Decades in Japan revealed Gary Barkley’s approach to evangelism was better suited for Japanese culture than for the Southern Baptist Convention, which appointed him as a teaching missionary to the island nation in 1984. “I always felt it was my…
We are all ‘made of one blood,’ remember?
As Advent morphed into Christmas 2023, immigration, a poignant subplot of the Nativity stories, spilled literally and figuratively into the American public square. Immigrants by the thousands jam multiple border crossings in record numbers, creating untold humanitarian and logistical dilemmas…
A voice was heard in Ramah, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Uvalde …
These days the stark realities of American culture can overtake us anytime, anywhere. I learned that again at a recent lunch with Doug Bailey, Episcopal priest and former Wake Forest School of Divinity colleague. We’d not seen each other in…
Are our churches prepared for Christian autocracy?
A 1638 treatise titled A Discourse about Civil Government in a new Plantation whose design is Religion, written in response to the founding of New Haven, Conn., contained this definition of a properly Christianized government: Theocracy, or to make the…
November 22, then and now
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th president of the United States, spent the last night of his life in the iconic Texas Hotel in Fort Worth. On the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, he attended a Chamber of Commerce breakfast, then mounted…
Sometimes reforming: Martin Luther, the church and the rest of us
In short, I will preach it, teach it, write it, but I will constrain no one by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences … but never with force. I simply…
Isn’t it really fundamentalist Christian nationalism?
As Christian nationalism forces itself across the American political and ecclesiastical landscape, I’ve been intrigued by recent columns from David French, New York Times commentator and prominent evangelical Christian. These include “Who Truly Threatens the Church?” (July 10), “Political Christianity…
First they came for them, then they came for us
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist….
American democracy is in danger, and so is the gospel
In the year of our Lord (?) 2023, tune into any news platform right or left of center and you’ll hear that “American democracy is under threat.” Rightwing media says the 91 charges in four indictments against former President Donald…