Opinion

My junior high school reflected Mississippi’s poverty, racism and provincialism. Good teachers like Danny McBrayer fought uphill battles.

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.

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.

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.

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?

To commune together, even when there’s good reason for withdrawn civility and hostile incivility, seems a miraculously unlikely experience.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.

Shepherds play an important role in the biblical narrative. Shepherds appear frequently in both the Old and New Testaments, often in reference to leaders. One of my favorite images of a shepherd is that of a caregiver. It is common…

A few ant bites were a reminder about three kinds of relationships that provide a solid foundation for my life, and that I should never take for granted.

Algunas picaduras de hormigas me recordaron sobre tres tipos de relaciones que proporcionan una base sólida para mi vida, y las cuales nunca debo de dar por sentado.

It’s time for us to go a step further by owning at least a part of this national shame of forcibly separating children from their migrant parents. We must be willing to name our government’s role in this crisis as perpetrators of child abuse. We must understand such harm in light of our knowledge about children’s health and wellbeing and how strongly the Scripture speaks to the mandate of protecting children.

As a teacher of political theory and constitutional law – and as a Baptist Christian – I would like to know the views of Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh on the meaning of religious freedom as guaranteed by the First Amendment. More specifically, I would like to know if Kavanaugh believes it is legitimate for our government to favor Christians over adherents of other religions.