We were out visiting for the church, Brother Tommy and I, two Baptists prepared to “win the lost for Christ,” on a steamy summer Sunday afternoon in Fort Worth. Brother Tommy was church deacon and I was a high school…
Louisville and Orlando, 2016
On Nov. 17, 1999, I met Muhammad Ali. It was at the Cathedral of the Assumption on 5th Street in Louisville, Ky., in a Cathedral Heritage Series of ecumenical gatherings. I was the preacher for an interfaith Thanksgiving service, and…
At an ordination, a reminder that Jesus remains agonizingly relevant and radical
On June 20, 1971, I was ordained to the gospel ministry — so the ordination certificate reads to this day. I reread it from time to time, still wondering what in the world it means to be a gospel minister….
Learning from students and their term papers
I began grading term papers in the fall of 1972, for undergraduates taking courses with C. Allyn Russell, Professor of Religion at Boston University. He paid me $2 an hour, or thereabouts, during our three-year run. Each semester thereof, Russell,…
The American Way(s) of Life
In his 1955 best-seller, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, sociologist Will Herberg wrote that “it is the American Way of Life that supplies American society with an ‘overarching sense of unity’ amid conflict.” Sixty-one years later, amid divisive ideologies of presidential politics,…
That’s not your seat: Regulating the seating arrangements at God’s dinner party
“That’s not your seat” is a phrase used by Morgan DePerno, a student in my church history class, as the title for her recent review of Martin Luther King Jr’s Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. For Morgan, “that’s not…
The religion of the New Lost Cause
At Maundy Thursday worship in Wake Forest University’s Davis Chapel, the day after Gov. Pat McCrory signed NC House Bill 2, a transgender divinity school student washed the feet of an African Pentecostal student as the Gospel text from John…
A church that protects sexual predators isn’t much church at all
“This was like God showing up.” That’s how one victim of clergy sexual abuse in the Boston archdiocese described his family’s response when a priest came to visit. He added fatefully, “When a priest paid attention to you it was…
The evangelicals?
“I love the evangelicals,” presidential candidate Donald Trump declares in rallies across the country, “and the evangelicals love me.” So the billionaire builder lauds his self-identified “evangelical” supporters, as he cusses his way to the Oval Office, scorning Muslims and…