It may now seem surprising to many United Methodists, and even more Baptists, that for most of our histories in the United States, all Methodists and Baptists were regularly designated as evangelical denominations. The most important reason is that both...
It is not the first time this question has been raised, but I ponder it here: Does the church in America need a new Barmen Declaration? In late May 1934, the Pastors’ Emergency League met in Barmen, Germany. Dietrich Bonhoeffer…
I’m a gun owner and a recreational sportsman. I used to believe in the NRA hype about “good guys with guns” being the heroes America needs and being crucial as protectors of the innocent. Over the past several years, my…
The pressure is steadily mounting on President Joe Biden to rescind a federal health code provision allowing the U.S. to summarily expel asylum seekers and immigrants to the home countries where they faced persecution. Immigrant rights groups, including Baptist and…
July 26, 2021 Letter to the Editor Dear Editor: Gregg Garrett, a senior columnist for Baptist News Global, wrote recently about the recent Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville. A few quotations from his essay are forthcoming. “While Litton (new president…
Two weeks after more than 120 students of Bethel Baptist High School in northern Nigeria were kidnapped by gunmen, 28 of them have been released by their captors. The release of the students happened four days after the Eid-el-Kabir, a…
An individual paid minimum wage for working 40 hours a week cannot afford the cost of a modest two-bedroom rental home anywhere in the United States, according to this year’s Out of Reach report by the National Low Income Housing…
Since publication of their new book addressing a Christian view on reparations for descendants of formerly enslaved Americans, Gregory Thompson and Duke Kwon have been met with harsh criticism by the “Anti-Anti-Racist Evangelical Complex.” That’s the best name I can…
One of Jesus’ most common didactic formulas was the phrase “the kingdom of God is like … .” Jesus told stories or parables of common illustrations that related to the experiences of his hearers and have served as timeless word…
What makes Southern Baptists and other white evangelicals so outraged about Critical Race theory isn’t their claim that it fosters a distorted view of American law and history, but that it illuminates the racist attitudes and assumptions baked into U.S….
Our schools will continue to discuss ideas such as Critical Race Theory, and we will continue to have difficult conversations about how slavery, Jim Crow (a term coined in Louisville), and the constructed notion of white superiority shaped our history…
Can you think of a word more maligned than “politics”? Some people believe it’s a dirty term affixed to a despicable craft. That’s because, for the most part, it’s practiced so poorly. People watch politicians engage in politics, and they…
White Christians increasingly appear to support democracy only as long as they’re in charge of running it, author and researcher Robert P. Jones said in one of his most candid interviews to date. Jones, founder of Public Religion Research Institute…
