God calls women to preach. This is not a progressive talking point or a cultural accommodation. It is a theological fact, attested across centuries of Christian witness and confirmed in the lives of countless women who have heard the Spirit’s…
What the church got wrong about queer people
The ACLU is tracking 530 anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures this year. Five hundred and thirty. In Kansas, a new law immediately invalidated the driver’s licenses of transgender people and authorized anyone, anyone, to sue someone they suspect of being transgender for using the…
‘This is not the way of peace,’ Boulder Baptist pastor says after attack
The pastor of a Baptist church located just blocks from a violent attack on Jews last Sunday told his congregation, “We must not conflate Jewish people or Judaism with the Israeli government, though we can and should condemn antisemitism and…
Original blessing, the #blessed hashtag, and what it really means to be blessed
This is the third in a November series produced by BNG on what it means to be “blessed,” a word so flippantly used that it often loses meaning. One morning nine years ago while driving my children to school (and…
‘This is a time of moral and social reckoning,’ Boulder pastor tells congregation
“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…
The Black Male, the White House and the White Knight
Donald Trump’s unsophisticated rise in this presidential election cycle has been referred to in some corners as a redefining of electoral politics. It is not. It is simply a third, national galvanizing of the historical white backlash to substantive African-American advancement and the browning of America.
Jesus doesn’t need a national day of prayer (and neither do we)
As presidents have formally done every year since 1952 (and informally before that), President Obama on Thursday, May 7, will issue a proclamation urging our country to “turn to God in prayer and meditation.” By longstanding national tradition, we will…
Eyes wide open
After Sunday’s service, a friend emailed me a confession: He kept his eyes open during Prayers of the People, which I led this week. It was a Lenten prayer about finding beauty in dry places, the hand of God in…