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...
Some will question the veracity of the fact that I feel bad about what is happening to the Southern Baptist Convention in light of the story I am telling for the first time in such a public forum. If ever…
Rep. Jeremy Faison, chairman of the Tennessee House of Representatives Republican Caucus, recently wrote his “Viewpoint” regarding House Bill 580, outlawing Critical Race Theory in Tennesse schools. And it was published in the Newport Plain Talk, a local newspaper. He…
While religious ideologies are increasingly cited as toxic and divisive forces in American culture and politics, faith also can heal those wounds when Americans unite around common causes such as hunger, poverty and disaster relief, according to Melissa Rogers. The…
Perhaps you’ve heard someone say, “The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it!” On the brink of the upcoming Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, it appears that Baptists continue to wrestle with diverse perspectives on how to read,…
As an anticipated 17,000 messengers descended on Nashville for the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting June 14, the SBC Executive Committee defended its decision to pre-emptively investigate itself and refused to broaden the scope of that investigation. Meanwhile, a North…
The turmoil engulfing the Southern Baptist Convention over its handling of sexual abuse allegations, racial injustice and gender inequality are both a result and an expression of a mean-spirited religious impulse that also has divided the U.S. politically and culturally,…
A bedrock theological concept of my formation as a white American evangelical was the idea, best articulated by Paul in Romans 14-20, that there is a war going on within all of us between those things that are good and…
There’s a common thread to much of the social conflict we’re seeing in church and society these days, and it has to do with our willingness to edit our own stories. Let’s call it a hardening of the narratives. One…
In the last couple of years, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has attracted national and international headlines for violence perpetrated by the terrorist group Boko Haram or other criminal elements within the country. Many of the incidents, particularly those relating…
Let’s say you are on the trustee board of a Christian-affiliated university and you are trying to figure out what your school should do about its policies related to LGBTQ students. You have two conservative voices in your ears, one…
In what appears to be a preemptive move four days before the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, the president of the SBC Executive Committee announced he has hired an outside firm to investigate his own agency and, purportedly, report the…
When I pulled into the seven-figure neighborhood outside Dallas, I began to wonder to myself why a former seminary president would be living in a mansion in this posh suburb near Plano. Then as I pulled up to the door,…
