By David Burroughs The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is a movement started by the people who stepped away from oppression and made some bold decisions about our future 22 years ago at our founding. We were not going to be a…
Reflections on the pope’s resignation
Today was a good day, the kind of day that someone like me, an academician, would consider an ideal day. After completing my morning chores, I headed to the library of one of the local Catholic seminaries to get immersed…
Creativity and contemplation
In October of last year, I settled into my old Impala and drove to downtown Duluth, just outside of Atlanta. Filled with excitement, I pulled into the parking lot behind the Red Clay Theatre and checked my pocket to make…
The discipline of failure
By Amy Butler It’s Lent again, and that means everybody is talking about what they are giving up. Many of us have been gearing up to make the most of the liturgical season, so much so that I felt a…
Six assumptions that allow white evangelicals to flout biblical norms
By Alan Bean In The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, Steven Teles describes how the conservative movement was able to undermine and largely replace what he calls the Liberal Legal Network (LLN for short). By the late 1960s, liberal…
Rejecting an ‘unexamined’ faith
By Molly T. Marshall I regularly read The Chronicle of Higher Education, which for over 40 years has offered news and commentary on issues that shape the varied practices of colleges and universities. It is sort of a form of…
Dear church staff candidate:
Dear church staff candidate: Your resumé matters. It matters so much that you ought to have a knowledgeable person proofread it before you send it out. I’ve just returned from a search committee meeting at church where a committee of…
One-eared Mickey Mouse model of youth ministry
Churches must be intentional about forming a community that includes everyone. I have been in youth ministry for over 12 years. In college I was introduced to the One-Eared Mickey Mouse Model of youth ministry. I ran into it again…
Enough to make a Baptist dance
By Pam Durso I grew up as a Texas Baptist — in the days when dancing was a sin — and since I was a good Christian girl, I never learned to dance and certainly didn’t attend school dances! Given…
Choosing to love
Love is much more of a daily decision than a feeling. I’m not sure I would have said this sentence five years ago. Then, I was still looking to gratify my own sensual and sexual needs. I was coupling these…
Reading Scripture is like rock climbing
Settling for the “clearest reading” of a Bible passage is not enough if doing so causes the Bible to contradict itself. In a recent interview with the New Voice Media Group (which includes Associated Baptist Press), I used rock climbing…
Recanting the Baptist Faith and Message
By Brian Miller In June 2000, I was on my way to a convention in Florida. I only had a vague idea of where I was going or what was happening there. I grew up as a Southern Baptist in…