By David Gushee Trinity College’s American Religious Identification Survey was releasedMarch 9. Its headline finding, assummarized by USA Today: “Faith is shifting, drifting or vanishing outright.” The news that “almost all denominations are losing ground” is sobering indeed. It helps…
Leaving Alabama
By James Green Somerville I was born on March 14, 1959, in Selma, Alabama. My mother tells me I was the most difficult of all her babies to deliver, and that while she was waiting for me to make up…
Whither — or wither — conservatism?
By Benjamin Cole Last month, I joined more than 8,000 other conservatives from across the country for the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington. Throughout its three-day program, disempowered and occasionally distraught conservatives plotted endlessly…
A Christian rationale for a truth commission
By David Gushee Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has begun hearings exploring the possibility of establishing a “Truth Commission” to investigate Bush policies in several areas related to national security. I want to comment here in favor of an inquiry on…
On interpreting the Bible
By R. Alan Culpeppe The story is told that when William Tyndale was a young man, a priest told him that it was better that the Bible was in Latin (a language only a few Englishmen could read) and that…
Jesus’ vacation and the Canaanite woman
(Editor’s Note: A column that Associated Baptist Press published Feb. 23, written by Miguel De La Torre and offering a novel take on one of the New Testament’s most difficult passages, set off a lively discussion about biblical interpretation in…
Music review: Grace inside a sound — U2, ‘No Line on the Horizon’
By Steve Harmon “This is the most thoroughly Christian thing they’ve done yet.” That was my initial reaction to the last two U2 albums in 2000 and 2004. In retrospect, that was just as true of the triad of albums…
The church: Always in need of reformation
By David Gushee “And if we glance again at Jewish history and see the strangeness and absurdity of the Jew, his obnoxiousness which repeatedly made him odious among the nations — and now you may give the anti-Semitic register full…
Of God and guns
By Benjamin Cole Count me among those Baptists who are about as likely to carry a leather-bound King James Bible as we are to carry a stainless-steel Colt Python .357. Etched with almost equal prominence in my memories of childhood…