On March 6, 2023, sociologist Jason Arday became the youngest Black person to be appointed as a Cambridge University professor. Three-and-a-half years later, on Aug. 14, 2026, he was found dead in a manner police called “unnatural” but “not suspicious.”…
The role of white Christian voters in 2026 midterms
There is good reason to believe female voters may be crucial to Democrats’ effort to retake control of Congress — particularly if past is prologue. In the 2018 midterms, during Donald Trump’s first term, 58% of women voted for congressional…
Why nondenominational churches aren’t Baptist churches in disguise
The data post from Ryan Burge caught my eye — as usual. But one of the comments below the post really got my attention. “Let’s be real, non-denoms are basically Baptists,” the commenter said. This was in response to Burge’s…
Confronting the white consensus
If you ask American voters to name their biggest concerns, kitchen table issues always head the list. It’s not a partisan issue. Everybody wants a good job, decent health care and affordable gas and groceries. But white conservatives have a…
Reflections on Death of the Pastor’s Wife
The morning after receiving word that his wife, Mica, had died by a gunshot wound to the head, pastor John-Paul Miller declared with excitement to his congregation, “I wrote a new parody for you all today!” Cheers erupted as Miller…
The role of Christian ethnic militias in Nigeria’s violence
An urgent prayer request came from my Fulani Christian friend in Nigeria July 11. His relatives were in danger: “Soldiers arrived suddenly and started chasing everyone. They arrested four men and stampeded the cows, which promptly got into the nearby…
Expanded sports betting is harming student athletes
On Jan. 14, 2023, the Dayton Flyers held a comfortable halftime lead over the VCU Rams. ESPN gave the Flyers a 95.8% probability of winning the game. The Flyers came out of the locker room and proceeded to implode. With…
Let’s define our terms on ‘sex’ and ‘gender’
On Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which directed government agencies to replace the term “gender” with “sex” in all federal documents…
Does Methodist connectionalism serve large and small churches equally?
The battle between Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas and its regional governing body in The United Methodist Church may boil down to whether large and small churches in the denomination can continue to operate by the same governing…
Democratic Socialists are not Social Democrats
I read George Orwell’s Animal Farm in the ninth grade. I’ve been thinking a lot about the novella in recent weeks as candidates from the Democratic Socialists of America face more moderate Democrats in primary elections across the country. In…
Ideology, autocracy and resistance: Assessing our US situation
As the end of the summer approaches, Congress returns to Washington, and the November elections move into their stretch run, it seems a good time to try to assess where exactly we are in terms of this second Trump administration…
AI slop: Do you know who wrote that book?
Three years ago, in June 2023, I was scrolling through the Amazon Kindle bestseller list. All the regular, normal, to-be-expected titles were at the top. But as I kept scrolling, the books began to change. Gone were the big names…