Like many Christians, I strive to read the Bible every day. However, I admit frequent failures and that I’m not as diligent as in times past. I remember the first time I set out to read the entire book from…
87 steps toward becoming an ideal team player on the quest for social justice
One of the most insightful books on business management and human resources that I’ve read in the last five years is Patrick Lencioni’s The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues. Lencioni makes compelling arguments…
To Whom It May Concern: I am writing this recommendation letter …
Every once in a while, I get an email from someone whose church has decided God is calling their minister somewhere else. My former student has taken the hint and needs a recommendation letter. Most of his seminary professors do…
COVID wars: Lament over a broken, divided nation
I was talking with a senior Mercer University colleague yesterday about the divisions engulfing our nation over COVID vaccines and masks. Carl has served as a pastor, professor and politician. He’s a very wise man. I said: “Carl, two years…
COVID-19 and moral incompetence
In 1979, the E.F. Hutton investment firm marketed itself on television with a commercial in which someone would mention that E.F. Hutton was managing their investments. Immediately, people near that speaker stopped what they were doing to overhear the conversation,…
They’re not coming back
Years ago, we used to tell ourselves that young adults who had strayed from the church would come back after they got married. When that didn’t happen, we shifted our hopes and proclaimed that they would return when they had…
The new abortion law reminds me why I have a love-hate relationship with Texas
I have had a love-hate relationship with Texas the entire 18 years I have lived here. I love the diversity of people in my neighborhood outside Houston. I loathe nationalistic white supremacy wrapped up in God-talk on bumper stickers, yard…
Reimagining the ‘kingdom’ of God as something other than an ancient hierarchy
One of my biggest disconnections with the Bible is regarding its kingdom language. I totally understand why the biblical authors used it. It was how people back then thought about ultimate reality. So, of course, God would be talked about…
After 9/11: Three Jesuses and one bright hope
When Manhattan’s towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001, many sensed that “this changes everything,” although we couldn’t imagine how extensive “everything” would prove to be. Twenty years later, it is clearer. Our once-proud nation is now a broken nation. Our…
Can God be found outside Christianity?
A few weeks ago, I attended my very first “energy workshop.” It’s taken years of deconstruction and healing from religious trauma for me to open up and allow myself to explore the energy work of more Buddhist traditions. My former…
9/11 at 20: The ongoing choice between fear and love
On Sept. 11, 2001, I was flying into Cairo with my photographer partner to do a magazine coverage on that vast, ancient city. Gazing at the Giza pyramids from the air on approach, we had no clue about the horror…
Spilled Cheerios and a theology of care
During the mid-1990s, I was a sleep-deprived mother of a newborn and a toddler, a wife, a college professor, and a doctoral student with an unfinished dissertation. While zombie-walking through mundane chores, I heard the contents of the last box…