Politics sometimes becomes religion for people. This is a fact. It is dangerous when politics becomes religion for people. This is my conviction. This phenomenon seems most likely to happen when a culturally established religion fades to become merely politics,…
Where is Mike Huckabee?
I knew Mike Huckabee before. Before he was governor of Arkansas. Before he was a presidential candidate. Before he was a Fox News personality. Before he was a multimillionaire. Before he was pitching racial slurs. Back then he was a…
Voting rights and the people who died for them: Jonathan Daniels et al.
A March 11 article in the Washington Post began with these two paragraphs: “The GOP’s national push to enact hundreds of new election restrictions could strain every available method of voting for tens of millions of Americans, potentially amounting to…
Why Beth Moore’s departure from the SBC really matters
In its own year of racial reckoning, the Southern Baptist Convention just awoke to a high-profile gender reckoning as well. Beth Moore, the popular Bible study teacher and author who for years has maintained the line of being a “teacher”…
Are you sure that all lives matter?
I have struggled for the past several years with understanding how so many Christians can support politicians and preachers with glaring, public moral failings. I’ve been discipled in Christian values my entire life, and what I observe with many Christians…
How slavery still shapes the world of white evangelical Christians
Without meaning to do so, Henry Louis Gates’ two-part series on “The Black Church” dramatically exposed the gaping chasm that divides the way Black Christians and privileged white Christians — especially white evangelicals — understand God, protest and politics. For…
Christian nationalism deeply embedded into American life, Tyler warns
Christian nationalism has seeped so deeply into the fabric of American religious and political life that arguing with its adherents is frustrating and unproductive, according to Amanda Tyler, executive director of BJC. Tyler spoke during a Feb. 26 webinar titled…
‘Hour of decision’? Evangelicalism in a post-church, post-Trump era
In 1950, evangelist Billy Graham initiated a radio program called the “Hour of Decision,” an audio vehicle for dispensing the call to conversion on the airwaves of America and the world. Actually, it was only a 30-minute broadcast, but what…
Majority of Americans believe race relations have worsened in last four years
Most Americans say race relations took a significant hit during the past four years, and almost a quarter believe clergy have failed to exert a positive influence on the trend, new research shows. “Fewer Americans believe our nation has made…