Tennessee news has my stomach churning. To comply with the legislature’s newly mandated guidelines, Knox County Schools recently banned several books including Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Roots, which depicts the horrors of enslavement. Two weeks later, the county…
Understanding the legacy of Roots after 50 years
As we approach the 50th anniversary of Alex Haley’s novel Roots, we are not merely commemorating a book and a subsequent television event, we are revisiting a cultural earthquake. Before the bright lights of Hollywood casting calls in 1976 —…
12 cures for the hollow church
It’s been several years since the huge oak on the property of First Church came crashing down into the empty parking lot one Saturday night. A blast of straight-line winds proved more than the 250-year-old icon could withstand. The tree…
You CAN go home again
When we use our imaginations, our grief and loss have the potential to become the silent, fertile seedbed for redemptive, life-giving deeds.
The shame is mine: ‘Roots’ 2016
This week I was one among the millions who watched A&E’s powerful and devastating “re-imagination” of the epic miniseries Roots, brought to the small screen for a new audience against the not-so-new backdrop of this, the latest iteration of the…