By Bill Leonard When Jim Crow segregation laws ruled the American South, their classic defense lay in the phrase, “Separate but Equal,” meaning that while the races were divided, their facilities and services were supposedly the same. Of course everybody…
It’s just war
By Bill Leonard “It’s just war.” That phrase often describes our society’s implicit response to the war in Afghanistan, begun in 2001, the longest combat conflict in American military history. The “other war” in Iraq, begun in 2003, continues with…
Green as a cabbage patch
By Bill Leonard Forty years ago this fall I became pastor of First Community Church in Southborough, Mass. I actually started as their interim pastor and wound up staying four years. It was a great place for one who had…
The sociology of Sunday school
By Bill Leonard These days, clergy and laity, professors and students alike generally agree that basic knowledge of the Bible is fast disappearing among Americans conservative, moderate and liberal. Indeed, in recent years I have occasionally received notes from undergraduate…
Running on faith
By Bill Leonard In Faith of Our Fathers, Edwin Gaustad wrote that, “In 1800 when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson engaged in the first wide open presidential campaign in American history, Jefferson’s political enemies seized the occasion to abuse and…
Unanticipated courage: A 9/11 retrospective
By Bill Leonard In the days ahead, we revisit graphic images that no doubt haunt survivors and families of the dead continually: A commercial airliner crashes into the World Trade Center in what seemed at first a horrible accident. A…
The freedom of Will
By Bill Leonard Will Campbell turns the gospel of Jesus on its head, at least where standardized, predictable concepts and actions, left-wing and right, are concerned. Preacher, writer, lecturer, farmer, raconteur and soulful iconoclast, Will Campbell is an equal-opportunity prophet….
Responding to ‘The Response’
By Bill Leonard On Aug. 6, thousands of Christians will join in a day of prayer and fasting at “The Response,” a “solemn assembly” at Reliant Stadium in Houston. Its purpose, leaders say, is “to pray for a historic breakthrough…
Continued reflection on a Baptist future
By Bill Leonard The quest for Baptist identity continues. The American Baptist Churches USA augmented their biennial gathering with a theological conference on the theme: “Memory, Identity and Hope: Intersections in American Baptist Ecclesiology.” In response to issues raised by…
The time is now for collaboration among Baptists
By Bill Leonard “Diversity” is surely one of the first words that spring to mind when delegates from American Baptist Churches in the USA meet in biennial convocation. This year’s gathering in San Juan, Puerto Rico, was a classic illustration…
Forgetting to remember
By Bill Leonard Last week we moved Lavelle, my mother, to the Alzheimer’s Care Unit (euphemistically called “Reminiscence Neighborhood”) at her assisted living facility. For the last nine years, two in Texas and seven in North Carolina, she has been…
Pluralism, not privilege, the debates continue
By Bill Leonard Winthrop Hudson, the American Baptist historian, writes: “The most obvious inference to be drawn from our present low spiritual estate would seem to be that the churches are no longer fully measuring up to the specific responsibility…