Brian Kaylor begins his Aug. 17 Word&Way article, “The World’s Religions Converge in Chicago,” with this personal question of mine: “How did someone rooted and grounded in a Baptist version of Christianity become a religious pluralist?” In that recent speech at the Parliament of…
Blind trust can be dangerous
Stanley Hauerwas is “considered by many to be one of the world’s most influential living theologians” and was named “America’s Best Theologian” by Time magazine in 2001. He shares a humorous memory in his autobiography, Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir: The…
To the mother who complained about Amanda Gorman’s poem
Dear Concerned Mother, You were astute to signal the potential problems the published poem, “The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman, might cause for your own two children and other elementary school readers at Bob Graham Education Center in Miami…
Six Scriptures undergirding my attitude toward other faiths
Recently, I wrote an opinion piece outlining six lessons I have learned on my interfaith journey. I concluded by stating it was really the way Jesus treated those who were different, the “outsiders,” that prompted my acceptance and celebration of…
‘Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be’
The clever saying “Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be,” while having been repeated in many similar iterations, is credited to a character named Uncle Joshua in The Tents of Wickedness, a novel by Peter De Vries written in 1959. The observation…
Where are the good Republicans?
Even with frequent emotional appeals for the passage of two voting rights bills — the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act — Senate Republicans, along with Democratic holdouts Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, defeated the…
What Patrick Mahomes taught us
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has taught us much about athletic prowess in his relatively short football career. At the high school in small-town Whitehouse, Texas, he was a local football hero. In his senior year, he passed for 4,619…
How a Muslim beggar taught me about dignity
Perhaps I had grown too accustomed to seeing people dig through the garbage containers at the edge of the street in my residential neighborhood in Semarang, Indonesia. Then, one day I prepared a sermon for the small English-language congregation I…
History will judge both John Lewis and Donald Trump
The death of John Lewis has once again brought into sharp focus the stark differences between the congressman and the president. The future congressman was born as one of 10 children of Alabama sharecroppers Eddie and Willie Mae Carter Lewis….