I’m not a “media hog.” I really don’t go looking for ways to get noticed, quoted, published, but it’s not been uncommon recently for a local television station reporter to show up seeking a voice from “our perspective.” It didn’t…
Alliance of Baptists moves ahead with plans to meet in N.C. to ‘model’ justice
Though some businesses are reducing or ending activity in North Carolina to protest the state’s new controversial LBGT law, the Alliance of Baptists says it will move forward with plans to hold its gathering next year in Raleigh in order to register its…
Transgender Baptist minister depends on ‘theology of survival’
Allyson Dylan Robinson, who may be the first openly transgender person ordained to the ministry by a Baptist church, talks about what spared her life years ago on a deserted Texas highway.
The religion of the New Lost Cause
At Maundy Thursday worship in Wake Forest University’s Davis Chapel, the day after Gov. Pat McCrory signed NC House Bill 2, a transgender divinity school student washed the feet of an African Pentecostal student as the Gospel text from John…
In North Carolina and Syria, the politics of ‘home’ is real
I haven’t lived in the place where I was born and raised in a long time. But sometimes a quality of “home” embedded in my consciousness is suddenly awakened — a visceral sense of rootedness in a place, among a…
Baptist group protests North Carolina transgender law
Alliance of Baptists President Michael Castle said March 25 he will ask the leaders at the progressive fellowship’s upcoming annual gathering to consider moving the 2017 annual meeting away from North Carolina in light of a new state law that…
N.C. legislature voids Charlotte’s LGBT protections
North Carolina lawmakers convened a special session March 22 to pass a bill requiring public schools to allow access to multiple occupancy bathrooms and locker rooms based solely on the biological sex listed on a student’s birth certificate. The special…
Charlotte approves measure to halt LGBT discrimination
By Bob Allen The city council in Charlotte, N.C., passed an ordinance Feb. 22 to prevent businesses from discriminating against LGBT customers, setting the stage for a battle with the Republican-controlled state legislature. Council members voted 7-4 in favor of…
The fallacy in opposing ‘bathroom bills’
Franklin Graham is wrong again — and, once again, giving a bad name to my religion and my church. We could hope that if a Christian minister with a worldwide voice (often mistaken for “the” Christian voice), was going to…