his expressions of gratitude to God, to his family, to the medical community who ministered to him, and to his good friends who stuck by him, are models of thanksgiving which all of us can imitate.

…Stick it to us, Steve, when we get too pompous, too uncaring about our neighbors who may be different than we are, too self-satisfied, too nasty or unloving toward those less fortunate than we. … Please keep those columns coming!

The letters I most enjoyed, however, were the personal ones that displayed my dad’s sense of humor. Upon learning in May 2008 that his longtime friend and colleague, the Rev. Dr. Glenn Rudisill, was about to celebrate his 90th birthday, my dad wrote:

Dear Glenn:

My mother taught me just a few years ago that I had to treat my elders with respect. While I have never known anyone quite as old as you are, this letter will be my attempt to communicate with the elderly.

Actually, you are an amazing guy! … My hope is that, thirty years from now, when I turn 90, I will be half as sharp as you are.

Dad was two months shy of his 80th birthday when he wrote this. Of course, my dad spent the remainder of that letter reminiscing and praising his good friend’s life, work, and “magnificent family” who reflected his “love, graciousness and commitment,” adding that Glenn had “been a marvelous colleague."

In an August 2008 letter to the Rev. Dr. Herluf Jensen, an accomplished theologian, pastor, and prophetic leader of the church during the volatile 1970s and 1980s, my dad wrote to congratulate him on the 40th anniversary of his ordination. In prior years, Jensen succeeded my dad, first as pastor of a church in Moorestown, New Jersey, and later as Bishop of the New Jersey Synod. The letter reminisced about their four decades of mutual counsel and respect, and recalled, with a tinge of pastoral humor:

Following my resignation as [Bishop] of the synod, what a delight it was for me to chair that meeting when you were elected to be my successor again! When I escorted you to the rostrum amidst a standing ovation, you asked me: “What do I do now?” My response was “Pray!”

Although he was a serious and highly respected theologian, I imagine Jensen laughed when he read that.

A letter from my dad to Rev. John Steinbruck in March 1997 also caught my attention. I have previously written about Steinbruck’s life and theology (here and here). During his time as senior pastor of Luther Place Church in Washington, D.C., Steinbruck and his wife Erna established the N Street Village, a four-story complex of shelters and clinics that offers food, clothing, housing, medical care, and social and mental health services to homeless women and their children. Dad wrote to congratulate Steinbruck on his impending retirement and to express gratitude for Steinbruck’s life of service on behalf of the most vulnerable members of society.

Your ministry … has been a gift for which we are all thankful. Whether you realize it or not, you have been one of my “heroes” in ministry. Indeed, led by God’s Spirit, you took what could have been an average urban congregation and enabled it to become a servant people in a city which has a reputation for taking itself too seriously. While I know that you will shy away from such praise, you need to know of [my] gratitude for the major role which you played in making this all happen.

There are so many more examples of letters and notes my dad saved that incorporated his experiences, concerns, and thankfulness for the people he had the opportunity to know over his 86 years of life. All his letters reflected his love for humanity, his caring nature, and his genuine interest in everyone to whom he wrote. I am thankful that he saved these letters, for they represent the memories, prayers, and laughter that filled my dad’s life. It is truly a gift to have them.

The digital age is upon us, and we have lost the special art of letter writing that more thoughtfully documents our friendships, appreciation, and concerns over our lifetimes. As we end one year and begin a new one, my wish to all of you is to enjoy life in all its dimensions. Let your friends and family know how much you care for them in written letters. Someday in the not-too-distant future, absent our letters, writings, and photographs, we will exist only in the memories of the people we have known and touched along the way. Peace to all and happy new year!

Edwin L. Ehlers circa 1990, McLean, Virginia

A Question of Character and American Values

U.S. military strike of civilian boat off Venezuelan coast, October 3, 2025

When he ran for president in 2020, Joe Biden described the election between he and Donald Trump as “a struggle for the soul of America.” It was an eloquent phrase from a politician not known for his eloquence, but the sentiment resonated with me for one simple reason: it was true.

