Browse Archives
Check out news and opinion posts across the years
Shameless commerce
I enjoy listening to the "Car Talk" guys on public radio, even their occasional references to their online store of over-priced merchandise, which they call the "shameless commerce" division.Today I offer my own poor...
To Bee or Not to Be
Rising food and fuel prices are on the minds of much of the world. These realities exist hand in hand. It takes lots of energy for the massive food production needed to sustain (and in many cases, fatten) over six...
SBC Enters Age of Decline, Not Promised Golden Age
Southern Baptist leaders promised years ago with their takeover of the convention's agencies and seminaries a golden age. They have delivered an age of denominational decline, division and dishonesty. The...
Climate-Change Bill Fails in Senate
Senators on Friday blocked a bill aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions linked to global warming. The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, sponsored by Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Joseph Lieberman, ID-Conn,...
Bible in Schools Bill Awaits Governor’s Signature in Tennessee
The newest textbook controversy isn't about Harry Potter or "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," but a volume that has divided public schools for 150 years--the Bible. The Tennessee Legislature recently passed a bill...
Religious Politics as Spectacle
In our last episode of religion and politics on the campaign trail we left Sen. John McCain rejecting the endorsement of John Hagee. McCain found out that Hagee thought the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves,...
Attend Screening of DVD Calling Baptists to Nurture Common Good with Jews
The premier event on Thursday morning at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship meeting in Memphis will be the Baptist Center for Ethics' screening with a panel discussion of a new DVD that challenges Baptists to nurture...
It’s about time — to change
An organized group of Southern Baptists including a strong contingent from North Carolina is calling on the International Mission Board to reverse restrictive policies enacted more than two-and-a-half years ago.The...
Spiritual energy low?
If your spiritual energy level is feeling low lately, the Mars Rover appropriately named "Spirit" could have a clue for you. It's also experiencing its lowest energy levels ever, and there's no question about why ......
No Free Lunch
I'm sitting at my desk eating a free lunch and trying to catch up on the news from an international food summit currently taking place in Rome. It is being sponsored by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Pope...
Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of the Religious Right
Having recently read Matt Taibbi's book about John Hagee's church, I was startled to read of what passes for phophetic language. The conspiracy theory about Al Gore working secretly with global warming folks to take...
Experts Say Anti-Immigration Laws Carry Unintended Economic Costs
Anti-immigration policies like an Oklahoma bill cracking down on illegal aliens are costly, two economists said in an interview aired recently on a Baptist radio program. Passed in 2007, the "Oklahoma Taxpayer and...
The youthful retiree
Longtime Baptist campus minister Marshall Kerlin is a man of numbers. On July 31 he will turn 56 years old. Add to that 29 years with the Georgia Baptist Convention and he qualifies for retirement benefits.So on Aug....
A BT Bonus
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 churches are counted as members of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (BSC). The level of commitment to the BSC varies among the churches and shifts with the changing...
African-American Men March Against Violence in St. Louis
At least 20,000 African-American men packed the streets of St. Louis on the first Sunday in June, marching one of the historic Annie Malone May Day Parade routes through "The Ville" and ending in Tandy Park. The...
Jesus Gave Strong Warnings Against ‘Affluenza’
We are in the middle of a very serious epidemic in this country. No, the Centers for Disease Control have not issued any warnings, and doctors and healthcare professionals have not reported any outbreak of disease or...
Scholars Say Submissive Wives Decree More Theory Than Practice in SBC Churches
Ten years after adopting a controversial declaration that the Bible teaches that women in marriage should be submissive to men, the Southern Baptist Convention's "complementarian" view of gender roles remains more...
Myanmar’s Government Criticized for Slow Response to Cyclone
A month after Cyclone Nargis, Myanmar's military rulers defended their relief operations amid international criticism that the government was dragging its feet in allowing aid to the hardest-hit areas of the Irrawaddy...
A Rabbinic Dozen
I have been a rabbi for more than a quarter century. In that time I have learned a few things about what makes a good rabbi; things that I believe could be of value to clergy people of all stripes. Unfortunately for...
The Search for Equality Continues
I grew up in Brownwood, Texas, an ordinary segregated county-seat town. I gave little thought to the welfare or needs of the folks who lived in "The Flats," the place where the blacks lived. The shoe-shine "boy" in my...
Meet Fred Shuttlesworth in Memphis
His name is not as widely familiar as Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, Joseph Lowery, John Lewis and Andrew Young. But in the struggle for civil rights — especially in Birmingham, Ala. — no one played a...