When I saw the cellphone videos of U.S. Border Patrol agents executing Alex Pretti on a snowy street in Minneapolis, the shameless brutality of the shooting reminded me of another execution 58 years earlier on a war-torn street in Saigon….
What can we learn from First Baptist Orlando?
A story BNG first reported more than three weeks ago came to a disheartening conclusion Sunday, March 8, when Chris Ogden resigned as campus pastor for First Baptist Church of Orlando’s Horizon West campus. Ogden, who by all accounts was…
Are US military commanders really talking about Armageddon?
Are U.S. military commanders really telling the soldiers fighting in Iran that President Donald Trump has been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth”? In a piece published…
Meredith Miller calls the church to wonder
In May 2020, many pastors held their breath as they released statements and stumbled over how to respond to the murder of George Floyd. Meredith Miller responded with formation. Making her Instagram account public, Miller began to write about faith…
The comedown: The Psychedelic Renaissance in sober light
I never will forget my first psychedelic trip. Visions of Christ, my childhood and forgotten dreams flooded through my mind. When that river of thought slowed to a trickle, I sat on the edge of my bed and knew I…
Dispensationalism is going to get us all killed
I remember the exact moment the world ended for me. It was November 2008, and as a third grader at Worth Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, I was inconsolable. What was the cause of my dismay? Barack Obama had…
Understanding the legacy of Roots after 50 years
As we approach the 50th anniversary of Alex Haley’s novel Roots, we are not merely commemorating a book and a subsequent television event, we are revisiting a cultural earthquake. Before the bright lights of Hollywood casting calls in 1976 —…
The end-times theology driving US intervention in Iran
President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a platform of peace, announced in the middle of the night March 1 that he had initiated “major combat operations” against Iran called Operation Epic Fury. By morning, Trump claimed that these strikes had…
The Iran bombing is a religion story for all but one person
When the United States and Israel bombed Iran Feb. 28, the motivations and repercussions were religious as well as political. We cannot think of Iran as a modern state unhinged from its religious moorings. And we cannot think of President…
‘You don’t know the half’ of the Good Samaritan story
In a sermon at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference preached from Luke 10:29–35, Reginald Sharpe Jr. circled a phrase that refuses to let the church remain comfortable: “You don’t know the half.” Sharpe did not give us a scholarly sermon…
‘And lead us into laughter … ’
“I’ll get real big hair, marry a man, let him lead, write a book called, ’Submissive Wife, Submissive Life,’ adopt a Southern accent out of nowhere,” comedian Taylor Tomlinson joked while imagining what it might look like for her to…
The myth of transgender violence
Well. It happened again. There was yet another mass shooting committed by a transgender person. Roberta Esposito, a transgender woman, opened fire during a youth hockey game in Rhode Island. Esposito specifically targeted family members in the shooting, killing her…