Back during the heated battle for control of the Southern Baptist Convention, Ed Young once chided the denominational press for seeking information about a fundamentalist leader who had done something untoward. I can’t remember who had committed the sin or…
Who is that man in a clerical stole at the protest?
Jonathan Redding is a Baptist minister from North Carolina who teaches apocalyptic literature at a Methodist university in Lincoln, Neb. But arguably the most unusual aspect of his ministry is a calling to serve as a chaplain at Black Lives…
Opposition to couple’s BLM sign inspires neighborhood unity
Someone in Lincoln, Neb., picked the wrong Black Lives Matter yard sign to protest in an anonymous note demanding its removal. For not only did Erin Palmer and Jonathan Redding keep the “offensive” sign in their yard, they added a…
Q&A with Doris Garcia Rivera: Seeking peace in turbulent times
Doris García Rivera saw just about everything during 23 years as an American Baptist missionary serving in Latin America. And it’s a good thing, because she arrived at the helm of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America just in time to guide it through the COVID-19 pandemic and the massive social unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd.
In Louisville, learning as a white witness in Black space
Last Saturday, June 27, a paramilitary outfit of white nationalists threatened on social media to “take back” our city from the racial justice protesters occupying Injustice Park in downtown Louisville. They predicted that the encampment of largely peaceful protesters would be cleared by nightfall.
Defund the police? How about ‘defunding America’ through radical, thorough-going, far-reaching change?
The American experiment has failed because it has been inequitable, unfair, unjust and discriminatory from the start, sanctioned by segments of a religion which propagated it while benefitting enormously from it.
As the white mother of a black son, calls for racial justice evoke something deep within me
My son is now raising black sons of his own. He fears for them, as I feared for him when he was a child and now fear for my grandchildren.
White minister tells George Floyd family, mourners: white Christians must fight racism
“Racism is the reversal of the revelation of God. Racism is not perfect love casting out fear, it is perfect fear casting out love.”
Black lives matter to me. Tragically, they mattered little in my segregated upbringing
Members of my (white) generation continue to recognize the pernicious stain of racism in our politics, economics and community relations. It seems we cannot ever fully repent as we learn how systemic racism is and how it has shaped the Christian imagination.