Browse Archives
Check out news and opinion posts across the years
War on Christmas? Some Christians Miss the Point
Every year it seems that the Christmas season grows. This year, "Black Friday" sales invaded Thanksgiving Day and began at 8 p.m. Thursday evening. And we have all lamented Christmas trees being put up in stores as...
What You Can Learn from Following an Eccentric
I learned from Marcus Boon, in his article "Spring Comes to New Jersey" in the October 2009 issue of The Sun magazine, that the word eccentric comes from a Greek word that describes objects in space that don't revolve...
Climate Change Theology: From Mitigation to Adaptation
My friend, Ruth Valerio, has a typically thoughtful and well-written blog post up about the need for adaptive theologies in the face of our changing climate, to which she drew my attention when we were talking about...
7 Questions to Become an Ethical Christmas Shopper
U.S. citizens will average $770 in buying Christmas gifts in 2012, according to Gallup. While some may choose to curb the amount spent on gifts, it seems unlikely that celebrating the season by exchanging gifts will...
Hope Plus Five
Hope is at the heart of EthicsDaily.com and its parent company, the Baptist Center for Ethics (BCE). BCE was started in the late summer of 1991 in hope – hope in the impossible possibility that we could make a moral...
Why Are We So Afraid to Learn from Jesus’ Mother?
Writer Sue Monk Kidd grew up among Baptists in the south and, like most of the rest of us who did, she learned to pay very little attention to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Kidd says she was "virtually unaware of Mary,...
British Baptists: No Stained-Glass Ceiling for Women
The General Synod, the governing body of the Church of England, failed to secure the necessary majority in the House of Laity to move to the possibility of appointing women to the episcopate. The recent upset has set...
Skype Interview: Gary Burton on Jefferson and Religious Liberty
"He had quite a life, and that alone merits study." So says Gary Burton, pastor of Pintlala Baptist Church in Hope Hull, Ala., about Thomas Jefferson. Burton talks about Jefferson and his commitment to religious...
7 X 23 = ?
I've been lucky enough to be part of a minister's support group that's been going now for the past 23 years. We started with a dozen or so guys who didn't know each other well, sitting around a table at the Caraway...
This Advent, Are You Waiting on God?
The word Advent comes from the Latin word meaning "coming," and the season that bears this title consists of the four Sundays before Christmas that look with anticipation to the coming of Christ. While we celebrate...
How Japanese Pilot at Pearl Harbor Became God’s Samurai
Dec. 7, 1941, was a big day for Mitsuo Fuchida, a day he had long prepared for and looked forward to. For, you see, Fuchida was the lead pilot of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. And his life story is quite...
Photo or Portrait? How to Discern the Real Jesus
News reports on the new book by Pope Benedict XVI on the infancy narratives of Jesus observe that he "debunks" some of the traditions associated with the nativity stories, such as animals in the stable and angels...
Fear or Faithfulness?
A sermon delivered by Kathy Pickett, Pastor of Congregational Life, Holmeswood Baptist Church, Kansas City, Mo., on November 11, 2012. Mark 12: 38-44 Several years ago my husband and I were gathered with family and we...
American Exceptionalism’s Original Use Was Unexceptional
In the last three or four years, we have heard more and more about American exceptionalism. Loosely defined, exceptionalism is the belief that America is the most free, most prosperous, most powerful nation in the...
Isn’t Health Care Worth 3 More Nickels for Your Pizza?
This article is about more than the Affordable Care Act; it is about making room for kindness and compassion in the public square. First, John Metz is not an executive with Denny's food corporation. He owns Denny's...
For Mary, Piercing Words Lead to God’s Blessings
I think the old man's words are some of the fiercest to be found in the Scripture, if you are a parent, that is, and especially if you are a mother. That he says them to Mary, Jesus' mother, at what you think should...
Pride in performance
By John Pierce Recently I stopped by Enterprise South Nature Park, 2,800 acres of hiking and biking trails and picnic areas, next to the new Volkswagen plant that rolls out the hot-selling Passat. It is an easy find:...
And be kind
Do you have a mantra, a motto, or a favorite scripture verse that comes to mind as "words to live by"? As a nerdy freshman in high school, somewhere near the bottom of the social totem pole, I adopted the traditional...
Rob Bell’s New American Christianity?
The public media evidently cannot get enough of "The Hell-Raiser," as Rob Bell is called in the current New Yorker, or the harbinger of "A New American Christianity," as announced in the subtitle of James K. Wellman...
6 Silicon Valley Lessons for Ministry Entrepreneurs
As readers of my columns have observed, I believe that ministry entrepreneurs are serving a significant role in Kingdom work today and will continue to do so in the future. I have had the chance to meet such creative...
Constitutional Crisis in England’s Church-State Relations?
The Church of England is continuing to struggle in the backwash after a recent attempt to approve women bishops was sunk when it narrowly failed to win approval from the General Synod's laity arm after the bishops,...