The past decade has created a new dialogue on issues of racial reconciliation and the role religion plays in it. From Robert P. Jones’ White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity to Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s…
Trump administration busy institutionalizing January 6 falsehoods
Donald Trump continues to falsely claim he won the 2020 election and his supporters who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, are “patriots.” Now he’s institutionalizing these falsehoods. Trump is busily rewriting history and using the power of the…
Here’s why the assault on Section 504 accommodations matters
Most Americans only encounter Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 if their child is one of the 8.5 million public school children with a 504 Plan. Whether they are dyslexic, have cerebral palsy or a temporarily broken leg,…
Layman’s book sparked UMC’s ‘Community of All Creation’
Editor’s note: This is the second in a five-part series on the Social Principles of The United Methodist Church and how they intersect current issues. In 1989, a United Methodist layman named Bill McKibben wrote a book he called…
Disney, Christianity and the erasure of transgender people
There is an ongoing effort by the Trump administration to erase the existence of transgender people. Since taking office in January, Trump has banned words like “gender,” “nonbinary” and “transgender” from government documents and websites; he’s ordered that all new…
Hauerwas calls Christians to obedience in his ‘last’ book
In what may be his final book, theologian/ethicist Stanley Hauerwas remains true to the principle he’s taught and preached across almost six decades — a call to unflinching obedience to Jesus embodied in the church. At 84, Hauerwas still knows…
How Southwestern Seminary is bouncing back from financial catastrophe
Over the past six years, we have spilt buckets of digital ink here bringing you the saga of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. I’m writing today not in the format of a news story but in the…
Is Christianity’s statistical decline slowing?
Between the New Atheist movement of the 2000s, clergy shortages in the Catholic Church, and the demographic collapse of Mainline Protestant sects in the United States, the story of religion for the past 35 years has been one of persistent…
Burning down the church
Just prior to the 2008 presidential election, 52% of American adults attended worship. As the 2024 election approached, only 31% of the white American population was regularly in church, a decline of 21 percentage points. In 2008, 68% of 18-…
Dismantling Education Department is straight out of Project 2025
News that President Donald Trump is preparing to sign an executive order dissolving the U.S. Department of Education has riveted attention on Trump’s adherence to Project 2025, a conservative evangelical blueprint for dismantling the federal government. The Wall Street Journal…
Turns out, we have partisan brains — but there’s hope
It’s no secret politics divides America. The growing hostility between Republicans who support Donald Trump and the Democrats who oppose him is fracturing friendships, families and churches. Each side wonders at the rationale of the other: “How can they possibly…
‘These people!’
President Donald Trump, at his smirking, scoffing, bragging best, spent his State of the Union address making a campaign rally speech. He could not conceal his rage at the Democrats who are duly elected members of Congress but won’t bow…