Tuesday afternoon, May 24: My focus was the Republican primaries in my home state of Georgia. Donald Trump, in his continued efforts to protest the lost 2020 election and make sure he can never lose another one, had put up…
Secular revolutions and religious counterrevolutions
In 2015, highly esteemed Princeton political philosopher Michael Walzer published The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions. The title itself immediately arrested me, as it crystallized a current intuition of mine. I believe the United States and several…
Changing Our Mind, 25,000 sales later
I learned this week that sales of my 2014 book Changing Our Mind are just about to cross 25,000, apparently very rare in the book business. This becomes the occasion for my column this week. Long-time readers of Baptist News…
Ukraine’s just war
At one level, the Christian debate about the morality of war is ancient and timeless. Juxtaposed against the ubiquitous warfare of human history stands Jesus Christ, who taught enemy-love, nonretaliation and peacemaking, and went to his death on the Cross…
The moral dimension of the ministerial vocation
Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. … Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls…
Ethicists Without Borders issues statement on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine
Dear BNG readers: Ethicists without Borders is a Facebook group spearheaded by the distinguished Christian ethicist Tobias Winright of St. Louis University. This group has just released the statement below. I am a signatory. Note the following elements: This statement…
Health care crises reveal our nation’s character flaws
This is a column about crises and injustices in the health care system in America. I interpret these crises and injustices as an indictment on the character and the governance of this country. What follows is inspired by hard personal…
On the spiritual value — and danger — of our trials
I ended my last post for Baptist News Global, one month ago, with this quote from the 16th century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross: It is better to be burdened and in company with the strong than to…
On radical acceptance and crap sandwiches
I am in the midst of an excruciating period of personal suffering. I am not at liberty to describe what is going on. Suffice it to say that it is a relational matter; it is awful; I have no idea…
New Year’s resolutions when you can’t count on anything except COVID
I am an old-school calendar guy. While I do use an Outlook calendar, my default calendar is a monthly planner. I use a color-coding system to write events on the calendar and tasks on the “Notes” column on the side….
Christ came to make us truly human: Social ethics and the image of Christ
This is the last in a three-part Advent series. Dietrich Bonhoeffer always brings me up short when he emphasizes the indicative rather than imperative voice in Paul’s thought and in Christian ethics more broadly. For example, in terms of Bonhoeffer’s…
Christ came to make us truly human: Remade in the image of Christ
This is the second in a three-week Advent series. In six places in the New Testament, five of them in the (probable) writings of Paul, the image of God is reinterpreted in light of Jesus Christ. The imago dei becomes…