Browse Archives
Check out news and opinion posts across the years
I Missed the Super Bowl
I missed the Super Bowl and also BWA Day. Well, not exactly. I expected that I would be celebrating the annual Baptist World Alliance Day, and watching the Super Bowl, somewhere. That "somewhere" turned out to be in...
Kurt Warner Does Damage Control Over ‘Inspirational’ Message
A Southern Baptist news service report quoting NFL quarterback Kurt Warner has the former MVP scrambling to deny he blamed being benched this season by the St. Louis Rams on his Christian faith. Baptist Press on Monday...
Super Bowl Obscenities
Janet Jackson's breast-baring stunt during this year's Super Bowl has outraged viewers, religious leaders, family groups and politicians. Christian groups such as the American Family Association expressed their outrage...
Super Bowl Sleaze
Next year, put your kids to bed BEFORE the Super Bowl. I'll admit it, I like a good football game, and this turned out to be a very good one, after a boring, slow start. But what everybody was talking about the next...
Baptist Theologian Reads Bible ‘From the Margins’
Growing up in a New York City barrio and Miami, Cuban-born Miguel De La Torre spent many of his formative years living on the margins of society. But it was only after becoming a successful businessman turned...
Will the Real Leader Please Stand?
Lawmakers on Tennessee's Capitol Hill stood for the Rev. Rosemary Brown to offer a quick invocation and open a recent session. She told them to sit down. She then delivered, in powerful and prophetic style, a sermon on...
BGCT Theater Ad Plays Off Gibson’s ‘Passion’ Controversy
The Baptist General Convention of Texas has produced a cinema advertisement to coincide with the release of Mel Gibson's controversial movie, "The Passion of the Christ." The BGCT's ad itself became a source of...
Study Guides for ‘Joan of Arcadia’
One of best new dramas of the 2003-04 season has been CBS' "Joan of Arcadia" (Friday, 8 p.m. ET/PT). It debuted with CBS' best rating in that slot in three years. It recently won a People's Choice Award for best new TV...
A Culture Over the Edge
Instead of P. Diddy, Nelly and Kid Rock, Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake as halftime performers at the Super Bowl, CBS should have brought in Ray Stevens to sing, "The Streak," one of his classic country comedy...
President or Pitch Man?
Those of us old enough to remember the 1980s can never forget the television character Joe Isuzu, the slimy car salesman who would say anything, no matter how outrageous the lie, in order to sell a car. Fortunately, as...
What Are You Teaching Your People?
Often we teachers only learn about our mistakes in the process of inflicting them on unsuspecting students. I just finished teaching a course for the first time on "Preaching Ethically." We had a lot of fun. We looked...
Women of Conviction and the ‘New’ Conservatives
"How much room is there for women of conviction to cooperate with the new conservatives?" This question was born out of my reports on a meeting that I had attended with the leaders of some local SBC churches. I am...
‘Faith-based Initiatives’ Cash Will Register With Religious Crooks
Much of what I remember from seminary classes in the late 1950s is the observations from wise professors which fell outside the boundaries of the official subject of class. Among these was an observation by New...
Epiphanies: Stories for the Christian Year
"Whatever derives from lively faith is itself lively," wrote the great German theologian Helmut Thielicke. His statement about authentic responses to faith can be applied to the most recent volume from the Chrysostom...
NAMB Defends Invitation to Catholic Speaker
North American Mission Board officials defended inviting a Catholic speaker to a conference aimed at helping college students and young professionals merge faith with daily life. Howard Roszak of Paisley, Fla., wrote a...
Capital Punishment and Race
Are those with darker skin more likely to commit crimes than those with lighter skin? Is it because they are genetically prone to violence? Or is it because of how we have been taught to see them? How we react to...
“The Fighting Temptations”
"The Fighting Temptations" wasn't the film it should have been. This story about a down-and-out New York advertiser who heads South to claim an inheritance—with strings attached—just didn't make the grade when the...
“Secondhand Lions”
If you missed "Secondhand Lions" in theaters last summer, you have another chance to see this fantastic family-friendly film. It's being released on DVD and VHS today. Set in 1962 rural Texas, "Lions" tells the story...
Texas Baptists Are Next
The Southern Baptist Convention's recent decision to quit the Baptist World Alliance all but completes its 25-year rewrite of what it means to be Baptist. George W. Truett, legendary Texas Baptist pastor and founding...
Cross-Cultural Competency: Resources for Effectiveness in the Global Village
The new frontiers for our Baptist witness have shifted from merely a focus on geography to a focus on culture with the advent of the global village. In the United States, we are living in close proximity to people of...
‘Fair Trade’ Coffee Brewing in More Churches
More American Catholics will be drinking "fair trade" coffee, thanks to a new partnership between a coffee worker cooperative and a Catholic relief agency. The CRS Coffee Project, announced Jan. 21 in a press release,...