One reason there is such a dissonance between the church and the culture in the United States is because the church has gotten lazy. In the early days of my time in Abilene, Texas, at Crescent Heights Baptist Church, Hardin-Simmons…
Church-state separation and separating fact from fantasy
My granddaughter Zoey loves and reads fantasy. She loves tales of dragons, wizards and elves. Me, not so much. However, I am visiting my granddaughters and the adults who spawned them. Every grandparent understands that order. My visit coincides with…
Who’s in and who’s out of the kingdom of God
Historically, many Baptists have taken issue with the notion of humans deciding who is in and who is out of the kingdom of God. I am one of those. I like to believe we always have felt a kinship with…
3 things you can do to defend our constitutional government
I am deeply grieved by what I am seeing in the United States today. Since the current administration took office, there have been 34 to 40 federal injunctions and more than 120 lawsuits filed against the administration’s overreach and breaches…
The grief of a caregiver
For many years, my journey in the “care of souls” has led me to walk alongside those who are grieving. This path has taken me from a ministry setting to managing a mental health department in a maximum security prison,…
The betrayal of a historic wisdom
For decades, there was a historic wisdom in the connectionalism and autonomy of local churches within Southern Baptist life. That wisdom is evident in the way local churches have related to one another — fostering friendships, camaraderie and mutual support….
Imagine a world …
One of the shared family experiences we had when our sons were growing up was Star Trek: The Next Generation and the Star Wars series. As I recall, Joseph and I attended a midnight showing with a friend of his…
No matter how pervasive, resist a ‘new normal’ of cruelty
Cruelty has become a defining characteristic of our politics. It’s a shift that was troubling to many in the psychology community and began long before Donald Trump was elected president. Trump’s public persona is marked by a distinctive meanness. As…
Israel, a secular state, cannot be covered in the ancient garb of ‘chosen’
I am grateful to two people I have never met. The first is Ali Khan, a physician in Little Rock, Ark. I became acquainted with his advocacy for Palestinians, which has helped draw attention to their genocide at the hands…
Another stroke of cruelty
The current administration is preparing to destroy $9.7 million in U.S.-purchased contraceptives destined for women overseas following the dismantling of foreign assistance programs under USAID. There is a callous meanness in this action from a “Christian In Name Only” (CINO)…
No, Rep. Boebert, the church is not supposed to ‘direct the government’
Lost in a sea of misattributions, but no less true, is the adage, “Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.” Enter Rep. Lauren Boebert, again. Her example illumines some sad…
History shows ‘integrity’ and ‘inerrancy’ don’t go together
“Integrity” is an interesting word. It is a powerful word. It can be an elusive word. The president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote in a 2020 piece that was published in the Baptist Standard not long after he arrived…