I am a New Yorker (with a Southern accent, but nonetheless a New Yorker). Like many of us, I witnessed the planes hit the World Trade Center towers on 9/11; I lived through the anthrax scare; and I now run…
Too busy to sing? Try anyway
I go to work on Tuesday with a detailed to-do list. If everything goes perfectly, I will end the day writing a column for Baptist News Global. If I get through six of the 10 items, it will be a…
Who is the Good Samaritan now?
Another day, another police officer-involved shooting. These national tragedies are happening with frightening regularity. So much so that we don’t need narration; we know the end from the beginning: “He had a gun.” “I felt that my life was in…
A confession of racism from a non-racist
I drove slowly and nervously down a narrow street on a sunny, humid morning, hoping the Google Maps lady wasn’t leading me astray. There were crumbling, dilapidated row houses as far as the eye could see. “This might be one…
One Christian’s response to the first presidential debate
Two people stepped onto the stage at Hofstra University. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. One of them will likely become the next president of the United Stated of America. Division runs deep in the election. Palpable tension seemed to erupt…
Can we talk about sexuality?
Can we talk about sexuality? Recently a pastor in Kansas has been challenging my school and me personally on our position concerning our faithfulness to Scripture concerning human sexuality. It reminds me of the sustained conversation in Southern Baptist life…
Pushing people to purpose
When Gil Rendle speaks, I listen. He’s been a pastor, author and consultant. Now retired, his work has inspired me and given voice to much of what I see and feel is happening in congregations. He “gets it”, in a…
Make every day Earth Day
“The great lesson from the true mystics … is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends and family, in one’s back yard.” —Abraham Maslow, Religion, Values…
Helicopter preaching
In early July, I called the Rev. Dr. Darryl Aaron, pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Greensboro, N.C. It was the latest moment in our country’s crisis of racism and violence, as we mourned Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. My…
Before the chasm is too great: Reflections on Luke 16.19-31
The Gospel reading for Sunday, Sept. 25, takes us to the bosom of Abraham. Well, technically Luke’s telling has angels carrying Lazarus to the bosom of Abraham after a life of isolation, neglect and suffering. The rich man who overlooked…
The civility of discourse
“They’ll tell anything on you down in town.” So the serpent-handling woman says as she sits on her Appalachian front porch, killing flies and defending her church’s approach to the sixteenth chapter of Mark’s Gospel. Whether in cheap novels, academic…
Creating our own American hell
In the last several days, I have watched yet more police shootings, with compelling video evidence that the use of such force was highly unjustified. I watched a United States senator handily dismantle a Wall Street banker (in a hearing…