Conservatives were “inches from losing the Southern Baptist Convention” before the “conservative resurgence,” Al Mohler told SBC President Clint Pressley in a new podcast. Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., has been a standard bearer for…
Liberalism is not liberation
One of my predecessors as pastor at Myers Park Baptist Church was the great Carlyle Marney, who confessed, “The real crisis for me was in Charlotte” where he was caught in a web of socio-economic forces that included “money, banking,…
Garrison Keillor: The Pied Piper of liberal Mainline nostalgia
Garrison Keillor is still on the road at 83. From 1974 to 2016, he was on the radio practically every Saturday night at 5:00 Central Time. The show was called A Prairie Home Companion. If you’ve read this far, you…
The case against conservatism run amok
I used to think I was a conservative because that’s what I was told I should be. Then I met some real conservatives and some real liberals. It’s all relative. Surely there is a case to be made against liberalism…
In three-hour interview, Mohler says he ‘hopes and prays’ Jimmy Carter is born again
Al Mohler has to “hope and pray” Jimmy Carter is a born-again Christian, he told a conservative podcaster in a wide-ranging interview. But the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary had no qualms about voting for Donald Trump for U.S….
Voters must choose between two religious visions
The 2024 presidential election is a head-scratcher. Donald Trump is intentionally violating every canon of American political etiquette. His interminable campaign speeches are aimed at no one outside the MAGA base. Outside of a few washed-up celebrities like Kid Rock…
When Baptists fight, they stop fishing
In his book In the Eye of the Storm, Max Lucado shares a story of a group of guys going on a long-awaited fishing trip. The problem starts when the weather turns ugly. They arrive at the lake and have…
Knocking down the straw man of theological liberalism
One of the growing frustrations many deconstructing Christians, ex-evangelicals, liberationist and liberal theologians share is how conservative organizations like The Gospel Coalition constantly misrepresent us through “straw man” fallacies. In the field of logic, a “straw man” is when somebody…
Disarming the fear infecting our politics
I started attending a Southern Baptist church about nine months before I was born. In those preschool years, the message about God was simple and clear: God is love; God is good; God loves the whole world, and God loves…
Social liberalism grows while economic conservatism still dominates
More Americans describe themselves as socially liberal than economically liberal, according to new polling data from Gallup. And for the first time, more Americans identify as social liberals than as social conservatives. “This is the first year in Gallup’s trend…
‘The Critique’ versus ‘The Heroic Narrative’ defines the debate in America today
In 2015, 37% of Republican voters told pollsters that “colleges have a negative effect on the United States.” By 2019, 59% of Republicans said they believed that. Among non-white voters, educational level had no effect on political preference in the…
It’s embarrassing, but it doesn’t have to be (being Baptist, that is)
Hello there! I just recently realized (in the midst of writing blog after blog after endless blog) that I don’t think we’ve met before (aside of course, from you mom! I promise I’ll come get my mail soon.) Yes, exactly…