Believe it or not, there’s a Republican candidate for public office in Texas who is worse than Ken Paxton. Bo French is so bad that even Sen. John Cornyn called him out on social media this weekend. That’s right, Cornyn,…
In conversation with Robert P. Jones
Robert P. Jones is founder and president of Public Religion Research Institute, a vital resource for anyone interested in religion, race, politics and justice, and also the New York Times bestselling author of a new book, Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith…
In conversation with Kendall Mariah
I’m wearing Jordan sneakers. Kendall Mariah is wearing Lilly Pulitzer. That probably tells you almost everything you think you need to know about us. It also tells you almost nothing. I met Kendall while interviewing to become her pastor. She…
There was more to Aunt Leila’s dining room table
Growing up in Youngstown, Ohio, I lived with a sense of youth and an aloofness to social issues. It’s not that I didn’t care about the struggle for fairness, equality and love or even about social justice; none of that was…
The stories we tell define us
Ten years ago, a priest at an inner-city Episcopal church in Delaware (Saints Andrew and Matthew in Wilmington) invited me to lead a Lenten retreat on race and film for his congregants. His parish, he told me, was made up…
We also need a reckoning with racist words that cut like a knife
In North Texas last week, all eyes were on a trial in Frisco, a northern Dallas suburb. The person on trial was Karmelo Anthony, a 19-year-old accused — and now convicted — of stabbing to death 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at…
To understand today’s SBC, listen to history
Across America this week, Baptist women are carrying a familiar weight. Some are pastors who have faithfully answered the call of God, only to watch the Southern Baptist Convention debate whether God possibly could have called them. Some are seminary…
From cannabis to marijuana: The racializing of weed
America did not merely criminalize a plant. It criminalized a people. Before “marijuana” became America’s most politically weaponized slang term, the plant was widely known as cannabis — used in medicine, industrial hemp and natural remedies. But in the 1930s,…
Developing a new conversation on race
Jesus had a lot to say about putting new wine in old wineskins, and those words need not to be lost on us as we imagine our way forward in our racial healing work. It not good enough to put…
The Bible is not just a white man’s book
You’ve been told the Bible was a white man’s book. You’ve seen the images — pale-skinned angels, a European Jesus, blonde-haired apostles. Church walls lined with Renaissance art have shaped a quiet but powerful assumption over time, that holiness somehow…
It’s time to try a new approach on racial healing
In order for any old ways and systems to change, there must be people with the capacity for vision who can imagine that change. Bridging the Rivers of Difference, A Proclamation of Unity In Resistance is my new book that…
Fighting fear and dehumanization in Richmond
Actions speak loudly, but words also count in a time when many who should be speaking out about injustice remain silent. A public statement read by a group of Christian leaders Feb. 27 on the steps of First Baptist Church…