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.
Saving John Oliver: 10 suggestions for retaining young people in the church
The form of religion we have inherited was packaged for mass appeal. It can still be sold to the Boomers, but the Millennials aren’t buying. And that’s a blessing.
Custodians of a lost America: The power and limitations of white evangelicalism
Donald Trump’s victory suggests that the influence of white conservative Christians extends far beyond the borders of evangelical culture. Not everybody outside the white evangelical camp is bashing that tribe. Especially in the South and Midwest, white evangelicals are valued as custodians of traditional sexual ethics by white folks who attend Mainline Protestant or Roman Catholic churches.
My father, the born-again socialist
In his formative years, my father encountered two religious options. One was forward-looking and optimistic, hoping for better days ahead; the other was nostalgic and pessimistic, resigned to the imminent end of the world. Like most North American Christians, my father was a product of both visions: one influenced his religion, the other his politics.
Liberal Christianity and the scandal of incarnation
The central claim of our faith is: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” Don’t let the poetic familiarity of the language fool you, this is an audacious claim. Christians believe that God looks and loves like Jesus.