Maybe our more usual careless naiveté about the similarities in the addictions and the differences in our response is a symptom of an even more insidious sickness.
Have eulogy, will travel
Before gaining fame and fortune for creating “Star Trek,” Gene Roddenberry wrote for a popular Western called “Have Gun — Will Travel.” Having been born in early 1964, I missed the last episode by only a few months. So I…
The president’s proposed budget: A new definition of compassion
Compassion doesn’t start with success. Compassion starts by measuring the people who are in need, and by investing our own time and energy and money in their lives.
How mean and lean must a budget be before it’s immoral?
The old preacher said if you want to know about someone’s spirituality, there’s no better measure than how they spend their money. The preacher wasn’t a money-grubbing televangelist; his comment reflected years wizened by experience as a careful student of…
It’s past time to start tending to our Collective Soul
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” That’s the way I memorized Newton’s third law, probably when I was in Mr. Pierce’s 7th grade physical science class. Newton’s law is inviolable truth for the properties and movement…
Retaining the courage to speak from the pulpit
I recently mentioned from the pulpit that we’d been invited to participate in a conversation with other pastors called “The Church in the Age of Donald Trump.” The next day I got a very nice, but concerned email: “Did you…
It’s Christmas — just tell the story
A good friend has spent most of his life outside the Church, though he was raised within its shadow. Through his adulthood, Christian practice has seldom inspired, and Christian doctrine, as he has known it, has too often been a…
Maybe preachers count after all
We stepped up to the desk and the attendant gave instructions about the pre-op procedure, the location of the waiting room, restroom, vending machines and what to expect over the next few hours. She informed the wife and son of…
After crisis, what’s next for Charlotte?
Where do we go from here? That’s a question I keep hearing, in one form or another, around Charlotte, N.C. Now that we’ve had our crisis, the protests exploding out of the killing of yet another African-American male by police…
Where are the white clergy on Charlotte’s streets?
I walked the streets of Charlotte, N.C., four nights last week. I walked alongside protesters clad in Black Lives Matter t-shirts and all the signs: “Am, I Next?” “Hands up. Don’t shoot.” “End white silence.” I walked in blue jeans…
Sin? Of course. Depravity? Not so much.
Amy and I led a retreat for a wonderful Presbyterian church this weekend. The response to our leadership and the session material was excellent — though my wife scolded me for throwing John Calvin under the bus in one of…
‘Spiritual but not religious’ or ‘religious but not spiritual’?
I often hear people say, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” The sentiment just wearies me. I wonder if what these people are, despite their sometimes angry claims to the contrary, is “religious but not spiritual.” Let me explain. I will…
When it comes to same-sex marriage, it’s all over but the shoutin’
I recently spent one day at the national convocation of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which is just beginning a conversation about the hiring of non-celibate gay employees. That frustrating experience made me reflect on my own experience. I thought I…
This is religious liberty? For whom?
“Religious liberty” has been in the media a lot lately so this piece is hardly news. But as Mississippi prepares to roll its “Religious Freedom” bill into law on July 1, apparently there’s still room for an opinion. Here’s mine:…