Men and women make history, but they are incapable of knowing how history will turn out. This was true of the American patriots who fought in the revolution and the men who wrote, debated, and agreed upon the Constitution. It has been true of all the people who have fulfilled positions of leadership throughout American history. It is why, since its inception, the ultimate success of the American experiment has remained precarious and uncertain, and why Abraham Lincoln asked at Gettysburg “whether any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”

The men who founded and molded the early American republic were deeply human and possessed profound moral shortcomings, yet they were the greatest collection of political minds in history. Despite their strong disagreements, personality conflicts, regional rivalries, and conflicting interests, they held the union together during a vulnerable and turbulent time. The leadership they provided to a young and not yet fully formed nation helped shape the character of the political institutions that we rely upon to create and enforce our laws, protect our liberties, and implement the checks and balances set forth in the Constitution. In their public statements and proclamations, the leaders of our newly formed nation spoke with an eloquence frequently lacking in today’s political discourse, because they knew their reputations and legacies rested on the judgment of history.

A nation’s leaders transmit values across generations that determine and influence its national character. David Brooks has written that human beings “are social and spiritual creatures whose souls are either ennobled or degraded by the systems, cultures, and behaviors in which we are enmeshed.” In examining the policies and actions of a government, it is fair to ask, “Does this moralize or demoralize the people it touches? Does this induce them to behave more responsibly or less?” It is not possible to separate policy making from moral character. It is why America’s founders believed so strongly in the concept of public virtue.

As the historian Joseph J. Ellis noted in Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, the United States is “the oldest enduring republic in world history, with a set of institutions and traditions that have stood the test of time.” That is true in part because “the fate of the American experiment … required honest and virtuous leaders to endure.” Honor and character still matter. Without leaders who exemplify these traits, the American project cannot survive.

I have been thinking about honor and character lately, particularly as we learn more about the President’s military campaign against civilian boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. At the orders of the President and Secretary of Defense, small vessels suspected of carrying illicit drugs are blown to bits with laser-guided missiles and military-grade munitions. In most cases, everyone aboard the vessels is killed immediately. In one violent drone strike on September 2 that killed nine people and split the boat apart, a second strike forty minutes later killed two defenseless men while they desperately held onto a floating piece of debris to keep from drowning.

In none of the approximately twenty-two strikes to date, which have killed at least eighty-seven civilians, has there been any attempt to arrest and prosecute the individuals on the boats or to seize the drugs allegedly being transported. Indeed, in one strike in October, two survivors were detained and repatriated back to their home countries (Colombia and Ecuador). Why they were not detained and brought back for prosecution raises a host of questions. Were there no drugs on the boat? Was there insufficient evidence that these two individuals were connected to a drug smuggling operation? We do not know because the government has provided no explanation or evidence.

These killings have no legal or moral justification. Blowing up boats operated by civilians, even ones suspected of committing a serious crime, is murder, not justice. These are attacks against citizens of a country with which America is not at war. The individuals on these boats are not enemy combatants, but people suspected of drug trafficking, a crime which, even if supported by evidence (we have at present only the President’s and Secretary Hegseth’s unsupported statements), is not a capital offense. Because the government has disclosed no evidence, we know nothing about the targeted individuals, what they were doing, what was on their boats, or where they were destined.

Trump and Hegseth have claimed that they are seeking to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States, which has been responsible for a surge of drug overdose deaths over the past few years. But the targeted boats, if they are indeed trafficking drugs, are almost certainly carrying cocaine and not fentanyl, which comes mostly from labs in Mexico. Will Trump start ordering military strikes on Mexican drug mules? He implied as much recently when he said: “And now we’re going to do land, because the land is much easier.” Is that to be the legal and moral justification for the undeclared war killings of non-combatants?

If Trump is so concerned about illegal drugs entering the United States, why has he pardoned or commuted the sentences of over one hundred convicted drug traffickers? And why did he recently pardon the former president of Honduras, who was convicted last year in U.S. federal court of conspiring to import more than four hundred tons of cocaine into the United States?

