What would it look like for Baptists and other Protestants to recover and reclaim the ancient tradition of making the sign of the cross? Lent might be an opportune time to find out.
Compassion is the work of seeing, of making invisible people visible
Lent is the season for paying attention. Compassion is the work of seeing, of making invisible people visible.
Hunting for the divine spark in ourselves and others
On the night of Ash Wednesday, somebody sitting at the bar yelled out, “Hey! You got something black on your face!” Without thinking, I yelled back, “Hey! It’s my skin!”
5 reasons why reparations talk makes white people crazy
We want our children to come of age hearing the same message of civil religion in church, at their “Christian school” and on Fox News. For those who live in this kind of environment, reparations talk sounds like heresy.
Lent has come amid a moment of moral reckoning for American culture and the Church
The Bible says that we have this treasure in earthen vessels, but moments of moral reckoning, such as the one we are enduring now, remind us just how fragile earthen vessels really are.
What’s wrong with the proposed sexual abuse amendment to the SBC constitution
By suggesting the need for prior judicial determinations, the workgroup set in place a remarkably high threshold for denominational action, effectively rendering even egregious cases outside the realm of inquiry.
Inclusion can get messy: gospel implications of a ‘Wider Welcome’ for United Methodists and the rest of us
Christian history is replete with the expulsion of persons from the church; times when sin, sex, orthodoxy and “special needs” all run together and somebody or some bodies had to go. Perhaps we should add an asterisk to “Everybody is Welcome” on our church signs.
God is not a guy and neither am I: male dominance and sexual abuse in churches
Changing male-dominant leadership and language that have been the norm for thousands of years may not always be easy or comfortable, but when we understand the suffering that results from failure to do so, we can change.
I became a pastor who had trouble praying
Ash Wednesday doesn’t stand alone. It’s a gateway to the season of Lent, which is in itself a way of understanding the whole of the gospel story.
Penitential pancakes: sin soaked in syrup
The point of Pancake Tuesday is not to get the partying out of our system before Lent begins. Feast days remind us to live in gratitude. Celebration, reveling in the pleasures of life, helps us pay attention.
Addressing clergy misconduct: American Baptists do things differently
As an American Baptist leader, I take clergy misconduct very seriously. I want to be heartfelt in my support of the vast majority of our clergy who are people of integrity. But I will be vigilant in dealing with those who are not.
For my Methodist friends (and others): how to survive the death of your denominational home. Or not
My sisters and brothers in the Methodist tradition (and elsewhere), if you do have to leave your denominational home, I hope that you keep your eyes and ears open for a God you or your tradition can’t hold on to: a God at the bottom of the slippery slope, in a field Rumi famously described as one beyond right doing and wrong doing.