In the season of Lent 2022, our world is at war. No, it’s not World War III. Not yet. But if you think the Russo-Ukrainian conflict has no worldwide implications, you’ve not stopped at the gas pump lately. Last January…
Trayvon and Ahmaud: If schools can’t tell their stories, churches must
“I recall a Sunday morning in the spring of 1968 when the pastor of the Southern Baptist Convention-related church in Mesquite, Texas, where I was youth minister, offered his sermonic response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It…
The meaning of Jesus in these odd times, part two
In his fascinating study, American Jesus: How the Son of God became a National Icon, Boston University professor Stephen Prothero wrote: It is highly unlikely that Americans will ever come to any consensus about who Jesus really is, but they…
The Maus saga: A case study of our present crises
In Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, writer and illustrator Art Spiegelman inquires of his Polish Jewish father: “When did you first hear about Auschwitz?” His father, a Holocaust survivor, replies: “Right…
The meaning of Jesus in these odd times
I recently received an email from Alfonso Armada, playwright, author and journalist, who lives in Madrid, Spain. Candyce and I invited him to Wake Forest University several years ago where he gave a theater reading and spoke of international affairs…
Faith with a conscience: Martin Luther King as a model dissenter for Baptists, present and future
As we remember this month the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., we would do well to understand that King and his philosophy of direct, nonviolent action — initially shaped throughout the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956 — arose from…
Dis-membered denominations: Forgetting who we are
In 1990, in God’s Last and Only Hope: The Fragmentation of the Southern Baptist Convention, I wrote: Growing up Southern Baptist once seemed relatively easy. Elaborate denominational programs created a surprising uniformity among an otherwise diverse and highly individualistic constituency….
Who are you? Non-Trumpist evangelicals struggle to be identified
What do you call an evangelical Christian who hasn’t bought into Trumpism? Rare. And likely frustrated. Ever since the ascendance of Donald Trump as the Republican Party presidential nominee in 2016, a chasm has been exposed among a once-loosely defined…
Worldliness and wistfulness on the way to Bethlehem 2021
This Advent season, I determined to follow the lead of the BVM, the Blessed Virgin Mary, in “pondering” the Bethlehem story in my heart. So I went back to Luke’s Gospel in the King James Version where I first heard…