“Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past,” says Deuteronomy 32:7. Once upon a time, people who called themselves Southern Baptist had a firm conviction that they were autonomous churches cooperating with other churches of what we called…
Harry Fosdick wants a word with Seven Mountains Dominionists
On May 21, 1922, Harry Emerson Fosdick broke the spell of Christian fundamentalism in a single sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” After more than 100 years, his words still sting those of a fundamentalism inclination. In fact, Fosdick’s critique fits…
War in Iran: A clash of fundamentalisms
Whatever its specious rationales and eventual outcomes, one underlying fact about the war in Iran is clear: What is largely fueling this dangerously combustible conflict is essentially a clash of fundamentalisms — Islamic, Jewish and Christian. When speaking of Islam generally, it is important to state emphatically that most of the world’s Muslims are peaceable peoples. (In my former role as a leader of the Alliance of Baptists, we entered…
Fundamentalism takes another stab at the BGCT
Earlier this week, the Baptist General Convention of Texas met in Abilene, Texas. This once-robust convention used to fill convention centers in Dallas, Fort Worth or Waco. This time, they gathered at the Abilene Convention Center with 2,007 attendees, made…
Sex, porn, bikinis, health care, hunger and Great Gatsby depravity
Those of us who grew up in white evangelical schools and churches are used to being coerced into submission under the threat of exile. In what we experienced as a theocracy, these institutions held total control over our lives, including…
The Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial isn’t done shaping America
If the Scopes “Monkey” Trial is discussed nowadays, the tone usually is pejorative. The events of July 1925 — in which a small-town substitute teacher was charged with a misdemeanor for teaching evolution in a public high school — are…
In conversation with Zach Lambert
Zach Lambert is a writer, public theologian and the founding pastor of Restore Austin. His new book, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing, catalogs the ways the Bible has been…
The long struggle to balance faith and freedom at Baylor
The latest controversy between Baylor University and the Baptists — rejecting grant funding to study LGBTQ exclusion in the church — has roots that stretch back more than 100 years, far preceding late 20th-century and early 21st-century struggles for control…
Fundamentalism and biblical inerrancy lite in the Global Methodist Church
When, on May 1, 2022, the Global Methodist Church announced itself to the world, more than 2,000 churches already had taken advantage of the disaffiliation process to break with the United Methodist Church. At the time of the announcement, I…
On not getting over fundamentalism
This past week, I received a link to an article on the Christian news satire website, The Babylon Bee. The article was titled “Baptist Conclave to Choose A New John MacArthur.” It was clever and funny. It pictured 12 older…
Getting over fundamentalism
Forty years after that long hot summer of 1925 in Dayton, Tenn., where the Scopes “Monkey Trial” was held, Southern Baptist preacher Carlyle Marney vividly recounted his memories. His parents were daily readers of the Knoxville News Sentinel, which claimed…
Scopes at 100: The lasting legacy of the trial over human origins
Tensions between religion and science erupted in a hot and humid courtroom in Dayton, Tenn., 100 years ago this month. Fundamentalist celebrity William Jennings Bryan squared off against agnostic attorney Clarence Darrow in the trial of high school teacher John…