The crusade to Make America Great Again is now dominated by the spirit of revenge. Longtime journalist Jonathan Karl has released his fourth book on Donald Trump: Retribution. Nobody needs to read the book to witness Trump’s public campaign of retaliation. Trump…
Cracks in the fascist facade
A remarkable thing happened this week. I don’t know how to explain it or what to do with it. Last Friday, my grandson Sam (a high school senior in Charlotte) texted me a question: “What do you say when people…
A second civil war
The Civil War began in April 1861 when Fort Sumter (in the harbor of Charleston, S.C.) was attacked by local rebels. Even with all the rhetoric for years, the United States was caught off guard. What became the Confederate States…
The Catholic Court
Evangelicals have gotten all the attention, but it is the Catholics that are reshaping American life. By Catholics, I mean the six Roman Catholics that comprise the conservative super-majority on the United States Supreme Court: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel…
What I’m learning about Christian nationalism
Christian nationalism is gaining ground among Republicans, they say — and I’m not sure who “they” is, but it could be somebody who knows what they’re talking about. I am trying to learn about all this because it has to…
Here’s what pastors said this Sunday in churches not celebrating the Supreme Court’s abortion decision
While conservative evangelical and Catholic churches across America celebrated Friday’s Supreme Court ruling rescinding a federal right to abortion care, sermons and prayers in other congregations ranged from lament to outrage to calls for simply getting along with each other….
Christian nationalism in Russia
The religious angle of the war in Ukraine has been largely ignored by the generals, the journalists and the politicians. But the pastors, bishops and theologians of the Christian community around the world, especially the Orthodox, have found their voice….
Let’s keep the lights on in Georgia
A half century ago, Bobby Russell wrote a song about infidelity, murder and a messed-up legal system. The chorus summarizes the result and gives the song its now-famous name: That’s the night that the lights went out in Georgia. That’s…
Why I’m quitting church: I’ve got better things to do than watch my pastor be run off over race
World Series. Halloween. Time Change. Full Moon. Election. COVID. And for me: Goodbye Church. I love my church here in Georgia and my ministers, my Sunday school class, and the friends I have made. But today, I resolved to put…
My Dad witnessed the last ‘legal’ hanging in America
My dad, Tom Moody, was there. Aug, 14, 1936. Owensboro, Ky. The last legal public hanging in America. “My brother and I got up before dawn and hitchhiked into town,” he said many years later. “There were lots of cars going that…
50 years later, abortion remains a political smokescreen
Abortion has been at the forefront of the Religious Right for almost 50 years — since the landmark Supreme Court decision in 1973 that recognized a woman’s freedom to abort a fetus based on the constitutional right to privacy. That…
My father, the born-again socialist
In his formative years, my father encountered two religious options. One was forward-looking and optimistic, hoping for better days ahead; the other was nostalgic and pessimistic, resigned to the imminent end of the world. Like most North American Christians, my father was a product of both visions: one influenced his religion, the other his politics.