I thought I had seen arrogance in Southern Baptist Convention agency heads in my 62 years of living, but I had not heard from Ben Mandrell until today. His cold-hearted arrogance speaking before the SBC annual meeting today is in…
Churches In Ireland Using Music To Engage Young People
A recent youth Mass at St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin started with a song that seemed to fit better in an evangelical worship service than among the Catholic rituals. A five-piece band led the congregation in an upbeat version of…
Watching SBC men posture for position is exhausting
It’s exhausting to the soul. That’s what I’m feeling as I consider all the possible stories I could write regarding what white conservative men have planned for this year’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Indianapolis. Capturing most headlines is…
Southern Baptist Calvinists crave authority, not Baptist theology
Do not be fooled by the new Calvinists among the Southern Baptists who are stirring fears of liberals in the denomination. Lies are being told about liberal influences in one of the most conservative denominations in the nation. And the…
Why I marched in a Pride parade and what I experienced
I’m not gay. On the Kinsey Scale, I’m a 100% heterosexual male. I don’t understand what either straight women or gay men see in men. I think we’re gross. I mean, I can say such-and-such male is “an attractive person,”…
A letter to Donald Trump’s supporters
Dear Neighbors, I write you in the aftermath of the May 30 New York state court jury verdict that found Donald Trump guilty of committing 34 felony offenses of falsifying business records in order to conceal a conspiracy to interfere…
A call for state AG investigations of sexual abuse in the SBC
As the Southern Baptist Convention prepares for its annual gathering next week in Indianapolis, few in the abuse survivor community hold any expectation that it will make meaningful progress toward protecting kids and congregants against clergy sex abuse. It’s now…
Dear SBC: Let my people go!
Dear Southern Baptist Convention: Welcome to Indianapolis! We Baptists — at least, the “normal” kind, whose pastoral leaders possess no desires of grandeur to elevate themselves to “bishop,” or “prophet,” or “apostle” — frequently joke about who might be bishop…
Is Trump innocent?
Of all the loud voices of protests from across the country about the unfairness of the legal system toward the former president, I have not heard a single one of them declare he is innocent. Thus, I am led to…
The Strict Father model is killing us
George Lakoff has given the world one of the most helpful and depressing models of understanding the differences between liberals and conservatives and how we think — what he calls the moral mind. His book Moral Politics: How Liberals and…
Why children are behaving differently at church after the pandemic
It is now June 2024, and we are four years away from the beginning of the COVID-19 experience in the United States. But the ripple effects of the pandemic are still being felt in church children’s ministries. As an educator…
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Starlette Thomas
Starlette Thomas is a preacher, an associate editor and the director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative at Good Faith Media and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church. We had…