Cancer has reduced my father’s robust frame to skin-covered bones. His bombastic voice has deflated to a chirping whisper. But his 84-year-old blue eyes still sparkled when he abruptly made a comment that, to fully appreciate, requires decades of context….
BNG podcasts feature each SBC presidential candidate
In less than a week, about 12,000 messengers are expected to arrive in Orlando for the 168th annual session of the Southern Baptist Convention. Leading the concerns facing church representatives are the election of a new convention president and a…
Trump’s birthday is an opportunity for semiquincentennial ‘pride’
On June 14, Dozin’ Donald Trump will celebrate his 80th birthday; and although he can’t seem to stay awake for much these days, the 47th president will be eyes wide open that evening as he hosts a UFC cage fight…
We are manna
I’ve been tired, and I know I’m not alone in that. People are tired. Not inconvenienced. Not stressed but tired, bone tired as the seasoned saints used to say. Wars are waging in the Congo, Iran and Palestine while cable…
The older brother was exhausted
After Easter worship several years ago, I spoke briefly with a pastor standing alone near the back of the sanctuary while the congregation drifted toward fellowship hour. Children were running through the hallways. People were laughing, hugging and talking about…
The Black Church cannot remain America’s emergency moral infrastructure
On Sunday mornings across America, many Black pastors stand behind pulpits carrying far more than sermon notes. Some are preaching only days after burying another teenager lost to gun violence. Some are trying to comfort congregations anxious about layoffs, housing…
The best way to change is to be put in community
Growing up in rural South Georgia, my only exposure to New Orleans was Greasing of the Poles on the national news, on Mardi Gras day. It was so scandalous, these revelers sliding their bodies and props on poles in the…
From cannabis to marijuana: The racializing of weed
America did not merely criminalize a plant. It criminalized a people. Before “marijuana” became America’s most politically weaponized slang term, the plant was widely known as cannabis — used in medicine, industrial hemp and natural remedies. But in the 1930s,…
What if Mohler talked about women’s bodies the way he talks about himself?
There’s a video circulating of Al Mohler speaking at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., where something critical happens to him that stops him from speaking without explanation. The audience there and those who watch the video can hear him…
Islamophobia is the next bogeyman
Our neighboring city, Frisco, Texas, appears to be a test site for the next manufactured culture war bogeyman. Remember when it was the immigrant caravan? And then wokeism and DEI corrupting public ed? And then trans people just … existing?…
Orange you aware of the problem with banning Roots?
Tennessee news has my stomach churning. To comply with the legislature’s newly mandated guidelines, Knox County Schools recently banned several books including Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Roots, which depicts the horrors of enslavement. Two weeks later, the county…
Blessed is the one who resists
Psalm 1 opens with a warning that feels hauntingly modern: “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked.” The verse is not simply about personal morality. It is about influence, power, allegiance and the…