By Bob Allen A Cooperative Baptist Fellowship pastor in St. Louis said any hope for improving race relations lies not in agreement about a non-indictment in the Michael Brown shooting death but in relationships that will grow between people with…
Thabiti Anyabwile says Ferguson grand jury gives marching orders for change
By Bob Allen An African-American leader in the “young, restless and reformed” Calvinist movement in the Southern Baptist Convention called on President Obama to exercise strong leadership in light of a Nov. 24 grand jury decision in Ferguson, Mo., to…
After Ferguson, a letter to my children
By Greg Jarrell Dear John Tyson and Zeb, You make my heart sing. The joy in your eyes as you take in the world sometimes takes my breath away, which makes it hard to tell you about the shadow sides…
Say goodbye to post-racial America, if it ever existed
By Seth Vopat The night Ferguson, Mo., erupted in protest over the shooting of Michael Brown, I was roughly 240 miles away attending the largest TEDx event in the world in downtown Kansas City. Any thought of the United States…
As for me and my house, call me a thug
By Connie Stinson I pastor a racially mixed church in a densely populated Maryland suburb of Washington. We accurately call ourselves diverse. One month ago, one of our young adults, a particularly gifted 20-year-old, preached “Judge Not” from my pulpit…
If they are black
By Bill Leonard Our pastor, the Reverend Dr. Darryl Aaron, is black. He and his family live about two blocks from our family, in a neighborhood that is predominately white. When an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown was shot…
‘Jesus is my savior, but I’m a killer!’
By Alan Bean Dan Page, the St. Louis police officer who famously pushed CNN anchor Don Lemon, has been relieved of duty. Pushing Lemon in front of a national television audience had nothing to do with it. It was Page’s…
Let’s do something about race in America
By Marv Knox The most delusional moment of my life occurred Nov. 4, 2008. For an hour or so after Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election, I believed the worst of America’s racism had subsided. America elected a black…
Eyes wide open
By Amy Butler Last Sunday all over the world lectionary preachers were handed a challenging text from Matthew’s Gospel. The text was that little part of chapter 15, where Jesus is busy just doing his thing: using gardening metaphors to…