I’ve had plenty of opportunity to get to know Robert Darden and Stephen Newby. Bob is a distinguished writer and teacher, and in our youth, we lived a few houses apart on 30th Street in Waco’s Castle Heights neighborhood. With…
Don’t be a Stormtrooper: Moral clarity in story and in life
As someone who has fond memories of watching the original Star Wars in the theater, I will confess I am drawn to the meme of Star Wars stormtroopers in their off hours — hanging in the break room, eating lunch,…
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Catherine Meeks
Catherine Meeks is a prolific author of works on race and justice, including the recent memoir, A Quilted Life: Reflections of a Sharecropper’s Daughter, and one of the Episcopal Church’s most impactful teachers on racial healing. After retiring as the…
A Holy Week choice between two parades
Some years ago, I led an adult formation (Baptists, read “Sunday school”) series for the good people of Calvary Episcopal in Bastrop, Texas, on The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem, a book…
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Beth Allison Barr
Beth Allison Barr holds the James Vardaman Chair in History at Baylor University. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the new book Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry and…
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Yolanda Pierce
Yolanda Pierce serves as dean of the Divinity School and Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Religion and Literature at Vanderbilt University. One of America’s vital theologians, Pierce was founding director of the Center for African American Religious Life at the Smithsonian…
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Rep. James Talarico
James Talarico was Texas’ youngest statewide elected official when he entered the Texas House in 2019. His mixture of bona fides — Democrat, devout Christian, former school teacher, Presbyterian seminarian — quickly attracted national attention, and many of his speeches…
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Malcolm Foley
Malcolm Foley is a historian whose doctoral work centered on lynchings and the church’s response to them. The pastor of Mosaic Waco and special advisor to the president for Equity and Campus Engagement at Baylor University is helping to drive…
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Jonathan Eig
Jonathan Eig is the New York Times bestselling author of six books, including Ali: A Life, Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning King: A Life. His biography of King is thought of by…
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Greg Jarrell
Greg Jarrell is a writer, ordained minister, jazz musician, and BNG contributor living in the intentional QC Family Tree community in Charlotte, N.C.’s, Enderly Park region — which one Reddit thread describes as noisy because of airplanes and gunshots. But…
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Robert G. Callahan II
Robert G. Callahan II is a writer, attorney, theologian and law professor at Baylor University. In 2020, Callahan was named Lawyer of the Year by the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Association. His recent book Fire in the Whole: Embracing Our…
100 years of James Baldwin: We are our history
James Baldwin was my exact age — 63 — when he died in 1987. At the time of his death, he had written essential novels, plays and essays and had given a multitude of powerful speeches, including a 1965 debate…