There was nothing heroic about it. Wasn’t terribly difficult. Just good old-fashioned kindness and people being good to people. We never got any tones. We did, however, get a knock on the station door. It was an older couple. They…
Why is anybody still giving money to Franklin Graham?
On the anniversary of the greatest single domestic threat to American democracy since the Civil War, what would you expect a respected religious leader to say? After the president of the United States calls out his predecessor’s perpetually expanding web…
Taking out the 2021 trash talk
Country singer Tim McGraw may not have known the social theory that informed his 1995 hit, I Like It, I Love It. As the song’s title hints, something has happened to McGraw that has changed his usual ill-mannered, trashy ways….
On radical acceptance and crap sandwiches
I am in the midst of an excruciating period of personal suffering. I am not at liberty to describe what is going on. Suffice it to say that it is a relational matter; it is awful; I have no idea…
To celebrate Epiphany, reject Herodian Christianity
If you’ve read or watched the national news this week, you’ve seen two stories dominate the coverage. One story is the Omicron variant and the increasing number of COVID cases all around the country. Part of that story has included…
The Capitol insurrection, the Lost Cause and the Confederate flag
On Jan. 6, 2021, I was in quarantine, recovering from COVID-19. As I read and watched TV to pass the time, I began to see early reports of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. I saw the events of that…
For me, January 6 began as a day of prayer and ended as a day of disbelief
The gloomy sky and biting wind only deepened the sense of foreboding in the air on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021. Apprehension had been growing in Washington for weeks as news continued to spread that supporters of Donald Trump,…
January 6 truth or consequences
Seeking out the truth has seldom been more urgent for Americans than it is now. We possess more factual information than any generation in human history yet differ over the most basic propositions. The dichotomy threatens our future. Truth makes…
One year after Jan. 6, some things are worth dividing over
In his classic work Why I Am a Christian, the late Anglican theologian John Stott prophetically penned gloomy words that, at the time, mostly fell on deaf ears. “The technocratic society, which diminishes and even destroys transcendence and significance,” Stott…
How Hagar shows us the meaning of divine motherhood
When thinking about the importance of motherhood in the Bible, many readers can name a few women who mothered prominent sons throughout Israelite and Jewish history. Women like Mary or Sarah, whose stories are well-known in Sunday school classes and…
Dis-membered denominations: Forgetting who we are
In 1990, in God’s Last and Only Hope: The Fragmentation of the Southern Baptist Convention, I wrote: Growing up Southern Baptist once seemed relatively easy. Elaborate denominational programs created a surprising uniformity among an otherwise diverse and highly individualistic constituency….
The limits of my right to be unlimited
Some time ago a number of people — I among them — were troubled by a cell phone TV ad that projected the idea that, “I need, no, I have the right to be unlimited.” The disturbing aspect for me…