This story starts around lunchtime on Thursday. Well, really, the story probably starts way before that — maybe the summer I spent traveling California during college or that day I left a staff meeting with fire in my eyes and…
I was taught by an Elder wiser
A good, straight-forward lyric from friend (more like a sister, really) Kate Campbell helps frame for me a way to process a bit of difficult news of the day. In her haunting ballad “Look Away,” a beautiful yet mournful take…
What worshiping with other people does to you
Recently, I had the opportunity to sing in a choir behind praise and worship leader Charity Gayle at one of her concerts. What I experienced was beyond my expectations and I learned more than I imagined. My church choir was…
Revisiting ‘natural law’ and gun rights
Two years ago, I wrote an essay that tried to untangle the legal and political issues that evolved over the 20th century that led to the current impasse around guns. There’s no panacea, I argued, but at least we can…
If you’re uncertain how to approach Israel and Gaza, start with grief
I’ve known churches that have been on the frontlines of every concern of justice, congregations in which you could well assume nearly everyone is voting for the same candidate at the top of the ticket, churches in which no controversial…
Children fleeing alone need our compassion and protection
Violence, conflict and oppression seem to be everywhere these days. The horrors in the Middle East, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Haiti and many more places are devastating to contemplate. And the dangerous flight for safety they spur: Life-threatening travels on overcrowded…
The vice and the cure
Livy, the great poet of Rome, once said: “We have reached the point where we cannot bear either our vices or their cure.” As was true for the Romans, so it is for us. The political and social fabric of…
Humans in the hands of a silent God
Any more, as I hear about the bad and violent actions people take against other people, I shudder. I held onto a naivete about how “good” people — those who believe in God — were somehow better, that their relationship…
Making sense of the senseless death of an Alabama pastor
I did not know F.L. “Bubba” Copeland, but I probably have more insights into his tragic story than most Baptist pastors. Copeland, mayor of Smiths Station, Ala., and pastor of First Baptist Church in nearby Phenix City, took his own…
Theology Beer Camp?
Tell somebody you’re going to Theology Beer Camp and you will be met with either a delighted giggle or a wrinkled brow. In the churches of my youth, the words “theology” and “beer” never occupied the same sentence — “for…
‘A good name is more desirable than great riches’
When I got in the taxi in Gaza, I asked the driver (in Arabic) to take me to the Ahli Arab (Arab Family) Hospital. “Where?” he asked. After we had that exchange a couple of times, I just said, “Go…
The day the camel slipped through the eye of a needle … and the church did not
You may have read the remarkable story about the life of Charles Feeney, who recently died at 92 after having given away almost all of his $8 billion to the causes he believed in. At some point in his life,…