Psalm 24:1 says: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.” In the conclusion to his 1962 masterful book The Fire Next Time, writer James Baldwin writes: Everything now, we must assume,…
Practicing gospel dissent: LIKE NOW?
One of the greatest Christian dissenters I’ve ever known was James M. Dunn, late chief executive of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and founding faculty member of Wake Forest University School of Divinity. Like his dissenting Baptist forebears, James…
Reconsidering dissent amid the ‘conservative resurgence’
Dissent is in my bones. I grew up in a First Baptist Church in Northeastern Oklahoma, known for rowdy business meetings. It was common for news of those meetings to spread through the community before closing prayer. Keep in mind,…
Supreme Court ruling annuls the idea of ‘Christian America’
Contrast this: “America’s doors are closed fully to asylum seekers.” — White House aide Stephen Miller, describing the current U.S. policy toward certain immigrants “I was a stranger and you took me in.” — Jesus of Nazareth, describing the terms…
Our legacy of dissent
Toward the end of his life, the great dissenter and short-time Baptist Roger Williams (1603-1683) reflected on the founding of Providence Plantation in the American colony of Rhode Island, writing: I desired it might be for a shelter for persons…
First they came for the Mormons
These days, you’d think we wouldn’t be shocked by a new weekly, daily or hourly religio-political-cultural-rightward-revisionism in the land of the free and the home of Project 2025. But “adjusting” to such practices seems abidingly stressful and/or depressing to many…
Good Friday 2026: Learning from the preachers
Good Friday 2026 hit me hard. The year 2025 was a difficult one for our family, and that pain accompanied me to Good Friday 2026. Except for two COVID-canceled years, I’ve attended Good Friday services every year since 2008, when…
Is the SBC still haunted by the slavery hermeneutic?
Had the holding of slaves been a moral evil, it cannot be supposed, that the inspired Apostles, who feared not the faces of men, and were ready to lay down their lives in the cause of their God, would have…
A tale of two Leos
In a recent Atlantic article, David Brooks writes: “Many of us thought that the world would get more democratic as it modernized, but for the past quarter century, we have seen a reversion to authoritarian strongmen. Donald Trump, acting like…
Marjorie Taylor Greene leads the way in repentance?
On Easter Sunday, former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote: Everyone in (Trump’s) administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the president and intervene in Trump’s…
Apocalypse? Now?
In November 1095, Pope Urban II addressed a gathering of clergy and laity at the Council of Clermont in France. According to the chronicler Fulcher of Chartres, Urban began: “Most beloved brethren: Urged by necessity, I, Urban, by the permission…
‘When are half your members going to be dead?’
In the concluding chapter of American Mainline Christianity: Its Changing Shape and Future, Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney predicted this: The churches of the Protestant establishment, long in a state of relative decline, will continue to lose ground both…