Browse Archives
Check out news and opinion posts across the years
Autonomy Worries Many Terminal Patients
Physician-assisted suicide is not new. I can still remember reading Derek Humphry's "Final Exit" (1991) as a college student. I remember feeling great sorrow for those that suffer. Today, I still feel that pain as I...
Preserving the songs that help preserve us
The late music educator Dr. Lee Norris Mackey of Chatta- nooga, Tenn., received a grant in the 1980s to conduct a study that revealed a decline in the performance of Negro spirituals. As a result he co-founded the...
Nigerian Massacres Challenge North Americans to Tackle Interfaith Engagement
Christian women, children and old men were cut down by machetes. Homes were burned. Hundreds were killed on a single Sunday evening in early March in villages outside of Jos, Nigeria. The violence was called "reprisal...
Southern Baptists Falsely Claim Health Care Reform Funds Abortion
As historic health care reform legislation heads to President Obama's desk for his signature, Southern Baptist leaders have continued to claim falsely that the reform will allow federal funding of abortion. Numerous...
Immigration Rally Makes Its Voice Heard
I never go to political rallies. This is not for lack of opportunity, given that I live in the Washington, D.C., area. Yet this one was different. I felt a moral obligation to be there. As an immigrant myself, this...
Gifts in the Body
A sermon delivered by Joel Snider, Pastor of First Baptist Church, Rome, Ga. on March 14, 2010. 1 Corinthians 12:27-31 Meditation Text: Our relationship to God and response to God cannot be relegated to special...
Faith Drama
A sermon delivered by Wendell Griffen, Pastor of New Millennium Church, Little Rock, Ark., on March 21, 2010. John 12:1-8 Life is always full of drama. Even when events in life seem routine, living by faith is never...
Strange Advice
A sermon delivered by Randy Hyde, Pastor of Pulaski Heights Baptist Church Little Rock, Ark on March 21, 2010. Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14 It was a long time ago. Six hundred years before Jesus came preaching,...
CBFNC at “Sweet Sixteen”
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina (CBFNC) celebrated its sixteenth year March 19-20 by affirming core partnerships, approving a record budget, and looking to a hopeful future. More than 950 persons...
More Churches Should Follow Their “Leaders”
'Tis the season to be about pruning. As an avid gardener with multiple fruit trees in my yard, I find myself thinking a great deal about pruning this time of year. Gardeners know that each type of fruit tree requires a...
Hijacking Faith to Fit Science, Politics
In 1981, Langdon Gilkey, professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School, found himself embroiled in a church-state battle in Arkansas that would eventually be known as McLean v. the Arkansas Board...
Interfaith Dialogue Carves Paths to Friendship
With approximately 7 million Muslims living in the United States, according to a recent estimate by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a dozen Christian and Muslim students are doing their part to better...
Taking familiar sights for granted weakens our gratitude
While sipping hazelnut coffee at Panera Bread Company in Winston-Salem, N.C., this morning, I watched a pair of Canada geese stroll across the empty parking lot of the adjacent Fuddrucker’s restaurant. Years earlier,...
“Shutter Island”
A Martin Scorsese movie is always an event. He is a master storyteller and a great student of the art of motion pictures. But "Shutter Island" is mostly a departure for him. It's not a mob movie, but a psychological...
Failed Border Policy Causes Migrants’ Deaths
On Sunday morning, March 21, I will be preaching at the Foundry Church in Washington, D.C. That afternoon, I plan to march with tens of thousands of Americans demanding that President Obama remember his campaign...
Get Health Care Reform Passed
We've debated health care legislation long enough. We need to get health care reform passed. The forces of negativity have thrown every genuine concern and fabricated issue against the different health reform...
One idea for bringing wisdom to Wall Street
Egypt's council on antiquities has announced the discovery of a huge statue of the Egyptian god Thoth as workers lowered the groundwater around Luxor to preserve the ancient site where pharaohs lived and were buried....
Fundamentalism continues — and continues to make no sense
The late Baptist statesman Louie D. Newton's name is on the chapel at the Georgia Baptist Convention's suburban Atlanta headquarters. Yet the in-town church where he was famously pastor is apparently headed for...
Are Churches Inclusive Places for All?
Mark's portrayal of Jesus and his disciples heading toward Jerusalem is both an important literary device and a theologically rich motif for the plot of the narrative. But the question we should ask is: Why were Jesus...
D.C. Rally to Push for Immigration Reform
I will join more than 100,000 people who will gather in Washington, D.C., on March 19-22 to vocally and visibly advocate for immigration reform. One of the highlights of the weekend will be the March for America on...
Texas Becomes Ground Zero for Historical Revisionism
Texans are revising history – Jamestown colonists were socialists; Thomas Jefferson is less important than Phyllis Schlafly; America's founding fathers were Christians without a commitment to the separation of church...