Browse Archives
Check out news and opinion posts across the years
Simple pleasures
If I had a dream place to get away from time to time, it would look like this: a small mountain cabin, a rustic porch, a cascading stream with a wooded slope beyond and no other houses in view. It's a place for...
Prosperity Gospel: A Valid Evangelical Option? Part 2
I grew up within classical Pentecostalism, a Christian tradition that by and large rejected the Word-Faith prosperity gospel when it emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet, within a decade, most cities had at least one...
Nigerian Scholar Corrects Idea That Missionaries and Colonialists Had Shared Agenda
An unpublished manuscript documents the clash of beliefs between a British colonial officer and an American Baptist missionary, a clash of worldviews that would contribute to the religiously related violence in...
These 3 Steps Will Embolden Your Prayer Life
Prayer is a primary way we communicate with God, and it's a primary way God communicates with us. If you go to church often, you have been reminded over and over again about the importance of prayer. You've been told,...
September 18, 2015
Climate Change Vulnerability Linked to Religion, Study Indicates (Irish Times) Arabic Baptist Church Fights Confusion, Grasps Evangelization (USA Today) Christian Conservatives Rally for Religious Awakening (ABC News)...
Lebanese Baptist Speaks to European Christians about Refugee Crisis
When historians look back on 2015, it likely will be remembered as the year the impact of the war in Syria was finally felt in Europe. Europeans are starting to meet the hundreds of thousands of victims of horrific...
Nepal Rejects Hindu State Proposal, Religious Liberty Concerns Remain
Nepal's constitution, to be released on Sept. 20, will include language defining it as a secular state. In the months leading up to a formal vote on the proposed constitution, there has been a strong push to return the...
Prosperity Gospel: A Valid Evangelical Option? Part 1
Florida mega-church pastor and sometime religious television personality Paula White is emerging in news media coverage as a leading spokesperson for "American evangelicals." Her church in suburban Orlando attracts...
September 17, 2015
Council Limits Prayer Proposals to Only Christian Faiths (KPHO, Phoenix) New Mexico Non-Believer Court-Ordered to Attend Christian Counseling Sessions (America Blog) Georgetown Church Starts Petition to Remove...
Israel Discriminates Against Christians in School Funding, Sparks Strike
The state of Israel provides 100 percent of the funding for state-run public and Orthodox Jewish schools, compared to only 29 percent for Christian schools. The reduced funding and tightened restrictions on tuition...
Maybe Society Needs to Do Without Its ‘Time-Out Room’
My first clinical position was in a high management group home for boys ages 8 to 14, a long-term environment, wherein children would stay up to two years. After the first week, I seriously considered quitting. This...
How Your Church May Exclude Single Members
Have you noticed how easily Christians talk about God being the source of our happiness? And yet, our reaction to single people in our midst suggests something different. Single believers often encounter an assumption...
September 16, 2015
Donald Trump Strikes a Chord – With Evangelicals (Boston Globe) A Better Look at Religion's Influence on Political Attitudes (Phys.org) Charles Darwin Letter Repudiating Bible Heads to Auction (Guardian) Pope Francis...
How Evangelicals Abandoned Organized Labor
These are the worst of times for organized labor, which during the post-World War II decades - the heyday of middle class expansion - represented more than one-third of all private sector workers. Today, that number is...
Shaping Theological Ideas to Meet Daily Life’s Needs
Pope Francis addressed recently an ever-present challenge for local church leaders - the disconnect between the academy (seminaries, religion departments, divinity schools) and the local church. The theme of a papal...
Reaching Out to Those for Whom Jesus Cared Most
I spotted a painting of the Last Supper of Christ several years ago when throwing away trash in our apartment complex's dumpster. Unlike the Da Vinci paintings I had seen before, this one was different: All of the...
September 15, 2015
Kentucky Clerk Won't Block, Authorize Gay Marriage Licenses (Reuters) Misconceptions Persist About Obama's Faith, But Aren't So Widespread (CNN) Bernie Sanders' Appeal at Fundamentalist Christian University Met with...
German Baptist Thomas Klammt Discusses Migrant Crisis
BBC News reports that nearly half a million migrants have arrived in Germany so far this year, as those fleeing war-torn countries scatter not only into neighboring lands, but even into northern Europe and the United...
How ‘Botox’ News Freezes Truth About Migrant Crisis
A few years ago I had a series of Botox injections in my forehead. It was not for cosmetic purposes, but rather to try to alleviate the pain I was experiencing from a chronic migraine headache. Sadly, it did not work....
Sharing Gospel of Compassion with Louisiana’s Poor
I spent a day recently with Baptist missionary Jenny Hodge at the Together For Hope ministries in Lake Providence, Louisiana, one of the poorest places in the U.S. It was an eye-opening experience, which began as I...
September 14, 2015
True Believer? Why Donald Trump is the Choice of the Religious Right (NPR) Bobby Jindal Says Trump 'Has Never Read the Bible' (Christian Post) In Church, Hillary Clinton Learns to be 'Nicer to the Press' (ABC News)...