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…
Remembering Will Campbell: does anyone here NOT know Amazing Grace?
Remembering Will Campbell: Does Anyone Here NOT Know Amazing Grace? Memorial Service for Will Campbell, Mt. Juliet, Tennessee Saturday, June 22, 2013 Sitting under the words “Love your enemies” I feel my heart swell. They are painted on the walls high…
My connection with the Rev. Will D. Campbell
In the fall of 2004, I was taking a seminary course on Thomas Merton. It was being taught by Merton friend and scholar E. Glenn Hinson. Dr. Hinson knew of my near-obsession with all things Will Campbell, and he helped…
What happened to the Baptists?
By Will Campbell When I was going to school on the G.I. Bill of Rights, right after the Spanish-American War, they told me that the first few minutes of any address or sermon should be given over to sheer foolishness…