On Jan. 26, 2022, my opinion piece, “Where are the Good Republicans?” was published by BNG. The article was prompted by the Senate’s defeat of two voting rights bills — the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting…
It’s the democracy, neighbor
Last week, I was driving along a Texas highway in Paige, a rural town with a population of 278, when I saw a sign as foreign to me as UFOs and aliens. The billboard read, “Protect Women’s Rights! Vote Blue…
Elect me, and you’ll never have to vote again, Trump promises evangelicals
Vote for me this year, and you won’t have to vote ever again, Donald Trump told a group of evangelical Christians July 26. The Republican presidential nominee was speaking at The Believers’ Summit, an event hosted by Turning Point Action,…
We can’t let political violence be used to silence concerns about rising political violence
On the flight home from our family vacation on Saturday, my phone lit up with messages about the horrific and thankfully unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Donald Trump at his rally in rural Pennsylvania. In the wake of that awful event,…
A death wish granted
On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. called on the United States to lead the world in what he termed “a radical revolution of values” during a speech at Riverside Church in New York City. He urged the United…
To save democracy, one place to start is in church
American democracy is under serious threat as we approach the 2024 election. Former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have normalized political violence in the wake of the January 6 riot, invoked poisonous and dehumanizing speech about opponents as…
Why is there a growing trend toward elder governance in Southern Baptist churches?
There is a growing trend among Southern Baptist churches to adopt an elder-based model over the traditional congregational model. In Baptist churches, the concept of elder-led polity refers to a specific form of church governance where elders play a central role in decision-making and…
The dangers of minority rule
America is a nation being held hostage by fundamentalism. In our recent BNG webinar with Robert P. Jones and Greg Garrett and Timothy Peoples, the single thing that stuck with me most is a comment by Jones, who is among…
Democracy dies in darkness?
Democracy dies in darkness. Sure enough: in the absence of a free press to throw light on the actions and decisions of our political leaders, we the people are left in the dark. We don’t know what they decided, what…
Jai Shri Ram, or else: Hindu nationalism strangles India’s democracy
The world’s largest exercise in democracy begins April 19 in India — an enterprise so vast as to boggle the mind. Encompassing a million separate polling stations, employing 15 million election workers, spread over six weeks, the national parliamentary elections…
The Christian case for democracy
For most of my life, American Christians were cheerleaders for democracy. That’s when we were in charge of the democracy. Today, oddly, many conservative Christians no longer believe in or support democracy. They seem to favor a kind of theocracy…
Thinking biblically about government in an election year
I begin by saying the obvious: We enter an election year in a time of great political and cultural division in our country. That could have been said every four years since 1968. But today we also can add that…