I am thinking back on the past and looking at the present for the Southern Baptist Convention, the denominational body in which I was brought up and educated but which I left completely when the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message…
The Bible says nothing about queer people
For far too long the LGBTQ community has conceded Christianity to traditionalists and conservatives, allowing them to perpetuate the narrative that the Bible is clearly anti-LGBTQ and that being queer is a sin. But the truth is that most of…
Russell Dilday: A portrait of light
Less than a month after John F. Kennedy was buried in Arlington National Cemetery and the eternal flame was lit, it was extinguished. A group of Catholic schoolchildren visiting the memorial was blessing the site with holy water and managed…
‘I came to watch a great convention die’
I attended my first Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in June 1987. Participation was part of my first class at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Bill Leonard’s J-Term study of the SBC. I was standing with Leonard, then and still our…
7 things every church member needs to know about spiritual gifts
There have been times in my ministry where I have understated the importance of spiritual gifts, partly because of the way some spoke of such gifts with an air of spiritual elitism, and partly because I didn’t want to mislead…
Complementarianism harms men and women both
What no one seems to be talking about is the harm the Southern Baptist Convention is doing to both women and men. Demands to define a strict gender binary and assign specific roles by gender are causing harm to every…
Want to ‘protect the children’? Start somewhere other than fearing LGBTQ people
A rhetoric of “protecting the children” has been gaining momentum over the last two years, and it’s targeting the LGBTQ community. On June 9, the hashtag “LeaveOurKidsAlone” was used on Twitter to celebrate young kids trampling Pride flags. The hashtag…
A Southwesterner’s appreciation for Russell Dilday
The president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1978 to 1994, Russell Hooper Dilday, died June 21, at the age of 92. Under his leadership, Southwestern reached heights of enrollment and impact seen neither before nor after by a Southern…
A well-regulated militia: Gun owners of the nation, unite!
My father gave me a .22 rifle for my 16th birthday. We shot it together at empty plastic milk containers for target practice far out of town. After heading off to college, my birthday rifle sat on a shelf for…
‘Not that kind of Baptist’
Editor’s note: Woodland Baptist Church in San Antonio, Texas, is one of two churches recently expelled from the Baptist General Convention of Texas after being found out of compliance with the BGCT’s stance on sexuality. What follows here is the…
The SBC and its sacrament of power
The Southern Baptist Convention continues on its crusade to rid Baptist churches of women in ordained leadership of any kind. I have looked with dismay at its inexorable path of patriarchal power and the denigration of women. So churches with…
The SBC 2023: When dogma trumps gospel
In 1964, Addie Davis was ordained to the gospel ministry by Watts Street Baptist Church, Durham, N.C., becoming the first female ordained by a congregation affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. A new generation of female ordinands soon followed, not…