I like calling North Carolina home. It has always been home for me, and I have all of my North Carolina native bona fides to prove it. State bird: cardinal. State shell: Scotch bonnet. State tree: longleaf pine. State mammal:…
In North Carolina and Syria, the politics of ‘home’ is real
I haven’t lived in the place where I was born and raised in a long time. But sometimes a quality of “home” embedded in my consciousness is suddenly awakened — a visceral sense of rootedness in a place, among a…
Baptist group protests North Carolina transgender law
Alliance of Baptists President Michael Castle said March 25 he will ask the leaders at the progressive fellowship’s upcoming annual gathering to consider moving the 2017 annual meeting away from North Carolina in light of a new state law that…
Stop talking about gentrification
My beloved neighborhood in west Charlotte is on the brink of big changes. Neighbors are trying to figure out what those changes will be and how to have a voice in them, and we keep coming back to one term…
Gaza children learn NC Christians care about them
As the bombs began to fall, we grieved that we could leave but they could not. My wife, Emily and I are members of Watts Street Baptist Church in Durham, N.C. In November, 2012, we had the unique opportunity to visit…
Are church camps, conference centers going away?
What is your most memorable experience at a church camp or conference center? Write it down quickly before these camps and conference centers disappear. My first remembrance of Ridgecrest Conference Center in western North Carolina is when I was five…
Gardner-Webb program aims to tackle hunger in region
BOILING SPRINGS, N.C. — Many Americans are still struggling to put food on the table, a full four years after the global recession ended, a new poll by Gallup shows. “Twenty percent of people polled last month said that they…
Baptist to lead justice ministry for farmworkers
Lindsay Comstock (ABP) — Lindsay Comstock, an ordained Baptist minister, graduate of Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond and former human-trafficking specialist for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, is new executive director of the National Farm Worker Ministry, a faith-based organization advocating…
Baptist minister Dana Trent details marriage to Hindu monk in just-released ‘Saffron Cross’
North Carolina Baptist minister J. Dana Trent got more than she bargained for when she tried to broaden the field on a dating website application by checking boxes for other religions along with Christian and “spiritual but not religious” —…