Graham Platner’s campaign to dethrone Susan Collins as one of Maine’s two senators has come to an abrupt end following allegations of sexual assault. In an 11-minute-long video on X, the progressive firebrand launched a combative defense calling the allegations…
Theologizing with Larkin Poe, 10 years after Reskinned
Lately as an amateur guitarist/professional theologian, I’ve been getting into the music of Larkin Poe, a Grammy Award-winning blues rock band led by guitar-playing sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell from rural Northwest Georgia who named their band after their great-great-great-great…
Two parallels and an outlier: Graham Platner, Roy Moore and Donald Trump
The stories of Graham Platner and Roy Moore, although unfolding in different parties and different eras, trace the same institutional pattern: Modern political parties elevate outsiders when they are useful and abandon them when they become inconvenient. Platner and Moore…
How Christian nationalism shows up in patriotic worship services
“What a Sunday!” Houston First Baptist Church’s social media team celebrates on Facebook. “From worship to fellowship, Pocket Constitutions to patriotic tunes, we’re grateful for a church family that gathers with thankful hearts and points people to Jesus. Happy birthday,…
What in hell became of heaven?
When I was 25, I assured myself that, at the very least, I could expect to live for another 50 or 60 years. Death was an old people problem. But the can of death is getting harder to kick down…
Reading Ryan Stollar’s final message through the lens of trauma
Note: This article discusses suicide, child sexual abuse and domestic violence. It may be distressing for some readers. On June 30, child liberation theologian and abuse survivor advocate Ryan Stollar died by suicide, following a lengthy struggle with his…
My first experience of Ryan Stollar was his cruel suicide note
Note: This article includes an explicit discussion of suicide and mental health issues. In the last 20 years, the words we use to talk about suicide have changed. We are chastised for saying that someone “committed suicide,” because in…
Why transgender people threaten some and what that says about us all
Living in Texas as a transgender woman sometimes feels like walking through your own neighborhood with three heads. People stare. People whisper. People make decisions about who and what you are before you have said a single word — decisions…
Louisiana pastor beats a man and thinks he’s following Jesus
In surveillance video that’s since gone viral, Pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, La., is seen outside his church when he reacts suddenly to a young man standing across the street. He runs across the multi-lane…
Supreme Court slides into partisanship
In siding with the Republican Party in yet another decision loosening campaign spending limits, the U.S. Supreme Court is risking credibility as the supposedly nonpartisan third branch of government. Beyond that, it continues to deny the corrupting influence of the…
The realists’ war and a call for strategic restraint
My mother was a medical student in Kabul when the realists came. They came first as Soviet advisers, then as mujahideen commanders, then as American strategists playing the long game against Moscow. Each faction arrived certain it understood the situation…
A Baptist reading of Pope Leo’s Magnifica Humanitas
Ever since the beginning of Pope Leo XIV’s papacy last May, there has been anticipation concerning his first encyclical letter. Oftentimes the subject and tone of a pope’s opening epistle is a significant marker of a given pontificate. For Pope…