Student athletes at Baylor University demonstrate higher levels of religious belief, participation and identity than their non-athlete counterparts at least in part because the Baptist school is successfully balancing faith and athletics, according to a study published last month in…
Houston pastor has a word of witness about the Bushes
Russell Levenson, pastor of Saint Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston, sees himself as an eyewitness to history as the pastor of former President George H.W. Bush. Levenson has written a book in which he reflects on the character and kindness…
Pew reports on how faith communities were treated during first year of COVID worldwide
Religious groups in nearly 25% of the world’s countries were subjected to government force to prevent in-person gatherings during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and even more endured social hostilities and conspiracy theories blaming them for the spread…
The unsolvable political problem facing those who lead purple churches
The United States is bitterly divided along what we now call red/blue, conservative/liberal, Republican/Democrat lines. Of course, not everyone fits into those boxes, but enough do for the statement to be accurate. The mutual suspicion and social separation between the…
The brutal honesty of The Book of Mormon
I’ve seen the hit Broadway musical The Book of Mormon twice. Deliciously blasphemous, it is as profound as it is profane. It’s also brutally honest and theologically instructive. Written by the creators of South Park (Matt Parker and Trey Stone),…
‘So you’ve been deconstructing, huh? What do you believe now?’
There is perhaps no greater trend in American Christianity than deconstructing the theology and ethics of white evangelicalism. Books, articles, podcasts and even music are being created daily to explore the reasons why so many people are leaving the faith…
Brian Dawkins says he’s blessed
Brian Dawkins wants to be known for more than his 16-season football career with the Philadelphia Eagles. In his new book, Blessed by the Best, Dawkins gives readers an inside look at his football career and the journey he believes…
‘Deconstruction’ is not a dirty word
On a fateful day during my third-grade year, my family was playing a board game and I was nearing victory. I rolled the dice and landed on a square that read, “Go back 17 spaces.” My family all laughed, as…
‘Faith is relationship’ — truer now than it was almost five decades ago
A short sentence has echoed through my adult life, and it rings truer now than it did 46 years ago. “Faith is relationship,” Clint Dunagan told a room full of Hardin-Simmons University freshmen in the spring of 1976. We learned…