Last weekend I was fortunate to attend a stop on “The Stories God Tells” tour featuring Jonathan Merritt (award-winning columnist at The Atlantic, and now children’s book author) and Matthew Paul Turner (New York Times bestselling author of several beloved…
Supreme Court inspires Dallas man to campaign against Project 2025
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled July 1 that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution of criminal acts committed while in office, that was a call to action for Pat Hicks. “I knew right then and there that they’ve…
We can no longer ignore the toxic forms of ‘evangelism’
Recently, I wrote an analysis about some of the shadow funders behind Project 2025. As part of that article, I pointed out how the form of evangelism embraced by many evangelicals is “dominating, colonialist and culturally offensive” and therefore “morally…
Want to know who’s behind Project 2025? Follow the money through the swamp
In the 1976 film All the President’s Men, the character Deep Throat tells Robert Redford, playing Bob Woodward, to “follow the money” to get to the bottom of the Watergate scandal. The line is a classic. It’s also pretty good…
Texas school district gets its injunction against Title IX changes, for now
District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas has issued a preliminary injunction against the U.S. Department of Education’s changes to Title IX in a lawsuit filed by Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas. Carroll ISD, represented…
Purity culture is alive and well in the Christian nationalist agenda for public schools
Last week, I attended a school board meeting for the Southlake-Carroll Independent School District in North Texas which has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education over its changes to Title IX. This is the school district in…
That Ten Commandments law isn’t the worst thing about Louisiana’s ‘Dream Big’ act for public education
Much attention has been given to Louisiana’s House Bill 71 recently signed into law, which requires every public school — including state universities — to prominently display the Ten Commandments in all classrooms. But HB 71 wasn’t the only bill…
What my grandparents would think of the Southern Baptist Convention today
In 1998, I spent the spring and summer in Rogers, Ark., with my grandparents. I had graduated from college the year before and was floundering, so hanging out for five months with my three living grandparents was a blessing even…
The NRA is a (mostly) changed organization, but the American public must not look away
In 2018, I did something most people wouldn’t dare do. While making a play about guns in America, I took a group of high school students to the NRA annual meeting in our hometown of Dallas. What we saw and…