The military strikes on the civilian boats in the Caribbean are unjustified killings under domestic law, international humanitarian law, and the U.S. Code of Military Justice. Most or all these killings would constitute war crimes under the law of armed conflict, but that does not apply because the people targeted in these boats were not at war with the United States or engaged in armed conflict with us. Even if they were members of drug cartels (or “narco-terrorists” as Trump calls them), and we have no evidence to know either way, no drug cartel is engaged in armed conflict with the United States. That they may be engaged in criminal activity (again, we have seen no concrete evidence) does not justify the lethal force inflicted. (For a thorough analysis of the clearly illegal nature of the military strikes on the boats, see "Expert Q&A on the U.S. Boat Strikes” from Just Security).

Americans understandably have strong feelings about drug trafficking. I served for eighteen years as a federal prosecutor during which I prosecuted and convicted hundreds of suspected gang members and drug dealers. I have no problem with aggressive interdiction efforts that intercept, arrest, seize, and prosecute the individuals responsible for smuggling drugs into the United States. But drug trafficking is a crime to be managed pursuant to our democratically enacted laws, just like any other crime.

The United States is supposed to be a nation of laws, and we cannot simply kill anyone we suspect of committing a crime, even a serious one. As stated by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY): “There is a difference between being accused of being a bad guy and being a bad guy. It is called the presumption of innocence. It is called due process. It is called, basically, justice that our country was founded upon.” Respect for human rights, the rule of law, and constitutional safeguards are what separates democracies from the authoritarian regimes of the world.

America today is experiencing a crisis of values. How else to explain that large numbers of Americans appear indifferent to the President’s and Secretary Hegseth’s callous indifference to human life and the rule of law. Trump and Hegseth think that enough Americans will admire their toughness that they will not ask the challenging questions. But the soul of America, the character of our nation, demands better than that.

As former Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) wrote in a recent essay in The Atlantic: “Citizens can support firm action while still holding on to their humanity. Death inflicted on the helpless is never an act of strength; it is what remains when strength forgets its purpose.” If extrajudicial killings of non-combatants are allowed to proceed with no oversight from Congress and no apparent accountability to the rule of law, we will have forfeited public virtue and lost the battle for America’s soul.

When, in 1776, the signers of the Declaration of Independence agreed to "mutually pledge to each other … our sacred Honor," they knew that the fate of the new republic depended on the honor and character of the men and women who would eventually be called upon to lead and represent the American citizenry. They did not demand perfection. And they understood that we cannot always expect people of impeccable moral character to lead the country. But public virtue, public honor, and public character have always mattered.

What message does it send to American citizens and the world when the statements and social media posts coming from the White House and many of the people serving in this administration, from Pete Hegseth to Stephen Miller, consistently appeal to the worst, most vile instincts of the body politic? These are people who routinely dehumanize immigrants, attribute the worst in everyone they fear or oppose, mock concepts like diversity and inclusion, despise the poor, openly discriminate against the LGBTQ community, and show resentment to the historical achievements of women, African Americans, and Latinos. They give little thought to how their policies impact real human beings, the communities in which they live and work, and the values they convey to American society. Their answer to every problem is to shift the blame to the prior administration and to accept responsibility for nothing.

What national values does the president convey when he orders the military to perform extrajudicial killings of civilians on the high seas? For that matter, what is the character of a nation that allows masked agents to racially profile Latinos, pull men and women from their cars as they head to work, ignore pleas that they have valid work permits and are here legally, and in some cases are U.S. citizens? What is the character of a country that, on the flimsiest of evidence and without due process, sends hundreds of immigrants to a notorious El Salvador prison known for its cruel treatment of inmates and human rights violations? What message does a country send when the president and his family members make billions of dollars on crypto investments and real-estate deals with foreign governments without regard for government ethics, the rules against conflicts of interest, and the laws against bribery? These are the actions of authoritarian governments and dictators, countries that are run by men and not laws.

The United States is better than this. As James Madison wrote in 1788, if our leaders lack sufficient “virtue and wisdom … we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks--no form of government can render us secure.” It is up to “We the People” to restore virtue and wisdom to American governance.

As Noah Webster wrote in 1835, “If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted.” We have had moments in our history when principled leaders of good character were not in charge, and the nation suffered. But we are today at a crucial turning point. How much longer can we endure under the current regime? The character of the nation, the “soul of America,” demands more. It is up to Congress, the Courts, and all of us, to ensure that the rule of law, and the checks and balances embedded in our Constitution, are upheld. If not, it is doubtful “whether any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”