Many years ago, two deacons from a church I served as pastor asked if they could take me to lunch. Was this an act of kindness? An act of thanks for my hard work? There’s always a reason for lunch….
America’s biggest wolf in sheep’s clothing
Evangelist Franklin Graham just concluded his 11th revival tour, now misleadingly named the “God Loves You Tour.” The tour was a perfect showcase of talking from both sides of one’s mouth. Graham has built his reputation by masquerading behind the…
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Vann Newkirk II
Whenever I’m asked what contemporary writers people should be reading on race and culture, the first name I always produce is Vann Newkirk II. Vann is senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly, where he has written essential stories on race,…
Searching for Grace: Haunting question
This is the fourth of a five-part fictional story set in the early 1990s about Rev. Paul Graham and his congregation, Grace United Church of Christ. In the previous episode, a lifelong member of Paul’s congregation contracted HIV/AIDS. In spite…
‘It ought to be like church’: Working out some lessons for congregational life
I once heard a pastor say, as he was getting into the sermon, “Now, hang with me, I’m working it out.” And, sure enough, there’s many a biblical text over which we have to labor and work out our understandings…
The cleansing of our temples and our forgiveness of church
This coming Holy Week, Christians remember Jesus’ “cleansing of the temple” in Jerusalem. He was setting his opposition to the temple priesthood and their collusion with Rome to sustain an unjust social order that oppressed the weak and poor. As…
What keeps me awake at night: ‘Bystander’ is both a noun and a verb
“At this moment in American religious and political life, what question should we let disturb us and keep us up all night?” That’s the query Tripp Fuller put to Corey Walker and me at the end of a two-hour Homebrewed…
Bartering in the Marketplace of Violence
Our words don’t matter anymore. There once was a time when they did. Media reach was limited by its medium, be that print or electronic, but with the advent of social media and the omnipresent internet, something changed. Anybody’s thoughts…
Bracket-busting faith
It was halftime, and we were down by double digits to one of our biggest rivals. It was summer basketball, which means the game didn’t count for much other than bragging rights, but we were playing one of our biggest…
Understanding Ramadan: Self-denial as a spiritual discipline
Sunday evening, March 10, opened the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Observed during the ninth month of the Muslim calendar every year, it is a period intended for self-denial, which enables more opportunity for prayer, reflection and devotion, according to The…
What I learned hearing 10 Baptist pastors talk about LGBTQ inclusion
Last Friday, I attended the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina’s 30th anniversary gathering at First Baptist Church of Greensboro, N.C. The theme of “thriving together” took on particular interest to me as a young seminarian because of one of…
Baptists are body and blood related to Mary Magdalene
Baptists have made plenty of mistakes in how we regard women. Women have just begun to take a full stride as pastors in many of our networks and denominations, while the Southern Baptists still disallow women to serve as pastors….