Letter to the Editor February 2, 2023 Dear Editor: I read Robert P. Jones’ perceptive article on Donald Trump and his allegedly disloyal white evangelical supporters and wanted to endorse it. Trump is outraged that Christian leaders are hesitating to…
Children who tell blunt truth, as opposed to lying, are judged harsher by adults
American children are socialized to be rewarded for telling subtle lies and punished for telling blunt truth, new research from Texas State University finds. While most parents want to teach their children to tell the truth, they are inconsistent with…
Tooting your horn, missing the point, or telling the truth about church
“Thank you for the tour. Your church has such an interesting history. I was surprised that you didn’t mention God.” What? Really? That can’t be right. Telling a church’s story seems simple. You just tell what happened. Start to do…
For evangelical voters, there’s ‘no exception’ except when their candidate needs an exception
National Republicans are standing up to defend Herschel Walker after a bombshell report that the Senate candidate in the hotly contested battleground state of Georgia paid for a woman’s abortion in 2009. Something has radically changed in the value system of…
‘These are not your people’
Meeting up with good friends recently, we all hugged and chatted about changes in our lives during the tumultuous pandemic. Everyone, of course, contributed with updates. At one point, I shared that a decision we made didn’t seem to be…
Separate filings accuse two SBC agencies of misleading courts to delay trial and avoid scrutiny
It hasn’t been a good week for Southern Baptist Convention entities defending themselves against lawsuits. Court filings in the two most prominent such cases have accused SBC leadership of intentionally misleading the court and, in one case, committing perjury. The…
‘Radical new arrangements’: On conservative Christian radicalization in the U.S.
After a year of researching the matter rather deeply — including listening to conservative scholars, activists and politicians — it has become completely clear to me that a significant chunk of conservative Christians in the United States has moved from…
What’s wrong with the ‘you’re being divisive’ argument
Pastors, of all people, should recognize this deflection for what it is. It’s a dirty trick they suffer from all the time. The pastor gets up the courage to speak actual truth about some situation — most likely a sermon…
Frederick Buechner, Maya Angelou and Helen Lewis: Telling the truth
But to preach the gospel is not just to tell the truth but to tell the truth in love and to tell the truth in love means to tell it with concern not only for the truth that is being…