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...
On Palm Sunday in my Bible study class at First Baptist Church of Decatur, Ga., I was slated to teach this parable of Jesus. It is one of my favorites. Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to…
We cannot on Good Friday disconnect the crucified Jesus from what Ignacio Ellacuria, Salvadoran martyr, called “the crucified peoples of history.” American Christians must place the Cross alongside the lynching tree, as James Cone makes unforgettably clear in his last…
Like any other American institution whose roots date back to the Revolutionary era, The United Methodist Church suffers from endemic institutional racism. Last year, leaders of the worldwide denomination declared their intention to focus on “dismantling racism” both within and…
Statistics about organ donation just roll off the tongue for Cartersville, Ga., resident Susan Carlisle May. She can easily recall that someone is added to a transplant list every 10 minutes and that a lack of donors results in thousands…
The shootings that happened in Atlanta on March 16 were a needless tragedy — the loss of innocent lives at the hands of yet another gunman, where women of color once again were the victims. While lack of gun control…
Personal conscience now outranks the responsibility to provide medical care to all people equally in Arkansas, according to a bill passed by the state Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Asa Hutchinson March 26. Senate Bill 289, also known…
Today, months of organizing comes to a climax as balloting ends in the quest to unionize some 6,000 workers at the Amazon fulfillment plant in Bessemer, Ala. The campaign — in this deep-red, right-to-work state — has enormous implications for…
Greg Funderburk’s first book followed the survivors of the Great Storm that killed 8,000 people in Galveston, Texas, in 1900. His second book, released this month, is a devotional born from the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed nearly 3 million…
Virginia became the first Southern state to eliminate the death penalty on March 24, and faith-based groups were among those credited with leading the campaign for abolition. Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam signed legislation abolishing the state’s use of capital punishment…
One of the most iconic Baptist churches in central Atlanta will give up about half its 12-acre property in a plan to relaunch the congregation and serve the community through a missions and ministry endowment. Wieuca Road Baptist Church has…
Despite having declared in 2013, “Who am I to judge gay people?” (to the dismay of conservative Christians and the hope of much of the Western world) Pope Francis did just that in supporting a recent ruling by the Vatican’s…
“This is again and again a time of moral and social reckoning,” Boulder, Colo., pastor Andrew Daugherty told his congregation the day after the mass murder at a grocery store located about 3 miles from his church. “Who are we…
