On Sept. 10, 2017, I sat in Washington National Cathedral as Dean Randolph Hollerith announced that after almost two years of discussion, prayer and discernment, the Cathedral Chapter had decided to remove a set of stained-glass windows donated by the…
For the Bible tells me so: The Bible and the Civil Rights movement
Many chapters in the story of the Civil Rights movement have been forgotten, modified or intentionally misrepresented. White Americans tend to imagine the movement as less controversial than it was, white resistance as less violent than it was, and the…
Listen to the woman: Cassidy Hutchinson
Cassidy Hutchinson, key witness in the January 6 committee hearings, revealed in her recently released book, Enough that she was sexually harassed and groped by Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, on Jan. 6, 2021. Hutchinson is a former…
Cats and dogs at Bubba-Doo’s
I’ve always been a dog person at heart. I grew up with dogs. Didn’t like cats much. The farm cats we had lived out in the barn at night. A time or two a day, they’d come around to see…
Idolatry is alive and well today
For much of the Hebrew Scriptures (what many Christians call the Old Testament) idolatry was the bane of Israel’s existence with God. As a product of the church, I always wondered how a people who experienced the power of God…
First they came for them, then they came for us
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist….
Don’t call it burn-out
Earlier this month, Alexander Lang’s blog post “Departure: Why I Left the Church” lit up clergy social media. To date, it has garnered north of 380,000 views. The day it hit, I saw it on the Facebook feeds of three…
Why potluck and Wednesday night dinners are important
I still remember the smell, the food and the sounds of my childhood and formative years growing up at First Baptist Church in Orlando. The interactions at our Wednesday night dinners were transformative to me as a kid. Although it’s…
American idols: Andrew Whitehead on American faith and Christian nationalism
So many of us look at America’s religious, political and racial landscape and wonder what on earth has happened. How is it possible that American evangelical Christians, who once insisted moral fitness matters, could vote for a creature such as…