By Bill Leonard When he preached his last sermon on July 7, 2013, 80-year-old Rev. Harold McKinnish urged the congregation to “get saved,” or reclaim their Christian faith, then “pass it on.” Steadying himself on the pulpit of the Holly…
Memories of a mountain preacher
By Bill Leonard When he preached his last sermon on July 7, 2013, 80-year-old Rev. Harold McKinnish urged the congregation to “get saved,” or reclaim their Christian faith, then “pass it on.” Steadying himself on the pulpit of the Holly…
Things that make for freedom
By Bill Leonard “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.” We recall the words of that spiritual a half-century after Martin Luther King Jr. sounded them across the Lincoln Memorial, a hallmark of the…
Things that make for freedom
By Bill Leonard “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.” We recall the words of that spiritual a half-century after Martin Luther King, Jr. sounded them across the Lincoln Memorial, a hallmark of the…
Enlightened pagans
By Bill Leonard “We have been taught that Christ is First-begotten of God and . . . that He is the Word (Logos) of whom all humanity partakes. Those who lived by reason are Christians, even though they have been…
On the margins
By Bill Leonard “No amount of pacification will be able to last, nor will harmony and happiness be attained in a society that ignores, pushes to the margins or excludes part of itself.” That’s what Pope Francis said July 25…
New strides toward freedom
By Bill Leonard With the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case and the storm of Internet racism it unleashed, I can’t get Sojourner Truth out of my head. Freed in 1827, the ex-slave woman spent her life demanding an end…
Faithful apologies
By Bill Leonard Perhaps St. Paul initiated it, punctuating his apostolic CV with an apology for behaving as one who was “in pious zeal, a persecutor of the church” (Phil 3:6) — “breathing out threats,” Acts says, against Jesus’ followers….
Ordination a personal and churchly calling
By Bill Leonard The London Confession (1644), a creatively Calvinist Baptist statement of faith, contains this passage on ministerial ordination: “That also such to whom God hath given gifts, being tried in the Church, may and ought by the appointment…