At 3 a.m. in the dark of the morning of June 14, 1954, William Emmitt Newell, my grandfather, stirred from his usual sound sleep. “Is it time to go to church, Momma?” he asked his wife, Lela Kittrell Newell, mother…
Decent men of faith and sexual abuse
Before I get into this piece any further, let me admit that decency is a pretty low bar for people of faith. I find that in most churches (I cannot speak for synagogues or temples or mosques), the bar is generally set…
Lunatic, liar or lord, revisited
After writing six opinion pieces for Baptist News Global about former President Donald J. Trump, I felt his defeat signaled that I would not need to spend any more time or effort treating him as the subject of a new article. But…
Sexual harassment at 30,000 feet
I recently got on an airplane for a trip to preach at a Baptist Women in Ministry partner church despite some hesitations I had about flying. My hesitations were because of health concerns related to the current Delta variant spike,…
Saving our churches from Dylann Roof’s white Jesus
Dylann Roof, the white Christian man who murdered nine African Americans during the closing prayer of a Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in 2015, was back in the news recently after a federal appeals court upheld his conviction…
Cathedrals of learning: A lament for the liberal arts
We built grand cathedrals. The arches and vaults reached toward heaven. Cathedrals of theology, art, literature, history, music. Cathedrals for the growing of souls. But the barbarians came with their budget officers, reducing souls to earning power. They took machetes…
Being Christian in an antediluvian age
Antediluvian: adj. of or belonging to the time before the Flood. In Luke’s Gospel Jesus had these words of warning: “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man….
History shows ‘integrity’ and ‘inerrancy’ don’t go together
“Integrity” is an interesting word. It is a powerful word. It can be an elusive word. The president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote in a 2020 piece that was published in the Baptist Standard not long after he arrived…
The history of Haiti you probably don’t know
Recent news coverage of U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback chasing asylum-seekers from Haiti who tried to enter the United States at Del Rio, Texas, is disturbing. The images harken back to a time when white slave patrols used horses…
Firearms and children 2021: ‘Death has climbed through our windows’
On Sunday, Sept. 27, 2021, a front-page story in the Winston-Salem Journal by Lisa O’Donnell began by asking, “Who was Jumil Dewann Robertson?” Then offered this description: “He was the grandson who could do no wrong; a cousin in a…
Getting my vaccine was a humbling, sacred moment
I am thrice vaccinated now, and each time I receive a shot of the Pfizer vaccine, I feel like I am participating in something both humbling and sacred. I am a Christian who believes very deeply in what the Catholic…
A tale of two cities: Telling the truth about race
In the past few weeks, I traveled to New York City and Washington, D.C., in support of research, collaboration and programming supported by Baylor University and the Baugh Foundation. I met with a number of principals at Washington National Cathedral…