By Bill Leonard In his 18th-century journal entitled, The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution, Anglican Parson Charles Woodmason offered this assessment of the people called Baptists: “They don’t all agree in one Tune. For one sings this…
Holy woman
By Bill Leonard She did not speak for five years. Raped by her mother’s boyfriend, “Mr. Freeman,” when she was 8 years old, Maya Angelou stopped speaking until she was 13, traumatized by sexual assault and her fear that Freeman’s…
A meditation on inequality
By Bill Leonard A “magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality.” That’s what Nobel laureate and economist Paul Krugman calls Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the runaway bestseller and culture commentary first published in France, now electrifying economic, academic and…
Ceremonial prayer
By Bill Leonard “Ceremonial prayer” — that’s what Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy called the rite that the high court approved by a 5-4 vote in the case of Town of Greece v. Galloway, a ruling that allowed the town…
The Clansman
By Bill Leonard “This is an institution of Chivalry, Humanity, Mercy, and Patriotism: embodying in its genius and principles all that is chivalric in conduct, noble in sentiment, generous in manhood, and patriotic in purpose.” With those words Thomas Dixon…
The War on Poverty: A young Baptist’s experience
By Bill Leonard In the year that Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, I worked for the War on Poverty in Dallas County, Texas. It was 1968, the summer after I graduated from Texas Wesleyan and took…
‘All my ex’s…’
By Bill Leonard As an “ex-SBCer” I’m hesitant to write about the situation among Baptists in the second decade of the 21st century. According to my friend David Gushee, as an ex-SBCer I should actually be retired, or, as one…
Millennials at hand
By Bill Leonard The Millennials are at hand! Millennials — that’s what sociologists call the generation of 18- to 33-year-olds now coming of age in America. A new study from the Pew Research Center details the nature of their unique…
Reserving the right
By Bill Leonard When I was a kid in Decatur, Texas, there was a hole-in-the-wall diner called Shorty’s Stop located just off State Highway 81 in that county seat town. Some guy named Shorty owned the place where I had…