So 2023 was an interesting year, wasn’t it? Baptist News Global wrote and edited 1,800 news, opinion and analysis pieces that addressed some of the most pressing concerns for life in America, and even in our world, today.
Not everyone will agree with what those concerns are, or how to address them, and we don’t pretend to have all the answers. But our mission “to inform and inspire readers with news, opinion and analysis that engages them to grow in faith and wrestle with what it means to live and serve faithfully in a rapidly changing world” is more than just a “mission statement” for us. We get up every morning with that directive in mind.
So let me share with you the five pieces that spoke most directly to me as I proofread this year.
Lindsay Bergstrom
My first pick is an interview Senior Columnist Susan Shaw did with Carrie Newcomer, titled “Big Ideas at Human Size.” This piece more than any other spoke to my frustration about where we find ourselves today and wondering what I can do to make it better.
In response to Susan’s question, “How do you imagine a way forward?”, Carrie said, “I always have to bring it back home. What can I personally do to make the world just a little better, kinder place in my daily actions and how I live my daily life?
“I think everybody has their own gifts in that. I am not the person who is going to engineer the desalination machine that improves what we can do for drought in certain areas. … That’s someone else’s gift. But I’ll sing, and I can write. I can speak and use the power of my own life and voice. If you’re a baker, bake. If you’re a singer, sing. If you’re a teacher, teach with all your heart. If you’re a parent or a grandparent, do it with all your heart. We underestimate sometimes the difference one person can make in the world.”
And that was just what I needed to hear.
My second pick is “Dear Tennessee and Montana: Stifling Dissent is Un-American, Unpatriotic and Anti-democracy” by Rodney Kennedy. Here Rod is taking on those Republican legislators who sought to silence their Democratic colleagues daring to voice opposition.
He writes: “Rhetorical scholar Robert Ivie argues: ‘Dissent is a key word in the vocabulary of a democratic people. A healthy democracy encourages the rhetorical act of dissent as a right of free speech and an antidote to political repression. … Democracy cannot be true to the principle of self-governance when dissent is stifled and public opinion is manipulated by ruling elites. When dissent is suppressed, especially in times of crisis, democracy itself is lost and the people are turned against themselves.’”
People of opposing views coming together and working to find common ground is how our country was born. Although I’m sure there were plenty of heated discussions among our Founding Fathers, they ultimately worked together for the common purpose of forming “a more perfect union.” Not everyone got their way, but everyone got something.
Rod closes with this call to action: “We can’t allow the repression of hard-earned rights to be trampled on by power-drunk legislators who can’t tolerate disagreement, who can’t stand to be told they don’t have the right to tell us what to say, where to stand, how to act.
“Let’s not let those who cry ‘cancel culture’ on one hand and ‘shut up and sit down’ on the other tell us who is and who isn’t a patriot.”
“And Baptists — of all Americans — should be leading the charge to demand elected officials allow dissent. This is our birthright. It is our legacy. It is our cause. Without dissent, we would have been silenced too.”
So let’s not let those who cry “cancel culture” on one hand and “shut up and sit down” on the other tell us who is and who isn’t a patriot.
My third pick is “The Hateful Faithful are a Threat in Every Religion and Every Country” by Wendell Griffen. In it, Judge Griffen contends much of what is wrong in the world has been caused and spread by toxic religion practiced by people he terms the “Hateful Faithful.”
He defines toxic religion (in present day) as a system that can turn a blind eye to political and racial gerrymandering, to environmental racism and industrialized poisoning of the soil, water and air that supports all life on earth, and paying no attention to the “wealth, health, housing and education disparities between the affluent and their impoverished, debt-saddled, over-worked and underpaid neighbors.”
He goes on to say toxic religion not only makes hatefulness politically acceptable to those who adhere to it, but also makes them believe “hatefulness is politically, socially and commercially necessary.” Remember many of those who stormed the Capitol on January 6 were carrying Christian flags.
How do we stem that tide? I believe it is the obligation of people who claim to follow the Prince of Peace to say an emphatic no to this type of religion and instead love as he commanded us. Just like the song written by Hal David and Burt Bacharach in 1965 says, “What the world needs now is love.” Imagine how wonderful that world would be!
My number four was Brett Younger’s “In the Beginning and the Here and Now: Genesis’ Call to Care for Creation” in which he declares: “The environmental question may be the most urgent issue of our time.”
But if that’s true, then why do so many of us deny climate change and the need for environmental care? Instead, we’re willing to strip the earth of its precious resources without mercy to satisfy our greed. We can see how important it is to take care of our homes and our things but can’t seem to see the importance of taking care of our environment.
I understand we have become so dependent on those resources for our comfort and some would argue our livelihoods. But at some point those resources, which are not limitless, will be used up and those alive at that time will have to adjust to being without them anyway. So what’s wrong with conserving them now so they might sustain us, our children and grandchildren longer?
“God made us stewards of the earth and all that is in it, and he expects us to honor that responsibility.”
The Bible is pretty clear, in Genesis and throughout, that the earth belongs to God and we live “in a borrowed world.” God made us stewards of the earth and all that is in it, and he expects us to honor that responsibility. Brett offers some helpful ways we can do that: Step up our recycling, reduce our energy consumption and live more simply. Maybe not as easy as it sounds because it will take intentionality. But I don’t think it was a suggestion.
And finally, number five is “Complementarianism May Promote the Death of the Family” by Rick Pidcock.
Rick says: “The biggest focus of evangelicalism and perhaps the greatest opportunity for connection with non-Christians today is the family. But evangelicalism’s obsession with the ‘created order’ of biblical manhood and womanhood completely undermines its chances to connect on common ground.”
He says the reality is that healthy families today look nothing like families in the Bible. And if we are honest, we know families in the Bible didn’t look like what we perceive families did in the 1950s. With the challenges that face families today economically, not many families can live the “ideal” with father going to work and mother staying home, her sole job taking care of the family. It just isn’t financially feasible.
In my own family, it took two salaries to make ends meet because neither my husband nor I made enough to sustain us. So, like Rick, we created a partnership in which we shared responsibilities based on “schedule, availability, personal interest, work responsibilities and energy.” Through that process, we discovered my husband really likes to cook, and I don’t. So he assumed most of the cooking while I did cleanup. It worked for us when our children were at home and our schedules were so hectic with church, school, work, sports, etc. And after almost 47 years, it still works for us today because that’s the way we choose to do things.
Complementarianism never would have worked for us.
Lindsay Bergstrom serves as director of operations for Baptist News Global. She not only proofreads every article BNG publishes, she is the longest-tenured employee in the history of Associated Baptist Press/Baptist News Global. She lives in Jacksonville, Fla.
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