Donald Trump’s victory at the polls on Tuesday will by no means end the political division and rancor that defined the 2016 election season. Nor will the pain, fear and bitterness between Americans magically disappear because churches around the nation…
Dr. King didn’t do everything
We miss the significance of the Civil Rights Movement if we attribute everything to Dr. King. In fact, if one studies the record carefully, it is amazing to note that most of the major Civil Rights Movement campaigns were actually…
The myth of redemptive violence and ‘The Hateful Eight’
By Michael Parnell I step onto some shaky ground here, but I will admit it: I love Quentin Tarantino. Yes, I know his movies are filled with violence and terrible language. But there are few directors working today that fill…
Winter’s here, but Christ is near!
By Elijah Zehyoue My friends, I hate to be a downer, but someone must say it: It’s December, and for where I live that means winter is here. Prepare yourself for winter. Prepare yourself for the snow, the cold weather,…
Black, white ‘First Baptist’ congregations unite after 150 years
By Bob Allen Two historic congregations that went separate ways after the Civil War worshipped for the first time in more than 150 years as a unified First Baptist Church of Murfreesboro, Tenn., Nov. 29. First Baptist Church at 200…
Before we say, ‘I forgive you’
By Starlette McNeill I am in a place that I had not anticipated and certainly could not have prepared for. It is the same feeling that I had after the shooting of nine bowed heads at Mother Emmanuel AME Church…
Apologies
By Bill Leonard In an essay posted on Christianhistory.net on July 1, 2007, Scott Manetsch writes: “Before dawn on the morning of August 24, 1572, church bells tolled in the Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois quarter of Paris. Just moments earlier, soldiers under…
World religions, up close and personal
By Doyle Sager Remember when studies of world religions were abstract and theoretical? No more. The world has come to us. And it is messier than we imagined. While seminary courses and numerous websites are helpful in providing academic knowledge,…
Commemorating Thurgood Marshall
Not many baby boys are named Thoroughgood, but that is the name William and Norma Marshall gave their son after his birth in 1908. As a second-grader, though, Thoroughgood decided he wanted a shorter, quicker-to-spell name, so he changed it…
Bombs and balm
Recently declassified documents confirmed what many had long suspected, that former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet ordered the 1976 assassination of former diplomat Orlando Letelier, along with his colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffit, in Washington, DC. This news is of especially personal…
Southern communion
By Laura-Lee Kidwell Jones As a hospice chaplain, I am regularly asked, “Why do you visit with Alzheimer’s patients?” My standard answer includes, “Because perhaps they will know that someone is there and they will, possibly, for even a moment…
Love already won
My grandmother, Eva Mae Thomas, was my first catechizer and theologian. At the age of 12, she put a pen and notepad in my hand and asked me to “write down all the Scriptures that the preacher says.” There were…