Tragically, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam isn’t an outlier. He merely offers the latest, high-profile evidence of the deep and bitter truth about white Christianity’s toleration of, and complicity in, the sin of white supremacy.
10 bogus ideas my white culture taught me growing up
I posted a list on Facebook of 10 bogus ideas I learned growing up in America’s white culture. The responses were interesting and sometimes surprising.
A church sign for Robert Jeffress and other ‘wallers’: We don’t need a big wall; we need a big mirror
Yes, Pastor Jeffress, the New Jerusalem described in the book of Revelation might have a wall. But it’s not for the reasons you claim. How in the name of Christ can we possibly justify building a multi-billion dollar wall to keep people out when all that Christ teaches us is to draw our circles wider to welcome people in?
Trump’s shutdown: a malicious spectacle of moral, political and humanitarian failure
The fate and futures of our neighbors, the security of our nation and the legitimacy of our claim to be a force for morality in the world has been taken hostage by an autocratic president with a lifelong penchant for immorality and inhumanity.
Yet more racially charged remarks beg the question (again): Is President Trump a racist?
I find it appalling that President Trump has used both Wounded Knee and Pocahontas as political fodder. The history of the United States regarding indigenous peoples is rooted in the genocide of millions of men, women and children. For the president to make light of that reality demonstrates his ignorance, arrogance or outright racist views.
White Baptists and racial reconciliation: there’s a difference between lament and repentance
Imagine what the Holy Spirit might accomplish if Southern Seminary spent the next 150 years intentionally preparing people for ministry careers based on the gospel of liberation and justice rather than the slaveholder theology and hermeneutic and heresies of white supremacy, white religious nationalism and imperialism.
3 words for the church in 2019: ‘we were wrong’
If the church of Jesus Christ is to be relevant in our mission, if we are to be agents of God’s reconciling love, we’ve got to take a hard look in the mirror. And in God’s grace to muster the courage to say we were wrong.
American racism, 1619-2019: exorcism of this demon is needed – now
I am forced to ask: what am I promoting as gospel right now that later generations will document, repudiate and apologize for? I can’t repent of the racism of my Baptist ancestors if I won’t repent of racism in myself and my own segment of American culture right now.
The irony of a Southern Baptist seminary’s report on slavery and racism
Using methods of biblical exegesis and theological construction similar to its founders’ defense of slavery, a Southern Baptist seminary’s leaders continue the institution’s history of discrimination and oppression, but with different targets.
Report laments history of slavery and racism at SBC seminary
A Southern Baptist seminary that believes the Bible forbids women from being pastors and that being homosexual is a sin has been wrong before, according to a 71-page report released Wednesday on slavery and racism in the history of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Black pastors challenge their white colleagues’ silence
“We need to hear you say clearly in the pulpit and in the streets that white supremacy and racism is wrong,” a black pastor told a group of white colleagues following the police shooting of an unarmed, African-American man. “And no more generalizations. It has to be specific.”
Silence in the face of evil: learning from an obscure schoolteacher who urged Karl Barth and other theologians to stand in solidarity with the Jews in Nazi Germany
If I thought Nazi-era Germany was an aberration I could probably move on; but in Donald Trump’s America, who can think that? The Church of Jesus Christ is confronted by an anti-Gospel once again. The German Church never acknowledged her complicity with the National Socialists, and the white churches of America are equally resistant to truth.