At year end, as always, I am reflecting on the books, movies, music and TV that shaped me. During the week that my wife, Jeanie, and I finished watching the acclaimed 2020 Apple TV series Ted Lasso, thousands of Americans…
Understanding Black theology, white fragility
Back in 2011, Raphael Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (and currently in a runoff for one of Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats), preached a sermon drawn from the Gospel of Matthew about whether a person could serve…
Prescription for a divided nation: Love and forgiveness
It didn’t surprise me in recent weeks to read articles like the essay Gene Weingarten wrote for the Washington Post in which he lamented the fact that “I find myself profoundly disliking and disrespecting almost half of my countrymen and…
‘I am third’ opens our minds toward a Christian political ethic
The great Chicago Bears running back Gale Sayers died recently. I admired him for what he did with a football in his hands, but what lingers with me are two books about him I read when I was a kid….
Films on race can help us have hard conversations
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests around the country and across the globe, HBO Max announced earlier this summer that it was pulling the historical epic Gone with the Wind (1939) from the streaming lineup. Then it…
‘OK, we live in a racist society. What do we do next?’
The videos don’t lie, and we can’t turn away from the images of George Floyd gasping for breath, from the truth of his story and so many like it. So over the past few months as demonstrators have taken to…
What kind of witness will the white Christian church give?
Recently I posted about re-encountering my white privilege on Facebook. I told a story about a meeting with a fellow dad from my daughter’s school and about my recognition that our lives were similar yet markedly different because of the…
Besides gore, zombie films offer rich spiritual formation lessons, prof says
Zombie dramas are known for being full of blood and guts, horror and death — lots and lots of death. But is it possible they also offer lessons in ethics and spiritual formation? Greg Garrett, a Baylor University professor, author and…
Many Americans find meaning in vampire, zombie tales, Baylor prof says
By Jeff Brumley It’s a good thing so many films, books and television shows are fixated on life after death, Baylor University scholar Greg Garrett said. Because we need them. “For many of us, if we don’t tell these stories…