In September 2021, a massive billboard promoting Donald Trump loomed high above Highway 27 in Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., with the words of Isaiah 9:6, a biblical text long cherished by Christians, emblazoned over an American flag: “Unto us a son…
How MLK’s questions became my questions too
When Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in April 1963, I was a sophomore Bible major at a church-related college in the South, studying to become a preacher. None of my professors suggested that I read…
Christian America’s betrayal of the kingdom of God
The storming of the American Capitol on Jan. 6 — with its profusion of Bibles, crosses and other Christian symbols — placed a gigantic exclamation point on the unease American Christians always have felt with the First Amendment to the…
A white Jesus, the American Creed, and a nation badly divided
I was young — perhaps only 3 or 4 — when I learned in Sunday school that “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world; red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight….