My first visit to a Southern Baptist church occurred in 1971, when I was 15 years old. My family had just moved from Alamogordo, N.M., to my parent’s hometown of Muskogee, Okla. On my first Sunday in town, my aunt,…
Robert Reich was right in 1994, and we must pay attention now
Thirty years ago, Secretary of Labor Robert Reich saw something on the horizon most of us missed. He spoke to the 1994 Democratic Leadership Council: My friends, we are on the way to becoming a two-tiered society composed of a…
Advent, Gaza and the coming of Christ
As the cold winter months are upon us and we are now approaching the third Sunday of Advent, we want to stop and reflect upon the coming of Christ into a broken and destructive world. This Sunday’s Advent worship carries…
A voice was heard in Ramah, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Uvalde …
These days the stark realities of American culture can overtake us anytime, anywhere. I learned that again at a recent lunch with Doug Bailey, Episcopal priest and former Wake Forest School of Divinity colleague. We’d not seen each other in…
Lessons from caroling with The Choir that Shows Up
For 25 years, members of Crescent Hill Baptist Church have caroled along Frankfort Avenue, the Louisville street where the church is located. The group that convenes for three or four nights each year can best be described as “The Choir…
Here’s the lie exposed: There are no medical exemptions to Texas abortion law
This article was updated Dec. 12 with additional information as the case developed. For months, advocates of the new law that bans almost all abortions in Texas have been telling us there is an exemption for medically necessary terminations…
The breasts of Advent
This is the third of a four-part series in which we seek to see anew the incarnation of Jesus through the eyes and body of a woman, Mary the mother of Jesus. For Jesus to live, he had to…
Would it make Jesus puke?
New Yorkers go to some attractions only once and then feel the need to make up excuses: “We went to the Empire State Building because my cousin from Iowa wanted to see it.” “I bought cupcakes at the Magnolia Bakery…
Are we still calling him the ‘Good’ Samaritan?
We have known the Parable of the Good Samaritan most of our lives. Yet that phrase is not Scripture. Editors of our Bible translations inserted it at the top of the parable as a helpful aid to our study. So,…
Skipping verses: When the Christmas Kranks read Scripture, at Advent and otherwise
John Grisham’s novel Skipping Christmas got me laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. It was the same with Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon Days, which evoked such uncontrolled laughter that many in the New Year’s Day crowd at the Nassau airport…
It is not antisemitic to oppose the nation of Israel’s atrocities
Reminiscent of the Vietnam War, we stand today on the brink of throwing out the American ideal of free speech in favor of political correctness. Yes, I know it normally is conservatives who cry foul over the dangers of political…
Looking beyond ‘fact or fable’ alternatives in the Christmas stories of Matthew and Luke
One of the learning activities I sometimes used when discussing the nature of Jesus in my New Testament undergraduate classes was a “forced choice” exercise. We moved the chairs to the sides of the room and all the students stood…