As the Southern Baptist Convention in its recent annual meeting has proved itself unreliably Baptist, it gives me pause to think about how quickly the transmogrification of this Baptist denomination into its ecclesiastical opposite has happened. Baptist folk often have...
A couple of decades ago, when I was working as a church consultant, I had an interesting conversation with a young pastor. He was probably 20 or so years younger than me, and it was obvious from our conversation that…
Just a month after making headlines by announcing her departure from the Southern Baptist Convention, popular author and Bible teacher Beth Moore launched a second salvo against the male-dominated leadership of the SBC. In a tweet April 7, she apologized…
That call weekend in September 2020 was one Matt Marston said he will never forget — and not only because it resulted in him becoming the senior minister of First Baptist Church in Athens, Ga. “Because of all the precautions…
It wasn’t too long ago that Eddie Gibson was visiting the Dellanna West O’Brien School in Liberia, ducking in and out of classrooms, talking and laughing with the teachers and students. He remembers working hard to get some ceiling tiles…
I knew Mike Huckabee before. Before he was governor of Arkansas. Before he was a presidential candidate. Before he was a Fox News personality. Before he was a multimillionaire. Before he was pitching racial slurs. Back then he was a…
Imagine if America’s coalition of conspiracy theorist, cowboy Christianity had colonized its way into the world of international politics and sexual abuse cover-ups under the guise of spreading the gospel. Research scholar Mary Li Ma believes this isn’t an imaginary scenario,…
Why should we open our border to poor people from Central America? What if they are really terrorists? What if they have COVID, or something even more contagious? How can we afford to take care of “their” children when we…
This week, I found someone who has it rougher than pastors in handling dissent generated from right-wing conspiracy theories and fear of the LGBTQ community: Public school administrators. I had no idea how bad this is, and yet I should…
Chip and Joanna Gaines have become household names in American reality TV and fixer-upper culture. In Chip’s new book, No Pain, No Gaines: The Good Stuff Doesn’t Come Easy, he makes it clear that the life that he and Joanna…
On Easter this year, Christianity Today reposted an article written by J.I. Packer from the magazine’s April 10, 1981, issue. Packer was a complementarian and Calvinist, so there’s quite a bit on which we disagree, and this article is no…
Recovery has been painfully slow in Lake Charles, La., which remains a near-ghost town since being struck by two hurricanes last fall and cut off from the aid of faith-based groups due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And now, with the…
“Good Grief!” This expression made famous by Schultz’ Charlie Brown is not going away. Neither is grief. Grief is a reaction to loss, often in the death of a loved one. There are stages to grief, but not all who…
