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.
Letter to the Editor – Response to Susan Shaw’s opinion article on abortion
Response to Susan Shaw’s opinion article on abortion from Jonathan Frank, Washington, D.C.
Revisiting ‘Battle for the Minds’ after nearly a quarter of a century
“Battle for the Minds” is not only a historical record of a tumultuous time at a leading Baptist seminary, but also serves as a cautionary tale about the ongoing misogyny within the Southern Baptist ecclesial tradition.
Letters to the Editor for 02.27.19
Response to Susan Shaw’s opinion article on abortion from Jonathan Frank, Washington, D.C.
Don’t strip our voices from the Baptist pulpit
How can we expect women to speak up about what is happening to them behind the curtain when their experiences and wisdom are not validated from behind the pulpit?
Why I spoke out against Virginia’s ‘Bible bill,’ and why you should too when it comes to your state
Has the holy word of God been reduced to a prop to win points with a political base? Those who support so-called “Bible bills” claim to love the Scripture, but I believe tossing the Bible into a partisan wrestling match betrays that claim.
An ‘apology’ is not ‘repentance’: responding to clergy sexual abuse and other crises in American Christianity
“Our sins have “found us out.” Wrongs swept under the ecclesiastical carpet or committed inside the church’s dark corners have gone public, requiring us to move beyond casual piety to encounter the pain, depth and gift of repentance.
Turn around and walk against the system of sexism in the Church
We live and worship in religious systems that function like a moving walkway of institutional sexism. Most of us nonsexist people are still benefitting from a sexist culture moving us through sexist systems.
Clergy sex scandal proves Dale Moody was right about ‘once-saved-always-saved’ as a dangerous heresy
In the Southern Baptist Convention no one has the power to tell local Baptist congregations who they can and cannot ordain to ministry. When abuse comes to light, the church sends the offending pastor on his way with a glowing letter of recommendation because congregational morale would suffer if the truth came out.