Browse Archives
Check out news and opinion posts across the years
Minister Says Churches Sacrifice Prophetic Voice for Political Gain in DVD to be Screened in Nashville
Instead of using God as a political wedge, American Christians ought to pray to be used by God, says Tim Alexander, a Church of Christ minister in Nashville, Tenn. "I think churches have made the bargain of Esau,"...
Alabama CBF Passes Policy Regarding Clergy Sexual Abuse
A state Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has adopted a policy for reporting sexual abuse by clergy that a victim advocate hopes will become a model for other Baptist bodies. The plan, approved last month by the...
God’s Economics: Choosing Who Gets What
Economics is like a game of musical chairs. There are not enough chairs in the world for everyone to have as many as they would like. But rather than play music and race to the nearest chair, we have an auction, and...
Beware of dishonest Baptist ‘news’ sources
The big news out of the Missouri Baptist Convention meeting last week was a major loosening of the stranglehold fundamentalist layman Roger Moran has had on the convention. Moran, the master of guilt by association,...
Will you miss it?
Hollywood's television writers seem serious about going on strike for higher pay, leaving many viewers to wonder when new episodes of "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" will run out.Boo hoo.It's not that I don't have...
Westboro Baptist Church Says $11 Million Verdict Helps Spread Message of Hate
Members of a controversial Baptist church said they were undeterred after a federal jury ordered them to pay nearly $11 million for protesting at the funeral of a marine killed in Iraq, claiming publicity from the...
Scarborough Defends Huckabee’s Role in SBC Holy War
Vision America founder Rick Scarborough is defending presidential candidate Mike Huckabee against those who criticize him for sitting out the Southern Baptist Convention's theological wars. In a WorldNetDaily column,...
It Starts When You’re Always Afraid
Fear is a great motivator. Nothing gets folks moving like a good jolt to the adrenal system. Marketing gurus understand this very well. That's why so much of what we are offered for consumption, from mouthwash to...
Overshadowed in death
Eighty-year-old country singer Porter Wagoner died last Sunday, Oct.28. Though he performed on the Grand Old Opry for decades and had 29 top-ten records, Wagoner never achieved the star status of others like Hank...
New Book Examines Jonah Story from the Underside of Oppression
The Old Testament story of Jonah is more than a fairy tale about a man being swallowed by a whale, and even more than an evangelical call to preach the gospel to those in foreign lands, but instead a model for...
A Christian and a Democrat
"I can't vote for a Democrat," a man once told me. "I'm a Christian." He spoke these two labels as if they were a set of antonyms. He could not grasp my attempts to explain that one label referred to a religion while...
Church, State Should Remain Separate for Theological Reasons
In the year 313, Roman Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan. This decree, which came as a result of Constantine believing that the Christian God had given him victory over his enemy, and thus sole power in the...
Cutting off your nose …
There's an old idiom used to describe a prideful person who has trouble maintaining relationships: "he'd cut off his nose to spite his face." I couldn't help but recall that adage when reading about the Baptist State...
Baptist Seminary’s Homemaking Degree Doesn’t Go Far Enough
Just as exciting as Messiah College students being able to take classes from yours truly, this fall also brought undergraduates at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary the opportunity to concentrate in homemaking...
What Drives the Theology of Blame That Follows Disasters?
Theological declarations of blame follow terrible disasters. Indian evangelist K. G. Paul said God was judging California with wildfires for the mocking behavior of gays, according to a 10-minute video on GodTube, a...
Lawyer Group Urges Moratorium on Executions; SBC Leader Favors Death Penalty
The American Bar Association has called for a nationwide moratorium on executions, citing a three-year study of state death-penalty systems that found unfairness and other flaws. "After carefully studying the way...
This Big Mac attack unfair
Morning shows were abuzz with the recent report that a survey revealed many more Americans could name the ingredients in a McDonald's Big Mac than could recite the Ten Commandments. Clearly, the implication is that...
Symbolic Nooses Reveal Racial Divide
Protests sparked by the hanging of three nooses from a Louisiana schoolyard tree have sparked a series of copycat acts, further fueling a debate over America's lingering legacy of racial injustice and violence. Last...
Immigration and the Law
Over and over in the Old Testament, we are admonished to be kind to "the widow, the orphan, and alien." In the New Testament Christ admonishes us to welcome the stranger: "When I was a stranger you took me in ¦whatever...
Repairers of the Breach, Restorers of Paths
In the late 1970s, I was a not-yet-30-year-old pastor with four or five years of grassroots ordained experience under my belt. I was serving a congregation of fewer than 50 members in south-central Los Angeles, in a...
J. Frank Norris would be proud
While compiling research for an article about independent Baptists, I came to realize that there would be far fewer independents if J. Frank Norris had been as successful as his spiritual heirs have been.The...