It’s in the Bible. In fact, it’s one of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” (See Exodus 20:16.) There’s more: Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self…
Untamed: The meaning of Jesus in these odd times finale
“We don’t live in Ukraine, but we do,” said our minister, Glenn Pettiford, as he began a pastoral prayer on a recent Lenten Sunday morning. His words have stayed in my head on the way to Gethsemane and Golgotha 2022,…
‘On a scale of 1 to 10’: Lindsey Graham meets John the Baptist
During Senate hearings on Appeals Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., raised this faith-based inquiry: “I’m just asking this question because how important is your faith to you? On a scale…
The meaning of Jesus in these odd times, part 3
In the season of Lent 2022, our world is at war. No, it’s not World War III. Not yet. But if you think the Russo-Ukrainian conflict has no worldwide implications, you’ve not stopped at the gas pump lately. Last January…
Trayvon and Ahmaud: If schools can’t tell their stories, churches must
“I recall a Sunday morning in the spring of 1968 when the pastor of the Southern Baptist Convention-related church in Mesquite, Texas, where I was youth minister, offered his sermonic response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It…
The meaning of Jesus in these odd times, part two
In his fascinating study, American Jesus: How the Son of God became a National Icon, Boston University professor Stephen Prothero wrote: It is highly unlikely that Americans will ever come to any consensus about who Jesus really is, but they…
The Maus saga: A case study of our present crises
In Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, writer and illustrator Art Spiegelman inquires of his Polish Jewish father: “When did you first hear about Auschwitz?” His father, a Holocaust survivor, replies: “Right…
The meaning of Jesus in these odd times
I recently received an email from Alfonso Armada, playwright, author and journalist, who lives in Madrid, Spain. Candyce and I invited him to Wake Forest University several years ago where he gave a theater reading and spoke of international affairs…
Dis-membered denominations: Forgetting who we are
In 1990, in God’s Last and Only Hope: The Fragmentation of the Southern Baptist Convention, I wrote: Growing up Southern Baptist once seemed relatively easy. Elaborate denominational programs created a surprising uniformity among an otherwise diverse and highly individualistic constituency….