In 2023, in the land of the free and the home of the unreported perks of Supreme Court justices, the American Culture War seems to find a new front to defend or invade every day or so. At least it…
Learning to pray … again
On Sunday, July 16, at First Baptist Church, Highland Avenue, in Winston-Salem, N.C., Deacon Dr. Judge Kornegay, following the standard liturgy, led the morning prayer. He began by asking God’s blessing on the sick and the bereaved. His gentle yet…
Christian conversion is no Jesus vaccination
In January 2015, seminarians in a 12-day January course on Appalachian religion sponsored by Wake Forest University Divinity School heard the “testimony” of a twenty-something Burnsville, N.C., resident named Adam who recounted a life of youthful “screw-ups” — cooking meth,…
The SBC 2023: When dogma trumps gospel
In 1964, Addie Davis was ordained to the gospel ministry by Watts Street Baptist Church, Durham, N.C., becoming the first female ordained by a congregation affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. A new generation of female ordinands soon followed, not…
Juneteenth emancipation then and now
“There were two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.” Harriet Tubman (c. 1822-1913) Born into slavery in Maryland around 1822, Harriet Tubman dreamed of freedom….
They’ll know we are Christians by our what?
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord. We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord. And we pray that our unity will one day be restored. And they’ll know we are…
Best be prepared: The antidisestablishmentarians are coming for our consciences!
Remember the word we often heard at elementary school spelling bees — “antidisestablishmentarianism” — said to be the longest word in the English language? Well, it isn’t, not anymore. That honor now belongs to “acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene,” defined as “a tough rigid…
Primitive Baptist Universalists? Are you kidding?
In the year 1741 at the Congregational Church in Enfield, Conn., Jonathan Edwards, pastor of the Congregational Church in Northampton, Mass., declared: The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some…
Expelling dissent: America from Roger Williams to the ‘Tennessee Three’
On March 29 in the year of our Lord(?) 2023, hundreds of young people, many of junior and senior high school age, descended on the Tennessee state house in Nashville to demand government action to reduce the threat of school…