Who are the people, of whatever faith or no faith, who will stand up to Trump’s despotism and to white Christian nationalism – and to the political opportunists and free market capitalists who support both?
Baptists under Nazism and Baptists amid America’s current political crisis: a call to ‘disruption’
What does the story of Baptists under the Third Reich reveal about how we respond to political crisis? I believe the church is meant to be a disruptive church. That means first “disrupting” a theology that prioritizes relevance over resistance.
‘Have you found Jesus yet?’ The peddling preacher and the pauper
Have you found Jesus yet? I ask because there seems to be some confusion today about where to find him.
Are we finally ready to learn from Glenn Hinson, one of our Baptist prophets?
Forty years ago, Hinson’s open letter challenged Southern Baptist Convention President Bailey Smith’s pronouncement that “God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.” Today, moderate Baptists know they don’t want to follow Smith and his tribe, but have we embraced a clear alternative?
Politics as an approximation of the Kingdom of God versus politics as Baal
When we identify the kingdom of God with one political party or ideology, Baalism is close at hand.
Booing Trump felt good, momentarily: the hidden danger of giving undue attention to evil
The common exhortation of “Don’t look away” reminds us that a lack of vigilance can make us oblivious to the ways in which our political environment can change us for the worse. But an ironic danger lurks beneath the surface.
If a favorite preacher, pundit or politician speaks in stereotypes, it’s time you changed the channel
The tool of a lazy mind, the product of shallow thinking and the evidence of unsettled and angry spirits, the stereotypes that are ubiquitous in the religious and political discourse of our age are also evidence of a nation misguided, the immaturity of the body politic.
President Trump is being investigated, not lynched
The president’s racist Twitter message employing the language of lynching was a diabolical suggestion that the current impeachment inquiry is the existential, moral and legal equivalent of murder.
Hope in spite of killer cops and Kanye’s cult
The deep and abiding anger that we harbor at the world as it is today will kill us in greater numbers than the actions of crooked cops, Trump-loving white nationalists or mass shooters. As elusive as it may seem, seeking the peace that surpasses all understanding must be our daily work.
‘Broken Churches, Broken Nation’: Yes, Pastor Jeffress, words do ‘mean something’
If words really do “mean something,” as Robert Jeffress asserted, correctly, then the rhetoric of “civil war,” “treason” or “coup” used by president, pastor or any of us is not only divisive but dangerous.
Carrie Newcomer, Christian kindness and making room at the table for everyone
It’s time to turn our personal kindness into political kindness, to turn love into policy, to speak truth and to be the people God calls us to be, in person and in policy.
Franklin Graham: the apple that fell far from the tree
As I see it, Franklin Graham is far from the man his father was. In conspicuous ways, he is still like the angry, impatient and entitled 11-year-old I met in the summer of 1964.