All musical bio-movies seem to follow the same script. A group or an individual rises from poverty to the heights of fame. Along the way they get taken advantage of by a manager and end up casting said manager aside….
Centennial of the lynching of Leo Frank . . . and the struggle over the meaning of freedom
In August 1913 the body of 14-year-old laborer Mary Phagan was found in the basement of the National Pencil Company in Atlanta. The company’s Jewish-American superintendent, Leo Frank, was eventually convicted of the crime and sentenced to death by hanging….
Fear, racism, and new knives
Two weeks ago, Samuel DuBose, a black man stopped for not having a front license plate, was shot and killed two minutes later by Raymond Tensing, a 25-year-old University of Cincinnati campus police officer. The event, recorded by the officer’s…
Letter from a Birmingham intersection
**The author has been participating with QC Family Tree in tracing the steps of the Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights Movement. Learn more about the trip here and here. Remembering that it happened once, We cannot turn away the thought,…
Bringing Scout out of the shadows of Atticus’s “selfie”
By now Harper Lee’s novel, Go Set a Watchman, released less than a month ago and the controversy surrounding it’s publication has become old news. However, I wanted to read the novel for myself before weighing in or making any…
Confederate flags left at MLK’s home church
By Bob Allen The pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church called Thursday’s placement of four Confederate flags on the campus of the home church of Martin Luther King an act of hate and terrorism. “It is the kind of…
A necessary heretic
Last week, the long-awaited new book Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates finally hit shelves. Its release was moved up from October to July in light of recent events yet again raising the ongoing concerns of race in…
Rights and offenses: The Confederate flag
On Friday, July 10, at the South Carolina Capitol, the Confederate flag was removed. On Sunday, July 12, at my church, the Confederate flag was prominently displayed. I saw the oversized flag attached to the back, right-side of an oversized…
Baptist colleges complicit in sin
Last week, two Baptist colleges in Texas jumped into the debate over women’s health. Baptist News Global reported that East Texas Baptist University and Houston Baptist University objected to “providing — directly or indirectly — emergency contraceptive drugs they believe cause…
More alike than different
Two contrasting stories from June 2015 are etched into my mind—one upliftingly positive and the other hauntingly negative. My reflection on the two experiences confirmed for me we are more alike than we are different. I officiated a meaningful wedding…
Forgiveness breaks the Devil’s back
Fresh from wrestling with the Devil through forty days and forty nights, Jesus shows up in his home church of Nazareth and uses the ancient words of the prophet Isaiah to lay down his manifesto: The Spirit of the Lord…
Following up: Further Reflections on Al Mohler, Racism, Inerrancy, and Theological Education
What I saw as a weakness in Mohler’s reflection was that while he acknowledged the racism of Boyce, and admitted that Southern Baptists “bear a particular responsibility” to combat racism, his arguments around “orthodoxy” and “heresy” were abstracted from real…