On June 20, 1971, I was ordained to the gospel ministry — so the ordination certificate reads to this day. I reread it from time to time, still wondering what in the world it means to be a gospel minister….
As racial healing seems elusive, New Baptist Covenant plans next summit
Former President Jimmy Carter, who has long put religion and racial reconciliation at the center of his life, is on a mission to heal a racial divide among Baptists and help the country soothe rifts that he believes are getting…
Learning from students and their term papers
I began grading term papers in the fall of 1972, for undergraduates taking courses with C. Allyn Russell, Professor of Religion at Boston University. He paid me $2 an hour, or thereabouts, during our three-year run. Each semester thereof, Russell,…
The American Way(s) of Life
In his 1955 best-seller, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, sociologist Will Herberg wrote that “it is the American Way of Life that supplies American society with an ‘overarching sense of unity’ amid conflict.” Sixty-one years later, amid divisive ideologies of presidential politics,…
That’s not your seat: Regulating the seating arrangements at God’s dinner party
“That’s not your seat” is a phrase used by Morgan DePerno, a student in my church history class, as the title for her recent review of Martin Luther King Jr’s Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. For Morgan, “that’s not…
The religion of the New Lost Cause
At Maundy Thursday worship in Wake Forest University’s Davis Chapel, the day after Gov. Pat McCrory signed NC House Bill 2, a transgender divinity school student washed the feet of an African Pentecostal student as the Gospel text from John…
What’s driving religious freedom debate in the U.S.? Fear, say some.
It was just about a year ago when Baptist writer and minister Corey Fields wrote a column critiquing a spate of “religious freedom” bills pushed through statehouses around the country. Indiana’s version was one of the more high-profile measures. It…
A church that protects sexual predators isn’t much church at all
“This was like God showing up.” That’s how one victim of clergy sexual abuse in the Boston archdiocese described his family’s response when a priest came to visit. He added fatefully, “When a priest paid attention to you it was…
Apologies
By Bill Leonard In an essay posted on Christianhistory.net on July 1, 2007, Scott Manetsch writes: “Before dawn on the morning of August 24, 1572, church bells tolled in the Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois quarter of Paris. Just moments earlier, soldiers under…