I haven’t lived in the place where I was born and raised in a long time. But sometimes a quality of “home” embedded in my consciousness is suddenly awakened — a visceral sense of rootedness in a place, among a…
A birthday party on our deathbed: Pentecost and the Pew study
Last week, the Pew Research Center reported that between 2007 and 2014, “the Christian share of the population (in the U.S.) fell from 78.4 percent to 70.6 percent, driven mainly by declines among mainline Protestants and Catholics.” Evangelicals are in…
Worn-out strategies in sexuality debate
By Cody J. Sanders It matters which questions we choose to ask, and for a long time now, churches have been asking a very limited set of questions about sexuality. Nearly every denomination in the United States — from the…
Public professions and sexuality
By Cody Sanders While I came to understand the meaning of embracing the Christian faith fairly early in childhood, a lengthy period of time elapsed before my journey down the aisle to make a public profession of faith. Some churches…
Our heretical Baptist heritage
By Cody J. Sanders One thing our Baptist heritage teaches us is that sometimes heretics make the best Christians (or at least good Baptists). So it’s not surprising to hear that Baptists are still being named as heretical for being…
The questions we aren’t asking about gays and the church
By Cody Sanders In a recent Web posting, Executive Director Randel Everett of the Baptist General Convention of Texas stated that the convention’s position on “homosexual behavior” has not changed within the 160-year-long history of Texas Baptists. Presumably this means…
Church-autonomy inquiries from a naïve Baptist
By Cody Sanders I grew up Baptist through and through — but when I got to seminary, I had a denominational identity crisis. As my theology grew and expanded, I questioned whether I might find a more suitable home in…
On gay rights, is there common ground?
By Cody J. Sanders In October, President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law. It extends existing federal hate-crimes laws (which already include protections for racial and religious bias) to include protections…
Grief, the past, and creating a future for moderate Baptists
By Cody J. Sanders I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the future of the moderate Baptist movement — including moderate churches, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and similar larger bodies of moderate Baptists. One only has to spend a little…