A year to the day before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist pastor, publicly defined the war in Vietnam as a civil rights issue on April 4, 1967, in an address titled Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence to…
The Great Replacement is a lie and not Christian, Southern Baptist pastor explains
Christians deviate from their own faith and Scripture whenever they espouse beliefs that immigrants of color are a threat to American culture, society and security, a Southern Baptist minister and author said during a recent podcast about the Great Replacement…
The ‘MAGA faction’ could be a hindrance for multiracial congregations
One of the prized goals of evangelical and mainline churches in America today is to create multiethnic congregations. But the same political trends that are making life difficult for pastors also bode ill for multicultural churches. New research published Jan….
Facing white Christianity’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection
On Jan. 20, 2021, President Joe Biden became the first commander in chief to use the words “white supremacy” in an inaugural address. Naming “the cry of racial justice 400 years in the making” and its corollary, “a rise in…
Everything that’s wrong with the world explained in one brief column
We do love simplicity. We love the idea that complex issues can be distilled into easy sound bites, that nuanced conversations can be summarized as “he said/she said” and that internet memes and bumper stickers offer plenty of space to…
‘Thank you, bell hooks, for your biblical vision of love’
Editor’s note: Author and activist bell hooks died Wednesday, Dec. 15, at her home in Berea, Ky. This is a tribute to her influence. I first heard bell hooks when she spoke at a graduate school event in 1999. She…
A few notes on Kenny G, the history of jazz and being tone deaf to how we got here
“John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, their technique was phenomenal, but that music was never heartfelt for me, so, when I went out and gigged, it wasn’t anything that I wanted to emulate.” So said Kenneth Gorelick, the much-beloved, and much-maligned,…
‘Bindergate’ story shows the behind-the-scenes struggle for unity versus strict orthodoxy in SBC
Southern Baptists were early to the cultural war over Critical Race Theory, but documents obtained by the Nashville Tennessean show the tightrope denominational leaders have walked trying to placate white ultra-conservatives while not running off Black conservatives. A Dec. 8…
Advent, race and the intimacy of Incarnation: Why we must see beyond a white Baby Jesus
Just ahead of the first Sunday of Advent this year, a painting depicting Mary cradling the body of the crucified Jesus was stolen from the wall outside the Mary Mirror of Justice Chapel at Catholic University of America law school,…