Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has created a stir with his proposed amendment to the Southern Baptist Convention’s constitution. He claims anyone who takes issue with the amendment is opposing biblical authority. The issue is not biblical…
Young Daniel and his three friends would like a word
We’ve seen it, the gold-plated 22-foot statue erected at the Trump Doral Golf Club, blessed by one of his court priests, evangelical pastor Mark Burns, paid for by the Presidents Crypto Bros. The pose is his defiant hand raised at…
Letting go of our ‘wish dream’ for the church
From the very beginning, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings centered around the life of the church. The church, its calling and welfare, was his passion. As a young doctoral student, he wrote two dissertations. One was titled, “Christ Existing as Community.” As…
Apocalypse Now and our heart of darkness
Every morning, we awaken to a new moral outrage from our president. It is hard to keep our equilibrium. Today, after his oil blockade of Cuba has caused a complete breakdown of the energy grid of the whole island, he…
Greed runs wild in the United States of Avarice
We are witnessing the monstrous effects of the deadly sin of greed (or avarice) today in our nation. Writing on this sin, Phyllis Tickle says greed is the most social and most political of the seven deadly sins. Here are…
Conversing with Jesus in time of war, 2026
We have as a nation entered into yet another war, this one in Iran. War places special stresses on the Christian conscience, especially when the war is defended as “preemptive,” that is, a war in anticipation of an attack, to…
A broken Mary, the new pope and the mystery of the gospel
This past week, Pope Leo XIV bestowed a blessing on a chipped and half-broken statue of Mary, the mother of Jesus, which changed the life of the man who found it. Pope Leo bestowed upon it the title, “Our Lady…
Walking with King and Heschel past Beth Israel Synagogue
As we have honored Martin Luther King this past weekend, I am remembering his friendship with Rabbi Abraham Heschel and Heschel’s joining with him in the Civil Rights March in Selma March 21, 1965. Heschel was criticized for leaving his…
For this new year: Ring the bells that still can ring
In a recent New York Times article, “The Nazi Plunder of Church Bells Changed the Sound of Europe,” Nina Siegel chronicled a Nazi wartime strategy of confiscating church bells — more than 150,000 of them — to turn the metal…
‘Are you hungry?’
In a day when the president of the United States cancels the commemoration of Dec. 1 as World AIDS Day — while his DOGE canceling of USAID has led to many more AIDS deaths in Africa — and we see…
Forgiving the church
Church is a school of forgiveness where we learn to forgive and be forgiven. The Lord’s Prayer invites us to this form of spiritual healing every time we pray it: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass…
Lisbon to Auschwitz to Alligator Alcatraz: Cruelty and the human face of evil
There are few things more characteristic of the Trump regime than cruelty, often gratuitous cruelty. It is the human face of evil in one of its most repellent forms. Susan Nieman, in her masterful work Evil In Modern Thought: An…