I grew up going to Sunday school, starting with the “Cradle Roll” department of First Baptist Church of Decatur, Texas, the town where I was born. Like all the kids at that church, when I learned to read, I was…
Are we still of any use?
“And so it begins.” As nominations for leadership of government agencies are announced by the newly elected American president, the words of Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, written around Christmas 1942, seem startlingly relevant: We have been silent witnesses of evil…
Improvising Grace: Reformation and dissent
Author’s note: On Oct. 22, I was privileged to preach at a convocation celebrating the 25th anniversary of the School of Divinity at Wake Forest University. I pass it along in this Reformation week. …
Ye shall know the truth, and?
On Thursday, Oct. 2, I exited the Winston-Salem Costco with products purchased for home and the storm-ravaged North Carolina mountains. At that moment, a man and a woman were loading a large pickup truck parked next to my car with…
God and a woman
In Sisters and Saints: Women in American Religion, Harvard religion professor Ann Braude writes: An old saying among members of African American churches can be applied to most religious groups in the United States: “Women are the backbone of the…
‘My teachers shot’
“My teachers shot.” That’s what a 10th grader texted her mom on Wednesday, Sept. 4, from a locked-down school room at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga. There was “blood everywhere,” she later recounted. And another teacher “put pressure on…
Church/state mandates then and now: A tenuous freedom
Church/state mandates began early in the American colonies. On July 19, 1651, three Baptists — John Clarke, Obadiah Holmes and John Crandall — traveled from Newport, R.I., to Lynn, Mass., and the home of William Witter, who requested their visit…
Presidential monarchy and judicial infallibility: America 2024
Reading the recently released Supreme Court verdict in the case of Trump v. United States, I couldn’t help thinking that before we put the Ten Commandments in “every classroom,” nationwide, we’d best post them in every room of the White…
Church, state and the ‘Christian agenda’
“With Louisiana Leading Way, More States Are Likely to Take Up Christian Agenda.” That’s how The New York Times began a June 22 story detailing that the governor of Louisiana “signed bill after bill this week on public education in…