This article is part of a series on Critical Race Theory published throughout the month of December. See the links below for previous articles in the series. On Nov. 30, 2020, presidents of the six seminaries affiliated with the Southern…
Interfaith group calls on Biden administration to ‘restore’ religious freedom protections
A group of nearly 100 interreligious leaders has offered four suggestions to the incoming Biden-Harris administration on urgent work necessary to restore religious freedom protections. “The Trump administration has taken many actions that undermine religious freedom,” the group’s letter says….
Reports of the death of white Christian America are greatly exaggerated
In the beginning of his 2016 book titled The End of White Christian America, Robert P. Jones issued an obituary for white Christian America. The time of death was listed as “in the latter part of the first decade of…
USC study finds Blacks three times more likely to be stopped by police in LA County
A new study from the University of California offers concrete data on the meaning of “systemic racism” in policing — data not surprising to two Baptists with front-row seats to issues of policing and criminal justice. The USC report analyzed police…
On incompetent response to coronavirus: God is watching
On Jan. 24, 2017 — less than a week after President Donald Trump took office —– I wrote a blog post that described him in one word: psychopath. I expanded on that assessment after Trump announced in April of this year…
A message to white Christian America: Remember the church at Sardis
I recently finished reading White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, by Robert P. Jones, the CEO of Public Religion Research Institute. In that book, Jones comments about recent (2018 and 2019) public opinion survey responses from white…
America, these are self-inflicted wounds
The United States has now lost 150,000 people — almost three times the number of people we lost during the Vietnam War – due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic is spreading unchecked across the nation. Meanwhile, national, state and…
Arkansas Supreme Court declines to prevent pastor/judge from hearing attorney general’s cases
The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday refused to bar a Little Rock judge from handling cases involving the office of the state attorney general who in 2017 got him removed from execution cases after he demonstrated against the death penalty in his extrajudicial role as a Baptist pastor.
Arkansas Supreme Court, Attorney General, continue to tangle with pastor/judge
The Arkansas Supreme Court won’t restore the authority of a circuit judge who also serves as pastor of a Baptist church to decide death-penalty cases, and the state’s top lawyer wants him barred from any civil cases involving her office in separate but intertwined controversies that began with a prayer vigil protesting capital punishment on Good Friday in 2017.