American democracy is endangered in the most unlikely of places: Ukraine. Events swirling around the Russian invasion of Ukraine have implications for our own freedom. I have no interest in conjuring the apocalyptic visions of rapture believers, but I do…
Could Jesus be coming to us again in the guise of an Afghan child?
You know what I’m grateful for this year as Advent comes? A home. Not just a roof over my head or a house with electricity and running water. I’m thankful for a national home, an imperfect but beloved country, a…
What I learned when I got lifted up on high
At “dark thirty,” too early for a vacation morning, we waited in the chilly pre-dawn air just outside our cave hotel room in Cappadocia, Turkey. Long before the sunrise, a nondescript white van eventually would come to pick us up…
Why Christians in the U.S. should be ‘truly frantic’
Headlines about Turkey’s October offensive in northern Syria have all but faded. But the danger is far from over for Christians trapped in the region. And the agony also remains palpable among refugees and others in North America who know…
European Baptist leaders protest escalation in Syrian conflict
Leaders of the European Baptist Federation strongly condemned the recent increase in violence in Syria, as government forces and their allies push to reclaim rebel-held neighborhoods in Aleppo, once the nation’s largest city and a key battleground since fighting broke…
More Noah’s ark headlines — this time at 5th-century synagogue excavation
While Ken Ham’s “Ark Encounter” museum near Williamstown, Ky., has drawn the lion’s share of attention this summer directed toward Noah’s vessel, another representation of the ark in Israel has been wowing the archaeological world.
Nonviolence and a different future with God
“Deliver us from evil.” Most Sundays we pray these words, but rarely do they sound the resonance we hear in these anarchic days. Evil seems unrelenting, incapable of exhausting its ravenous power. Who can withstand its voracious appetite for destruction?
Belgium-based minister helping Syrian families to safety
Four years into a multi-faceted and sustained response to “the biggest humanitarian emergency of our era,” the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is continuing its efforts to serve Syrian refugees through field personnel and ministry partners in five countries. Belgium-based field personnel…
Garrison Keillor got it right about children
My wife has an acrylic paperweight which was given to her some years ago. Etched into it is the quote popularized by Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame that says, “Nothing you do for children is ever wasted.” I…