Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison. — Mark 6:27 On the day we write this post, during the week Tyre Nichols was buried…
Southwestern Seminary student arrested for alleged ‘felony sexual assault’
A Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary student was arrested last week by a suburban Fort Worth, Texas, police department on charges of felony sexual assault. In Texas law, “felony sexual assault” is a specific term meaning rape. Sexual assault in Texas…
Black pastor arrested in Alabama for watering neighbors’ flowers sues city
A pastor watering his neighbor’s flowers wouldn’t normally make national news, but in Childersburg, Ala., such an act of generosity resulted in an arrest and a story on National Public Radio. The story later made The New York Times. Michael…
Louisville police training quoted Bible verse to say officers are God’s agents of wrath
The police department that wrongly shot Breonna Taylor dead in her own apartment in 2020 had trained its officers just three years earlier that they are avengers who carry out “God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” New reporting by the Louisville,…
January 6 truth or consequences
Seeking out the truth has seldom been more urgent for Americans than it is now. We possess more factual information than any generation in human history yet differ over the most basic propositions. The dichotomy threatens our future. Truth makes…
Police and clergy join forces in this Virginia city to train officers in community assets more than deficits
The Danville, Va., Police Department’s new community immersion program connects rookie officers with leaders, including pastors, and residents in the city’s most diverse and economically challenged neighborhoods. Baptist pastor Joshua Hearne helped design the course, and the experience was a…
George Floyd found innocent, and we can breathe again
There were those who were holding their breath and did not even know it. They had suspended their respiration — instinctively but unconsciously — because for so long, none of us have been able to breathe in an atmosphere polluted…
Remembering Jamorio and praying for justice
I don’t think all police officers are bad people. I think many are good people, trying to do a very hard job for very little pay, and that they are doing so out of a real sense of service to…
Q&A with Chris Sanders on unions, social justice and policing
Chris Sanders knows theology and law, and he’s an advocate both for labor unions and social justice. That blend of life experience and life passion makes for an interesting conversation these days — with the dueling demands of holding police…