In case you missed them, we compiled 11 opinion articles that were among the most-read articles at baptistnews.com in 2018. To browse additional topics and perspectives from our opinion contributors, visit our opinion landing page.
I’m a preacher. Yes, I have a political agenda
Jim Somerville, October 19, 2018
As Election Day approaches I can tell you that when politicians talk, I listen. I listen to hear if they are concerned for all people or only some people. I listen to hear if they have any plans for lowering the mountains and raising the valleys of disparity.
The peril of selective inerrancy
Molly T. Marshall, May 29, 2018
Demanding that women keep silent about abuse and submit to male headship is all about patriarchy and nothing about biblical values.
Continuing to cast God as male does a disservice to us all – women and men, sons and daughters
Christy Edwards, October 17, 2018
With one breath the Church is teaching my daughter that she is created in the image of God and in the next is telling her repeatedly that God is a man. “Daughter, you’re created in the image of God. Just not quite as fully in God’s image as your brothers.”
Silence in the face of evil: learning from an obscure schoolteacher who urged Karl Barth and other theologians to stand in solidarity with the Jews in Nazi Germany
Alan Bean, October 19, 2018
If I thought Nazi-era Germany was an aberration I could probably move on; but in Donald Trump’s America, who can think that? The Church of Jesus Christ is confronted by an anti-Gospel once again. The German Church never acknowledged her complicity with the National Socialists, and the white churches of America are equally resistant to truth.
No, Pastor Jeffress (and others), America is not a Christian nation. And here’s why it matters
Andrew Daugherty, July 9, 2018
It simply is not true that America is a Christian nation. We are a nation of Christians (and Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and people of no faith at all), but we are not a Christian nation.
Jakob Topper, July 30, 2018
After four years of battling infertility and other challenges, our long-awaited baby arrived healthy and whole. Then the nightmare began, and the caregiver became the care receiver. Here are some things I learned about caring for people in the worst moments of their lives.
A white Jesus can’t save a brown child
Alicia Reyes-Barriéntez, March 27, 2018
I was raised in a brown evangelical church in a small, predominantly white town in central Texas. Our “mother” church was one of the many First Baptist Churches in the Texas Bible Belt. Our congregation was composed mainly of poor, uneducated, largely undocumented migrants from rural Mexico. And while we were a brown church, the Jesus we worshiped was white.
Another racist policy: are we paying attention?
Alyssa Aldape, August 31, 2018
If we preach on Sunday that being children of God is enough, yet ignore dangerous policies that tell persons of color — including children and their immigrant families — that they are not enough, we are complicit in this racism.
8 ways to wound a minister
Bob Browning, July 19, 2018
I am convinced many church members are unaware of the ways they wound their ministers. Perhaps it would help church members to know how ministers are wounded. This could lead to constructive changes in the way they relate.
Paige Patterson, women’s voices and the gaping hole in education
Kyndall Rae Rothaus, May 24, 2018
That a Southern Baptist pastor made such disparaging remarks about women is not surprising given the Southern Baptist Convention’s theological treatment of women. What is surprising is how many Southern Baptists pushed back. Logic would suggest that if women don’t have to accept husbands who beat them, they do not have to accept a theology that beats them down, either.
A tattoo that says, ‘Your story is not over’
Mark Wingfield, September 6, 2018
The struggle is to welcome life as it is now, which is certainly different than you thought it would be or should be. The struggle is to see injury and illness and despair as a semicolon and not a period.
