In the Southern Baptist Convention no one has the power to tell local Baptist congregations who they can and cannot ordain to ministry. When abuse comes to light, the church sends the offending pastor on his way with a glowing letter of recommendation because congregational morale would suffer if the truth came out.
In the twisted, ‘two kingdoms’ theology of Jerry Falwell Jr., Donald Trump is the perfect fit
Jerry Falwell Jr. is fine with Jesus setting up his Sermon on the Mount kingdom when he returns on the clouds of glory. In the meantime, however, Jerry Jr. has a different kind of savior in mind. Somebody big, mean, nasty and profane, the kind of guy the baddies can’t push around. Donald Trump looks like that man.
Lost in the debate over Trump’s silence during the Apostles’ Creed: a bigger issue for progressive Christians
The coming generation will have no morality apart from a stout belief in God. Progressive Christians can’t afford to trash the Apostles’ Creed unless we’ve come up with a fitting substitute.
Silence in the face of evil: learning from an obscure schoolteacher who urged Karl Barth and other theologians to stand in solidarity with the Jews in Nazi Germany
If I thought Nazi-era Germany was an aberration I could probably move on; but in Donald Trump’s America, who can think that? The Church of Jesus Christ is confronted by an anti-Gospel once again. The German Church never acknowledged her complicity with the National Socialists, and the white churches of America are equally resistant to truth.
After the eulogies: Was John McCain one of our ‘better angels’?
John McCain was no saint, but he pointed us to the better angels of our nature and many of us loved him for it. He treated enemies like friends. And in a messy and divided world like ours, that may be as good as it gets.
My close encounters with Southern Baptist hell
Southern Baptists’ carrot-and-stick evangelistic strategy was perfectly suited to a denomination that was born defending slavery, that came of age in a season of Jim Crow segregation, and that had spent the previous 20 years dismissing the civil rights movement as a communist plot. If the Southern Baptist hell was real, evangelism must be the first and only mission of the church.
Pressler, Patterson and Trump: dancing with demagogues
The folks who fell for Pressler and Patterson in the 1980s are the same folks who voted for Trump in 2016. They all live in the same bubble.
Where Michelle Wolf crossed the line
Sarah and I don’t agree on much, but we both grew up Baptist, so I know what her childhood looked like and why she became the woman she is. Michelle Wolf and I share the same politics, but I’d rather spend an evening with Sarah Sanders. Jesus might be the only thing we had in common, but he’d be enough.
Martin Luther King Jr. called me to preach
I wept because I knew where this kind of religion led Jesus and where it led Clarence Jordan, and where it led Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and where, in the fullness of time, it might lead me.