I recently traveled to Geneva to attend the fifth session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, an advisory body to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations. As executive director of JustFaith Ministries, I joined representatives…
Can justice movements lose their soul?
Public life in America feels increasingly volatile. Anger saturates political discourse. Across the ideological spectrum, our public conversations often mirror the hostility they claim to resist. Many people reach for the language of prophecy to justify the indignation they assume…
Court prophets and the crisis of the prophetic
We are living in a moment of widespread moral confusion, and yet we have no shortage of people claiming to speak with moral and even prophetic authority. Everyone seems certain. Everyone seems outraged. Everyone seems convinced God is on their…
Why most bow
For the past few months, I’ve immersed myself in prophetic writings, Second Temple apocalypticism and related texts. And I know what you may be thinking: He’s fascinated by the end of the world. Not really. What has captivated me is…
‘Great white Christian freakout’ shifted America, Jones says
The U.S. was just beginning to come to terms with the effects of racial injustice when the “great white Christian freakout” ushered in the era of Donald Trump and empowered religious nationalism, said Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion…
A word for the church in a time of collapse
In 2021, I published “The Fight for the Soul of America,” an op-ed warning that our country was not simply in political turmoil — it was in spiritual crisis. Four years later, that warning has proved tragically prescient. Today, I…
What you haven’t been taught about Martin Luther King
Dedicating highways, schools, monuments and a national holiday to Martin Luther King Jr. often obscures his status as a radical bent on revolutionizing American race relations and faith, according to author and King scholar Lewis Brogdon. “Those are great things,…
Brogdon urges forthright approach to ‘problematic’ biblical texts
While Lewis Brogdon doesn’t describe the Bible as fragile, he wants to help people interpret its content with care. That is one of the reasons Brogdon, associate professor preaching and Black church studies at Baptist Seminary of Kentucky, wrote a…
The Black community needs allies who listen and act, scholar says
The quest for racial justice in the United States needs more white people who hear the concerns of their Black neighbors and respond with concrete actions, a Black church scholar wrote in a New York newspaper. In an op-ed published…
Racism-induced trauma creates hopelessness in Black communities, scholars say
As he consults with Black congregations, Black church scholar Lewis Brogdon often advises them to prioritize adding a mental health professional to their staffs. That’s because Brogdon, director of the Institute for Black Church Studies at Baptist Seminary of Kentucky,…
White supremacy permeates U.S. life, scholar says
The issue of white supremacy in the United States is not confined to people of the past who spewed racial hatred, researcher and author Robert P. Jones told a Baptist gathering in Kentucky. “When most white people hear the word…
Erica Whitaker named associate director of BSK’s Institute for Black Church Studies
Erica Whitaker has been named associate director of Baptist Seminary of Kentucky’s Institute for Black Church Studies, where she will work alongside Lewis Brogdon, who became the institute’s first director earlier this year. Whitaker, pastor of Buechel Park Baptist Church…