Two parallels and an outlier: Graham Platner, Roy Moore and Donald Trump

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...

Analysis Joe Marlow

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So Paula White’s a complementarian? Really?

While many express concern about Paula White’s leadership in the White House Faith Office due to her adherence to the prosperity gospel and her bizarre, tongue-speaking prophecies for Donald Trump, one of the surprising developments of this past week was…

Clergy oppose Missouri Legislature rewriting Ten Commandments

A Missouri Senate committee approved legislation to place the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms, but not before rewriting the Scriptures to conform with conservative political ideology, said Brian Kaylor, a Baptist minister and leader of a clergy coalition opposed to…

Trump’s tariffs are bad medicine

President Donald Trump’s tariffs are difficult to parse as viable economic policy. While he claims they will be good for the country, the obvious conclusion is that they are bad medicine that will not cure us but make us more…

William Barber arrested for praying in Capitol Rotunda

Just days after President Donald Trump’s task force to fight anti-Christian bias held its first meeting, a prominent pastor was arrested for praying in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Pastor William Barber and two other people were arrested by…

In Dallas, interfaith clergy rally to decry deportations

Immigrants must be treated with the dignity and respect required by faith and the due process afforded under the law, a coalition of Dallas-area faith leaders demanded during an April 28 press briefing. The event was presented by the Interfaith…

Concerning diversity, equity and inclusion

“Love casts out fear,” says 1 John 4:18, concerning which the late John Claypool once observed, “As surely as love casts out fear, fear casts out love.” Fear casting out love may help explain the current national obsession with dismantling…

How to read the Bible through the eyes of thousands of languages

If you’re anything like me, you may regularly look up Scripture in more than one English translation, perhaps to get a fresh take on an otherwise familiar text, or maybe when a word in our most trusted English Bible seems…

Are you liberal or conservative?

These two words may be the most politically charged words in the English language. One of the problems is we have let politics, instead of the dictionary, define these words. The primary way to communicate is by the use of…

Why are SBC leaders supporting a group that competes with the Cooperative Program?

In a little over a month, Southern Baptists from across the nation will converge in Dallas for the 2025 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting. If you put any stock in the latest social media posts, there likely will be several…

Banned Together documentary challenges ‘book burnings’

Amid a plethora of culture war issues dividing America today, book bans are among the most visible and controversial. From Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth banning books at the U.S. Naval Academy to parents attempting to ban books in public…

Imagine this great cloud of Baptist witnesses around the Resolute Desk

Two images crowd into my mind. One is of President Donald Trump sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, surrounded by a group of evangelical leaders. The other image is the cover artwork of Margaret M. Mitchell’s The…

Red Dawn: Baptists’ contradictory contributions to the rise and demise of America

In the 1980s, in the throes of the Cold War, huddled in a Baptist college dorm room with friends, I watched the original version of the movie Red Dawn. The film portrays a hypothetical invasion of the United States by…