School boards across America are under attack by conservative parents whose fears of woke liberalism are being stoked by national organizations affiliated with Donald Trump and the Republican Party, as well as Fox News and other conservative media outlets. The…
In praise of Shiprah and Puah and all their descendants
The Bible is full of women heroes, exemplars of courage. We do not give them attention, and very few end up in the stained-glass windows. Two of these heroes are Shiphrah and Puah, Hebrew midwives in Egypt during the Hebrews’…
The history of Haiti you probably don’t know
Recent news coverage of U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback chasing asylum-seekers from Haiti who tried to enter the United States at Del Rio, Texas, is disturbing. The images harken back to a time when white slave patrols used horses…
How we’re learning to see and hear the Black experience at Colonial Williamsburg
Last week, when I left Williamsburg to drive to Peace Hill, my cousin’s farm in the next county, I could hear my uncle’s instructions over the phone during our first trip to Williamsburg in 1997. “Take the road to Jamestown…
It’s time to pay the Piper
On a crisp November night in 2016, I stumbled upon a message from John Piper that changed my theological and ministerial trajectory forever. I was an eager high school senior with a passion for (what I perceived to be at…
Americans are deeply divided over the need for racial healing and how to talk about the nation’s past
Americans remain intensely split over the pace and need for racial healing more than a year after the police killing of George Floyd unleashed massive social and political upheaval, new research shows. The Pew Research Center also has found deep…
Beware the Anti-Anti-Racist Evangelical Complex
Since publication of their new book addressing a Christian view on reparations for descendants of formerly enslaved Americans, Gregory Thompson and Duke Kwon have been met with harsh criticism by the “Anti-Anti-Racist Evangelical Complex.” That’s the best name I can…
The plantation lived on through Texas Baptist evangelism
Recently during worship, my minister sang a song of lament he composed about the whitewashed history of violence and slavery in the United States. In “This House,” Aaron Austin sang: “They said it was history, time to move on. They…
We can’t have two Independence Days
There was great fanfare over the decision by Congress earlier this month to establish Juneteenth as a federal holiday. The president acknowledged that it was long overdue (and indeed, it was). But many within the Black community lamented that the…