I’ve always been a dog person at heart. I grew up with dogs. Didn’t like cats much. The farm cats we had lived out in the barn at night. A time or two a day, they’d come around to see…
Idolatry is alive and well today
For much of the Hebrew Scriptures (what many Christians call the Old Testament) idolatry was the bane of Israel’s existence with God. As a product of the church, I always wondered how a people who experienced the power of God…
First they came for them, then they came for us
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist….
Don’t call it burn-out
Earlier this month, Alexander Lang’s blog post “Departure: Why I Left the Church” lit up clergy social media. To date, it has garnered north of 380,000 views. The day it hit, I saw it on the Facebook feeds of three…
Why potluck and Wednesday night dinners are important
I still remember the smell, the food and the sounds of my childhood and formative years growing up at First Baptist Church in Orlando. The interactions at our Wednesday night dinners were transformative to me as a kid. Although it’s…
American idols: Andrew Whitehead on American faith and Christian nationalism
So many of us look at America’s religious, political and racial landscape and wonder what on earth has happened. How is it possible that American evangelical Christians, who once insisted moral fitness matters, could vote for a creature such as…
Creating inner peace
Last week I heard “therapy” mentioned on Zoom meetings, but not for the usual life dilemmas. The reason was generalized anxiety, a lack of inner peace. “I just need to learn new skills to live in this chaotic world now,”…
‘Nobody wants to be an addict’
During a recent Spirituality in Recovery group at Costello House, a recovery living ministry for men, I asked residents if they would be willing to answer a few questions about their experiences with addiction and recovery. September is National Recovery…
Men and congregational singing: The rest of the story
Christianity Today recently published an opinion piece titled, “All About That Tenor: Why Men Don’t Sing in Worship.” The authors and their sources, one of whom is a treasured friend and a trusted colleague of mine, center their piece on…
Things Christians need to know, for our own sake, about Yom Kippur, Judaism’s Day of Atonement
Invocation “Forgive the entire congregation / of the children of Yisrael / and the stranger amongst them / for the entire people sin unintentionally / Please pardon the sins of this nation / in accordance with the greatness / of…
The real religious crisis in America
In a recent NPR interview, Russell Moore, author of Losing Our Religion, told a story about a pastor who preached a message from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. During his message, the pastor quoted Jesus saying things like “Turn the…
Fear of dancing and the courage to be serious
On May 2, 1963, more than 1,000 students walked out of class in Birmingham, Ala. They gathered at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church to march downtown as part of the ongoing Southern Freedom Movement, of which Birmingham was the epicenter. Children,…