During the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last Saturday, Cole Allen breached a Secret Service checkpoint and fired shots at agents in an attempt to assassinate the president of the United States and other high-ranking officials. About 10 minutes prior, from…
Why the faculty’s stand at Southeastern Seminary matters now
In 1987, the faculty of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., faced what many faculty members at colleges and universities across the country are confronting today: The takeover of their institution by outside forces determined to impose ideological…
Another letter from Birmingham
Our nation’s current campaign of intimidation against our immigrant neighbors has called to mind Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, written in April 1963 by King from a prison cell not far from where I am writing this morning…
Protests lead owner not to sell Texas warehouse to ICE
Yet another of the planned ICE mega-detention facilities has fallen through, with the property owner refusing to sell a Hutchins, Texas, warehouse for the Trump administration’s planned use. BNG was the first national news outlet to report on the location…
America’s unfinished civil war
We are in the midst of an American civil war. This time, wool uniforms have been replaced by whistles, backpacks and face masks worn by ICE agents, and drafts have been replaced by calls from community organizers and federal recruitment…
Cracks in the fascist facade
A remarkable thing happened this week. I don’t know how to explain it or what to do with it. Last Friday, my grandson Sam (a high school senior in Charlotte) texted me a question: “What do you say when people…
Seven commendations for resisting counterfeit faith
Night owl that I am, these thoughts began composing in my mind at the stroke of midnight, just as the U.S. government closed (many of) its doors. I began imagining the anxiety, even panic, hundreds of thousands of federal employees…
Bad Indians Book Club aims to inspire the resistance
In a world that is increasingly polarizing along religious, racial and ethnic lines, the solidarity that happens when we set aside the political categories meant to keep us apart and talk to each other is becoming critical to our survival….
The veterans resisting the militarism in DC
Last weekend, I was in Washington, D.C., with a group of veterans pushing back against the occupation of the city by the National Guard and federal officials. As veterans, they believe it is their unique voice and responsibility to tell…
Storytelling as creative resistance
I have no doubt that the daily drama of American crises is causing a lot of art to be created — and viewed. “Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for…
Get out of the echo chamber and hold to hope and courage
The echo chamber sends unending messages each day about the onslaught of the evil that is walking the national leadership halls surrounded by an aura of being unstoppable. It is maddening. I am sure I am not alone in being…
How to use social media to join the resistance by God’s people
Each day we are bombarded with multiple news reports of government dismantling, people being abducted by unmarked officers, orders by judges ignored, criminals pardoned, war plans texted on apps, job loss, Social Security at risk, tariff wars starting a Trumpcession,…