I don’t understand why Speaker Mike Johnson, by all accounts a committed Baptist, is abandoning the Baptists of Bucha, Ukraine. We all remember Bucha as the city where, two years ago, Russian invaders raped, tortured and murdered. I also remember…
Etiquette for whites visiting a Black space for the first time
With Black History Month upon us, some white folks will be moving across typical racial dividing lines and entering into what’s known as Black Space, which I define as a place where Black people are in charge and make up…
What I learned teaching incarcerated white students about structural racism
Note: This is the final in a three-part series by Chris Caldwell about his work in Kentucky prisons. The course I taught this summer in two Kentucky prisons was one I created a couple years ago at our HBCU:…
Prison tables and the Lord’s Table
Note: This is the second in a three-part series by Chris Caldwell about his work in Kentucky prisons. When I was preparing to teach in prisons, I thought about a lot of things: bars, windows, cells, towers and fences, to…
Six things I learned from teaching incarcerated students
Note: This is the first in a three-part series by Chris Caldwell about his work in Kentucky prisons. I recently had the pleasure of teaching a college class in two medium-security Kentucky prisons. I’m on the faculty of Simmons…
The pastorate — always a challenge — is even harder in this post-intention world
I served 27 years as a pastor, the last 15 of them in a wonderfully supportive and healthy congregation. Even so, mistrust in the narthex, rooted in our toxic culture, is part of what led me toward the church exit…
What does the SBC tell us about America’s future?
I hope the way the Southern Baptist Convention fell apart 40 years ago is not a picture of what will happen in America, but the parallels are scary. What was the SBC and what is the United States of America…
Beyond ‘contact without fellowship’: How can white people move toward black people?
While white people in America will never fully imagine what black people endure, this does not excuse the sin of racial ignorance or the empathy deficit that black pastor and theologian Howard Thurman called “contact without fellowship.”
10 bogus ideas my white culture taught me growing up
I posted a list on Facebook of 10 bogus ideas I learned growing up in America’s white culture. The responses were interesting and sometimes surprising.