While responding to fundamentalism is exhausting, it is essential to question its immediate impact on American church/state, particularly since fundamentalist ideology seems to have become the default interpretation many American Christians implicitly or explicitly bring to bear on questions of scripture, doctrine, church and society.
Searching for a purposeful life, only to be surprised
Look closely. Listen carefully. Be ready to be surprised by the unexpected goodness alive and well all around us in big and small ways.
On the pathway of Jesus, can life be a joy ride?
When we genuinely pursue the common good with all the energy and vision we can summon, not only is a community transformed, but so are those who give themselves to the joyful work of justice. It is not only good for humanity, but God as well!
Our ‘sin of the bystander’ enables sexual abuse. We must change
As ‘bystanders’ to the trauma of sexual violence, we can choose to see and hear, refuse to keep the secret, empower survivors to tell their stories, and in their telling, open wide the windows of truth and healing.
Is our white Christian majority straining out gnats and swallowing camels?
It seems like the “gnats” we strain out are things that irk white Christian majorities, but the “camels” we leave in place are large-scale injustices or suffering among minority races, religions and sexualities. Maybe we should leave the gnats alone, if that’s what it takes to get our eyes focused on the “weightier matters.”
What I learned from my 8th-grade teacher in Mississippi in 1975
My junior high school reflected Mississippi’s poverty, racism and provincialism. Good teachers like Danny McBrayer fought uphill battles.
The best day of our lives suddenly became the worst: lessons about ministering to people in crisis
After four years of battling infertility and other challenges, our long-awaited baby arrived healthy and whole. Then the nightmare began, and the caregiver became the care receiver. Here are some things I learned about caring for people in the worst moments of their lives.
My close encounters with Southern Baptist hell
Southern Baptists’ carrot-and-stick evangelistic strategy was perfectly suited to a denomination that was born defending slavery, that came of age in a season of Jim Crow segregation, and that had spent the previous 20 years dismissing the civil rights movement as a communist plot. If the Southern Baptist hell was real, evangelism must be the first and only mission of the church.
The jeremiad: good news of an unprivileged gospel
My longtime friend and mentor Samuel Hill affirmed “evangelical Christianity” for its emphasis “on righteousness, love of neighbor, disciplined behavior, and a sensitive conscience.” Restoring those now-diminished gospel traits will require strong doses of “moral chemotherapy,” beyond culture privilege. It’s worth the treatment.
What does it mean to be pro-life?
I share the concern of conservative Christians for the unborn. Pro-life means that all life (at all developmental stages) should be honored, respected and valued. But when did the unborn become more valuable than the born, especially those born into tragic life circumstances?
Communion: It’s about gratitude, welcome, hunger and koinonia
Just as Jesus takes, blesses, breaks and gives the bread to the hungry gathered in Galilee, so he does with us. He takes us, blesses us, breaks us and gives us as his continuing embodied presence. We are to be “bread for the world in mercy broken.”
As culture demands civility or incivility, an alternative for the Church: ‘communionism’
To commune together, even when there’s good reason for withdrawn civility and hostile incivility, seems a miraculously unlikely experience. Which is probably why the Church has spent the majority of its life protecting the metaphor of Communion instead of practicing its meaning.