Sioux City, like most towns in the rural Midwest, went heavily for Trump in 2016. It was there that the Republican candidate claimed he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue without losing votes. Many of the Sioux Center residents interviewed…
Jesus and John Wayne exposes militant masculinity in the age of Trump
Why Donald Trump? Why are American evangelicals so enamored of a president who could serve as a poster boy for the seven deadly sins?
Letter to the Editor – Responding to a commentary on heaven and hell
From Kirby D. Smith in Midlothian, Virginia
BNG’s Top 25 of the decade
Presented here are BNG’s top 25 news and opinion articles during the past decade.
Silence in the face of evil: learning from an obscure schoolteacher who urged Karl Barth and other theologians to stand in solidarity with the Jews in Nazi Germany
If I thought Nazi-era Germany was an aberration I could probably move on; but in Donald Trump’s America, who can think that? The Church of Jesus Christ is confronted by an anti-Gospel once again. The German Church never acknowledged her complicity with the National Socialists, and the white churches of America are equally resistant to truth.
Saving John Oliver: 10 suggestions for retaining young people in the church
The form of religion we have inherited was packaged for mass appeal. It can still be sold to the Boomers, but the Millennials aren’t buying. And that’s a blessing.
Custodians of a lost America: The power and limitations of white evangelicalism
Donald Trump’s victory suggests that the influence of white conservative Christians extends far beyond the borders of evangelical culture. Not everybody outside the white evangelical camp is bashing that tribe. Especially in the South and Midwest, white evangelicals are valued as custodians of traditional sexual ethics by white folks who attend Mainline Protestant or Roman Catholic churches.
My father, the born-again socialist
In his formative years, my father encountered two religious options. One was forward-looking and optimistic, hoping for better days ahead; the other was nostalgic and pessimistic, resigned to the imminent end of the world. Like most North American Christians, my father was a product of both visions: one influenced his religion, the other his politics.
The curse of Ham: Black Baptists question their place in the SBC
A proposed resolution condemning the alt-right which was submitted to the Southern Baptist Convention last month included a reference to the “curse of Ham.” The statement eventually adopted by the SBC omitted the reference. And that’s a problem.