The American way of life may be good for business, but it wreaks havoc on the mental and emotional well-being of individuals and society, psychotherapist and former Baptist youth pastor Eric Minton believes. The diagnosis stems from his observation of…
What my interview with Anthony Fauci taught me about cave living
Recently, I had the opportunity to visit with Anthony Fauci for one of his rare interviews with a religion journalist. When I pitched the story to one prominent evangelical news outlet that promotes itself as being a balanced news organization,…
Evangelicalism isn’t dying; it’s already dead
Long before there was evangelicalism, before there was even such a thing as Christianity, there was good news. As the earliest Jesus followers wrestled with exactly what it meant that this prophet from Nazareth had been crucified and resurrected, what…
An interview with a Cameroonian pastor who fled persecution but has high hopes for his side to win the war at home
Cameroon is at war because God did not approve the union between the French and English-speaking people. — Taku-Ayuk Moses One of the world’s worst conflicts in recent years is the crisis in Cameroon, where separatist groups in the southern…
Disarming the fear infecting our politics
I started attending a Southern Baptist church about nine months before I was born. In those preschool years, the message about God was simple and clear: God is love; God is good; God loves the whole world, and God loves…
From purity pledges to the Equality Act: How evangelical concern about sex has shifted and what it has to do with creation
When more than 200,000 evangelical purity pledges were being planted at the National Mall in 1994 at the height of the True Love Waits movement, nobody would have imagined that the next 25 years would bring about a total revolution…
The peril of getting too comfortable in church
More than 65 years of “church going” has made me appreciate a comfortable “church.” My bum is not what it used to be, so a little padding helps — actually a lot. A good sound system that can fill in…
How travel and food break through barriers that divide us
One hot topic — for the church and Americans — is that we as a nation continue to struggle with diversity. Increasingly, folks of all races are moving next door, entering families through marriage or adoption, and sitting next to…
Beware that Santa doesn’t bring dismay, and bad theology, on Christmas
Keeping children in the dark about Santa, and using the Christmas figure to coerce good behavior from them, can be spiritually and emotionally damaging to youth, says Cassandra Carkuff Williams. It’s a message that hasn’t been all too popular over…
Preaching every week in a divided culture – and trying not to lose my voice
Pray regularly for your pastor, week in and week out, because discerning and speaking a word from the Lord is an ever-present challenge and sometimes a heavy burden.
More BFFs are officiating weddings, but look for ministers to make a comeback
Millennials and other religiously unaffiliated Americans are more and more eschewing clergy involvement in their weddings, but some ministers say that may not be a bad thing.
In the U.S., are Christians really different from secular culture?
In America, it seems that the prophetic tradition is in a crisis. How does it differ from the tradition of order? Indeed, it seems that the only tradition in America is that of order, and if there is a prophetic tradition, it seems that it is not easily and clearly distinguishable from the tradition of order.