During his 1846 Illinois campaign for the U.S. Congress, Abraham Lincoln, candidate for the Whigs, soon to become the Republican Party, was charged by his Democrat opponent, the Methodist circuit rider Peter Cartwright, with being “an open scoffer of Christianity”…
‘Reverend, they ain’t ever coming back’: Confronting churchly realities 2022
Early on in the COVID crisis, I had a long conversation with a close pastor friend about changes in American church life occurring before our eyes. We talked about what I call “the changing sociology of Sunday,” a demographic-cultural reality…
Frederick Buechner, Maya Angelou and Helen Lewis: Telling the truth
But to preach the gospel is not just to tell the truth but to tell the truth in love and to tell the truth in love means to tell it with concern not only for the truth that is being…
Looking for hope in a time of abandonment
Surely I am not the only person in the land of the free and the home of the classified documents who keeps wishing, even hoping, that the innumerable issues, actions and ideas that divide us as a people have finally…
Forsaking Baal for the God who is in recovery
“As much as any other voice in Scripture, Hosea fulfills the child’s dictum, (and) when told that no one knows what God looks like, responds, ‘They will when I finish.’ When Hosea has finished his sketch, we have a full…
An ‘indispensable’ experiment: Exegeting prayer and religious liberty in the ‘New America’
In his defense of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 majority decision supporting a Christian high school football coach’s practice of kneeling in prayer on the postgame 50-yard line, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote: “Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life…
‘The problem with a theocracy is everyone wants to be Theo’
No sooner had the Supreme Court of the United States begun releasing its summer decisions than the word “theocracy” started trending across social media in headings like, “Supreme Court Accused of Starting A ‘Theocracy’ Following Public School Prayer Ruling” and…
When ‘orthodoxy’ won’t hold: The SBC and the rest of us
In a May 26 New York Times column, “The Southern Baptist Moral Meltdown,” conservative commentator David Brooks wrote: “They dedicated their lives to a gospel that says that every human being is made in the image of God. They dedicated…
Mass shootings, DNA swabs and gospel triage: America 2022
Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought so great a sin upon them?” And Aaron said, “Do not let the anger of my Lord burn hot; you know the people, that they…