On the night of June 28, I posted to Facebook this status update from my hotel room in Greensboro, North Carolina: From Wednesday’s pre-assembly Baptist Women in Ministry celebration to the closing General Assembly communion service tonight, I’ve never felt…
Pope Francis and the Baptists
I don’t think a day has passed since March 13 without a student, colleague, fellow church member, family member, or friend asking what my perspective is on the election of Pope Francis, especially since they know that I was a…
Prayers for the pope are prayers for unity
The Pope has prayed for me, and following the announcement of his retirement at the end of the month I’m returning the favor by praying for him and the future of his office. Don’t get the wrong idea: Pope Benedict…
Prayer for the papacy
By Steve Harmon The pope has prayed for me, and following the announcement of his retirement at the end of the month, I’m returning the favor by praying for him and the future of his office. Don’t get the wrong…
Are Baptists still nonconformists?
Not long after our move to work at Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity my wife Kheresa read Monique Truong’s Bitter in the Mouth (Random House, 2010), a novel rooted in Truong’s childhood experiences as an “outsider” Vietnamese-American in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, where…
Remembering our ‘rememberable’ baptisms
Many churches celebrate the feast of the Baptism of the Lord on the Sunday following Epiphany (January 6). Since Epiphany falls on Sunday in 2013, this year the Baptism of the Lord is celebrated on January 13. This feast is…
Three ways to spend Christmas book money
In 1500 Dutch humanist and theologian Desiderius Erasmus wrote to a friend, “When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.” Thanks to gift cards from Amazon or Barnes and…
In good company (or, the futility of theodicy)
It was the innocence of the twenty youngest victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, all the ages of my son and his first-grade classmates, which made this latest mass shooting most enduringly haunting. Their innocence also underscores the…
Vatican II, 50 years later: a Baptist appreciation
Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council by Pope John XXIII on October 11, 1962. My service as a member of the Baptist World Alliance delegation to a series of bilateral ecumenical conversations with…