On Sunday mornings across America, many Black pastors stand behind pulpits carrying far more than sermon notes. Some are preaching only days after burying another teenager lost to gun violence. Some are trying to comfort congregations anxious about layoffs, housing…
How Bad Bunny gave America a real reflection
When the Super Bowl halftime stage centered Grammy-winner Bad Bunny, Spanish was not a provocation — it was a translation of reality. What unfolded was not controversy but clarity: a portrait of the United States as it actually exists, a…
‘Progressive imagination often is wider than progressive practice’
Not long ago, a search committee called to share their final discernment after months of conversations, sermons, prayers and emails. Their words were familiar, almost rehearsed by the collective memory of Black clergy everywhere. They told me it had become…
A culture living on Christian leftovers
What happens when a culture loses the concept of anything transcendent above? Truth, goodness and beauty become ends in themselves; they don’t lead anywhere, and they never make you look up. Truth, goodness, and beauty become hevel. Sure, they might…
6 ways to gain credibility in our gospel witness
The gospel message itself always has been a big ask for much of the world to accept: an unmarried virgin’s conception, Jesus’ myriad supra-science miracles, the atoning death, the bodily resurrection. It is for this very reason the Apostle Paul…
Do Lifeway’s trustees even have a pulse?
Just imagine you are an elected trustee of a $300 million denominational entity whose outgoing president lobs verbal grenades toward the trustees and corporate culture on his way out the door. And then you show up a week later for…
America’s moral emergency
As our nation celebrates its 249th birthday, we find ourselves in a time of moral emergency. The seven deadly sins of Western Christianity are being paraded as virtues by our most powerful and wealthy, and the classical virtues of our…
What I found hiding in my church library
Some of my former fellow seminarians reminded me on social media at the beginning of this week that 31 years ago on March 9, 1994, Russell Dilday was fired by trustees as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary after ultraconservatives…
The language of liberty
When President Donald Trump signed an executive order making English the official language of the nation his action was heralded by some as a unifying measure while raising concerns among others about the consequences it might have on the rights…
Putting Christian political participation in proper place
“Christian nationalist” (or its synonym “MAGA Christians”) has, at times, been applied to any Christian who expresses a political opinion or votes Republican. Yet not every Christian who votes or is otherwise involved in politics is a Christian nationalist. Such…
Evangelicals upset about the Olympics are pearl-clutching hypocrites
Enough with the pearl-clutching! As if many rightwing Christians have nothing better to do, on Friday they set X alight with outrage over a scene from the Paris Olympics opening celebration. Drag queens were part of a DaVinci’s Last Supper…
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Rowan Williams
Rowan Williams is the past Archbishop of Canterbury, the retired master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and one of the world’s greatest living theologians. He is also a person who has thought concretely about social issues, governance and government over the…