“I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” President Donald Trump declared this week while surrounded by six members of his administration. “This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re…
When a former megachurch becomes a satellite congregation
Something struck me as odd when I read the news that Roswell Street Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., has become a satellite campus of First Baptist Church of Woodstock in far north suburban Atlanta. Back in the day, Roswell Street…
Donald J. Trump’s ‘Greatest Show on Earth’
President Donald Trump may be the world’s greatest salesman. His greatest skill is offering political analysis in the language of a profane oaf. He sold the American voter on his toughness by being vulgar, crude and lacking in decorum. In…
CNN interviews Doug Wilson, and Pete Hegseth likes it
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has come under public fire for publicly endorsing the misogynistic views of Idaho pastor Doug Wilson and his colleagues in a CNN interview. But Hegseth’s support for Wilson and his ultra-conservative theology is not new information….
King of the Hill reminds us change can be good, too
In an age when politics overpowers all aspects of life, it isn’t surprising adult cartoons regularly embrace it for fodder. South Park’s new season drew White House acrimony after depicting Donald Trump as an egomaniacal devil-worshipping tyrant. And this was…
The attack on comprehensive sexual education, from federal law to the SBC
In initiatives to remove “woke” content from school curricula across the United States, comprehensive sexual education — or CSE — is under attack. CSE programs diverge from abstinence-only curricula by nature of the problems they attempt to solve. Abstinence-only curricula…
‘We don’t hate, but they do,’ conservative Christian activists claim
When conservative Christian activist groups are called hateful or placed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate map, they claim innocence and reverse the charge: “The real haters are those people who say we’re hateful.” “You are not hateful or…
The approaching storm: Generational shift in views of financial stewardship
Growing up in Florida and Alabama respectively, we both learned early what it means to prepare for storms. When Hurricane Andrew’s name comes up, or when someone mentions the tornado outbreak of 2011, memories surface — not just of the…
Can mainline liberals get their story back?
In my most recent column I drew attention to the certainty gap between American evangelicals and mainline Protestants. While 85% of evangelicals and 82% of Black Protestants believe in God without a shadow of a doubt, the same can only…
Everything is connected: A snapshot of Dallas, ICE and gerrymandering
For the last three months, I have been part of a weekly clergy and faith leader’s prayer vigil that holds space and bears witness to the plight of our immigrant neighbors. The vigil takes place outside of the Dallas Immigration…
The Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial isn’t done shaping America
If the Scopes “Monkey” Trial is discussed nowadays, the tone usually is pejorative. The events of July 1925 — in which a small-town substitute teacher was charged with a misdemeanor for teaching evolution in a public high school — are…
Israel, a secular state, cannot be covered in the ancient garb of ‘chosen’
I am grateful to two people I have never met. The first is Ali Khan, a physician in Little Rock, Ark. I became acquainted with his advocacy for Palestinians, which has helped draw attention to their genocide at the hands…