This wasn’t the In Conversation I thought I would sit down and write this week. I did not plan to interview my grandmother from a hospital chair. The room was quiet in the way hospital rooms often are — machines…
Texas Baptists demand representation without taxation
Baylor University is trapped in an abusive relationship with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and needs to step away. Some of you already think that language is too strong, but please hear me out. When a person or organization…
Dan Patrick is wrong again
Yesterday morning, coffee in hand, I was met with a sobering claim. Our Texas lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, broke the news: “Separation of church and state is a lie.” Despite my “limitations” — a public-school education, a private college degree…
Marjorie Taylor Greene leads the way in repentance?
On Easter Sunday, former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote: Everyone in (Trump’s) administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the president and intervene in Trump’s…
A tale of genocide and preschoolers half a world apart
On April 12, the first Sunday after Easter, I led a Sunday school class of little ones through an interactive Stations of the Cross. This was an activity I had done during Holy Week, and a Sunday school teacher loved…
Insanity in the name of God
The pronouncements of President Donald Trump these days are so outrageous that it would be a form of parody if it were not for the fact that he is commander in chief of the most powerful army in the world…
In conversation with John Fugelsang
John Fugelsang is author of the New York Times bestselling book The Separation of Church and Hate, a comedian, actor and broadcaster who is the child of two parents who were in holy orders — and then, as he writes,…
Walk with me, Jesus
It is Easter season in the Christian community and, like many gospel preachers around the world, I have taken as my Sunday texts the stories of the Risen Lord: How he appeared to his friends and followers, and how they…
Yes, the pope is a politician
I recall Helms and I, while co-pastors of a congregation for about five years, working through the following church life issues: The color of the new carpet Whether (and how) to remove the American flag from the sanctuary Guiding the…
Immoral vice president tells pope to stick to ‘matters of morality’
Some stories are so stupidly simple they virtually write themselves. This is one such article. But bear with me a moment, please, for just a splash of embellishment. Here’s the stupidly simple part: U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who speaks…
Pope v. Trump is about the value of a moral tradition
The recent entirely predictable online attack by Donald Trump on Pope Leo XIV has made an argument over values into a personal dispute. But the issue between the two men is not a personal dispute. It is instead a powerful…
Yes, we need another Trump book
There’s yet another new Trump book available. Paul A. Pomerville has written Why Didn’t Evangelicals “See Him Coming”? with the subtitle Donald J. Trump’s Deception and Dismantling of American Democracy. Why bother with another Trump book? Books and articles about…