Note: This post is an excerpt from a chapter titled “Juneteenth” in the author’s forthcoming book, Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy, which will be published September 8 and is now available for pre-order....
Life has gone from bad to worse for LGBTQ persons in Afghanistan during the year since the Taliban took control of the nation, attorney and human rights activist Joseph Azam said. He spoke during an Aug. 24 webinar hosted by…
Scrolling the web for morning news, I came across an article titled, “Historical Facts You’ll Wish Weren’t Really True.” The article turned out to be about historical oddities of not even passing interest. The headline, however, suggests an entire philosophy…
Have you heard the one about the church that ripped off the most successful Broadway musical of the moment, rewrote parts of the script and turned it into an altar-call evangelistic event? Turns out that anti-gay church in McAllen, Texas,…
Please submit transitions — including staff changes, ordinations, anniversaries or deaths — to Barbara Francis. This page will be updated bi-weekly. STAFF CHANGES Adrian Bullock, to Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina, as Triangle area campus minister. Jordan Conley, to Crescent…
Like the lyrics from Paul Simon’s hit song “Call Me Al,” there have been “incidents and accidents, hints and allegations” swirling about The United Methodist Church in the past two weeks, and they add up to some disappointing developments for…
One of the underlying factors in today’s battles over public education is two polar opposite views of parenting. Parents who want to ban books from school libraries and tell classroom teachers what parts of American history to teach and how…
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Fellowship Southwest, Baptist Joint Committee and 160 other civil rights and faith groups are demanding American border agents be forced to stop confiscating religious items and other personal property from migrants seeking asylum in the United…
The Religious Right seems to be flexing its muscles these days. After all, they’ve overturned Roe v. Wade, openly embraced Christian nationalism, banned a whole slew of books, and told Florida’s teachers, “Don’t Say Gay.” I don’t think all this…
The Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board nearly tripled its investment income in 2021 compared to 2020, according to the latest financial reports published in the SBC Annual 2022. NAMB booked $44.93 million in investment income for 2021, compared…
It was Carlyle Marney, I think, who first named our personal saints in the “great cloud of witnesses” as those in “the balcony of heaven.” On the occasion of the death of Frederick Buechner, I offer these memories of the…
When he was 14, Peter Makapela and his cousin Xolani joined scores of other schoolchildren in Cape Town, South Africa, to protest miserable conditions in the area’s schools for Black children. It was 1989, the height of public resistance to…
The familiar division of the Bible into chapters and verses helps us locate our Scriptures of interest. Yet, it took 1,200 to 1,500 years before translators and publishers put them there; and, thankfully so. However, like dishwashers, iPhones and all…
