My grandparents taught me that three topics should be avoided in conversation: race, religion and politics. When you remove those subjects, it does not leave very much for conversation, especially if you live in the American South. My grandparents’ admonition…
TRENDING: Spiritual formation
Dallas Willard died on May 8. Or I should say, quoting Pascal, what he once believed, he now sees. Perhaps no other figure in the past 50 years has caused so many North American evangelicals to think so deeply about…
Virginia Muslims and local community angry over Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s burial in the state
(RNS) — Officials and local residents of a rural Virginia county say they’re surprised and angered that the body of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was buried in a local cemetery. Tsarnaev, 26, died following an April 19 getaway…
VITAL SIGNS: Success or significance?
The novelist Walker Percy often said that the trouble with most people is that they are not up to anything significant. Bob Buford once wrote a book titled Halftime: Moving From Success to Significance in which he suggests that many…
R.G. Puckett, longtime Baptist editor in North Carolina and Maryland, dies at 80
RALEIGH (ABP) — Career journalist and champion for a free Baptist press R.G. “Gene” Puckett died May 12, months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Puckett, 80, worked as a Baptist journalist longer than any person in the 20th century….
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: It’s not your mother’s WMU
Recently I was invited to the 2013 Shine Conference for Acteens, sponsored by Woman’s Missionary Union of Virginia. I was asked to share my experience of having malaria. I was also asked to sit in on a session that was…
OPINION: Divesting doctrine
A recent Religious Herald included a review of Brian McLaren’s new book, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? I first encountered McLaren in college through his book, A New Kind of Christian. Here, through the…
TRENDING: SEKAP
Here’s a no-brainer trend: blogs, Twitter and Facebook pronouncements by public religious leaders going viral with all kinds of unintended negative consequences. Besides making me shake my bald head, it raises the question of what the “best practices” trend will be…
OPINION: A new commandment
Jesus makes his way around the entire room. He looks at each of us with the eyes of redemption and humbly bathes our feet. Some of us attempt to protest but none walk away without having been cleansed. I can’t…