His cremation ashes will not be any different because I gave my dad a shave before the funeral home took his body from the house he’d lived in for 47 years. On the surface, logic says a shave before cremation…
Colorizing the SBC’s one-paint-can resolution on euthanasia
Cancer has reduced my father’s robust frame to skin-covered bones. His bombastic voice has deflated to a chirping whisper. But his 84-year-old blue eyes still sparkled when he abruptly made a comment that, to fully appreciate, requires decades of context….
Orange you aware of the problem with banning Roots?
Tennessee news has my stomach churning. To comply with the legislature’s newly mandated guidelines, Knox County Schools recently banned several books including Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Roots, which depicts the horrors of enslavement. Two weeks later, the county…
The dying art of parenting
I’m sitting at a sunroom table, my 84-year-old parents to my right and left. Dad just asked Mom, “Did you find my will in the safe deposit box?” She had. Moments ago, to make sure they had their bases covered,…
Ben Sasse’s courage, grace and metastasized Calvinism
Two tensions can be true at the same time. We can admire a person’s courage and grace without blindly accepting their well-intentioned but dangerous beliefs. Many Christians recently shared on social media a segment of Scott Pelley’s 60 Minutes interview…
Church names the FCC might fine you for saying on TV
Editor’s note: This piece is funny but in a way that might be offensive to some readers. Proceed with caution if you don’t care for the humor of fifth-grade boys. At a Friday lunch of Baptist college professors, a…
And to think I saw it in a Buc-ee’s parking lot
I would have been less surprised seeing an elephant walking past — carrying a Raja, with rubies, perched high on a throne. I certainly would have felt less nervous for the elephant’s and the Raja’s well-being. What I saw took…
Teacher! The media farted!
We’ve all heard it. The Christian Right says our social ills are rooted in the “lamestream media.” The Left jumps on the media-bashing bandwagon when the subject is outlets like Fox News. You can bet your home theater that legitimate…
Training bold prophets: A conversation with Shonda Jones
What are the religious and racial aspects of liberating U.S. democracy from authoritarianism? A recent conference at United Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia addressed this question. En route to the conference, I saw a social media post quoting conservative commentator Megan…
KPop Demon Hunters — the Brené, the bad and the beautugly
Over Zoom, my young-adult counseling client smiled when I noticed her new poster hanging on the wall behind her. The active-duty military service member said, “It’s Huntrix — the musical group from the movie KPop Demon Hunters.” Later I saw…
Conversing with the code-red morally bankrupt mind of MAGA
Remember the famous scene in A Few Good Men when Jack Nicholson’s character, Col. Jessup, bellows, “You’re goddamn right I ordered the code red!” Remember the stunned reaction of Lt. Kaffee, played by Tom Cruise? My recent experience wasn’t that…
Must ‘rugged individualism’ and ‘warmth of collectivism’ be opposites?
With a nod and apology to Robert Frost and his poem “The Road Not Taken”: Two roads diverged on my fallow screen, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one…