On Jan. 22, Tom Buck, pastor of First Baptist Church of Lindale, Texas, equated Vice President Kamala Harris with the biblical Jezebel. It was a strategic insult designed to terrorize and imbrute Harris. He joined Steve Swofford, pastor of First…
A letter to the white church in America
On April 12, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in Birmingham, Ala., for leading a nonviolent demonstration for human rights. While he was being detained, he was given a newspaper that contained a statement written by eight white preachers….
No ifs, ands or butts: Binary thinking makes the Christian life hard to wear
Binary thinking is the butt crack of the body of Christ. Yes, I’m being cheeky, but the reality is that our Christian faith gets sucked into the bottom half of a sagging belief system sort of like when a person…
A second SBC pastor in Texas called Vice President Kamala Harris ‘Jezebel’
It turns out that East Texas pastor Tom Buck wasn’t the first Southern Baptist pastor in Texas to call Vice President Kamala Harris a “Jezebel.” Steve Swofford, pastor of First Baptist Church of Rockwall, Texas, located in the eastern suburbs…
The death penalty is dying a slow death; it’s time we pull the plug
The death penalty is dying in America. I cheer its death. Capital punishment has been abolished in 22 states. Ten of the remaining 28 states have not had an execution in a decade. According to the Death Penalty Information Center,…
Amid the hypocrisy of critiquing ‘unity,’ maybe we need a different goal: Cooperation
We need to debunk the argument that achieving “unity” means everyone will get their way. That’s not logically possible. This fallacious thinking is emerging as a primary conservative critique of the new administration in Washington, D.C. And once again, it…
‘God bless white America’: Why we need to overturn white racial mythologies
On June 17, 2015, a young white stranger walked into a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. (sometimes known as “Mother Emanuel” because of its role as one of America’s most historic Black churches). That…
America needs a ‘third Reconstruction,’ Barber tells new administration
America needs a “third Reconstruction,” William Barber II said in a homily at the virtual inaugural prayer service for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris hosted by Washington National Cathedral on Thursday, Jan. 21. “Reconstruction” refers first to…
SBC pastor calls Vice President Kamala Harris a ‘Jezebel’ two days after inauguration
The Southern Baptist Convention already had a problem with Black pastors because its six seminary presidents have launched a battle against Critical Race Theory. Then an East Texas SBC pastor added to the consternation Jan. 22 by calling Vice President…