Recently I returned to Mississippi to preach at the United Methodist church I served immediately out of seminary. I turned 23 shortly after moving in. It’s a country church in Southwest Mississippi not unlike the one where I grew up….
Baptists were for separation of church and state before they were against it
For a Baptist to oppose separation of church and state feels like disowning one’s own mother without cause. What more could Thomas Jefferson have done for Baptists than pen the First Amendment with John Leland, a Baptist preacher, looking over…
‘I came to watch a great convention die’
I attended my first Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in June 1987. Participation was part of my first class at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Bill Leonard’s J-Term study of the SBC. I was standing with Leonard, then and still our…
The inconsistencies of our ethical declarations: Samford’s dilemma
Editor’s note: Bill Leonard served as professor of church history and chair of the Religion Department at Samford University from January 1992 to June 1996. In his 1995 book, The Stem of Jesse: The Costs of Community at a 1960s…
How Don Durham and I became neighbors
In the first chapter of The Glad River, author Will Campbell introduces two main characters, Claudy “Doops” Momber and Kingston Smylie. Flung into the cold military-industrial machine, the men first cross paths during basic training. Be it the impending war,…
Seeing a new thing: the prophet must prophesy for the institution
I am weary of “prophetic” preachments about justice that are divorced from the creation of justice, which requires both the remaking of existing institutions and the birth of new ones.
‘Black sheep Baptist’ explores inspiration, path to newfound spiritual identity
Justin Cox is a first-year student at Wake Forest University School of Divinity, a Cooperative Baptist Leadership Scholar, and minister to students at First Baptist Church in Statesville, N.C. Not bad for a guy who’s only been Baptist for just…
After all these years, why still Baptist?
I hear the question all the time. I meet someone for the first time at a party, they eventually ask what I do for work, and then the follow-up is some version of, “How are you Baptist?”
Ole Miss honors Will Campbell
By Bob Allen Sixty years after he was forced out of a job for challenging racial segregation on campus, the University of Mississippi is naming a plaza for the late Will Campbell, a renegade Baptist minister and author active in…