The stories of Graham Platner and Roy Moore, although unfolding in different parties and different eras, trace the same institutional pattern: Modern political parties elevate outsiders when they are useful and abandon them when they become inconvenient. Platner and Moore...
She was 15, and she believed. She hadn’t been raised in church exactly. But somewhere along the way, she found her way in — drawn by something tender and true, something that stirred in the songs and the stories, the…
United Methodists in Indiana have officially backed UMC-related DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., for its continued support of diversity and inclusion in the face of a threat from the state’s attorney general to strip its nonprofit status unless it complies…
Amid all the other headlines at this week’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, you might have missed an important internal debate that happened about financial transparency. To those outside the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, this may not matter. But for…
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is refusing to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, prompting AU to sue the Trump administration. The lawsuit contends the VA is violating federal…
The federal government can now deport abandoned, abused and neglected children even if they have been granted Special Immigrant Juvenile status. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced the change June 6, the same day it went into effect. The action…
Nearly half of Americans are opposed to the deployment of U.S. Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell protests against President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign. A June 9 CBS News/YouGov poll found 45% of adults surveyed…
In the long-ago time when cell phones were becoming more ubiquitous, we were encouraged to put the letters ICE with the names of our contacts who should be called In Case of Emergency. Everyone knew if someone was in need…
The most notable thing about this year’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting is what didn’t happen. The convention did not advance a third try at the so-called Law Amendment that would enshrine a Constitutional ban on females in any role…
I’ve had plenty of opportunity to get to know Robert Darden and Stephen Newby. Bob is a distinguished writer and teacher, and in our youth, we lived a few houses apart on 30th Street in Waco’s Castle Heights neighborhood. With…
The U.S. Supreme Court sided with an Ohio woman who claimed to be the victim of reverse discrimination because she is heterosexual. Justices ruled unanimously June 5 that a federal appellate court erred in determining Marlean Ames’ majority-status sexual orientation…
“I can do anything! Anything!” These are words posthumously ascribed to Russian mystic and claimed religious healer Grigori Rasputin. Their authenticity is debated by historians, but the dramatization of the real event did make for excellent television in the Netflix…
Contemporary Christian musician Michael Tait published a “confession” June 10 that largely corroborates accusations against him published the previous week by The Roys Report and also reported by Baptist News Global. “Recent reports of my reckless and destructive behavior, including…
