Many people appear baffled about the hard-right turn in U.S. conservative religion. It’s not just a turn to politics, or to hard-right politics, that is problematic. It is the apparent amorality, the cruelty, bigotry and snarling spirit that is so impossible to reconcile with the Spirit of Christ. It’s the nasty cast of characters who are […]
When Christianity Becomes Toxic ‘Christianism’
I was talking with someone very close to me recently who said something important I want to share: Our country has so many things going wrong, so many things really to feel ashamed about in a way, that it seems like on an average day I have two choices: either think about those things and then
We are witnessing an extraordinarily disturbing juxtaposition in U.S. politics right now. In Washington, the January 6 Committee, primarily using testimony from Republicans and former Trump administration officials, is once again shredding Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, meanwhile revealing the extent and damage of Trump’s desperate, likely criminal attempt
The French Dreyfus Affair and Trump’s Big Lie
Long after it seemed dead and buried with Mussolini and Hitler, the term “fascism” has been making a comeback — not as the self-description of authoritarian politicians and parties, but as an epithet applied by their enemies, or as an analytical category applied by scholars. It is not uncommon, for example, for leaders ranging from Vladimir
Is ‘Fascism’ the Right Name for the Trumpist Hard Right in America?
Tuesday afternoon, May 24: My focus was the Republican primaries in my home state of Georgia. Donald Trump, in his continued efforts to protest the lost 2020 election and make sure he can never lose another one, had put up two toadies — David Perdue and Jody Hice — to challenge Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and
On Another Classroom Full of Murdered Children
Having abandoned the denomination in which I was converted over forty years ago, I am not a part of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), whose moral credibility has just been torn to shreds by the devastating Guidepost Solutions report on twenty years of SBC Executive Committee (EC) mishandling of sexual abuse allegations in SBC churches. But I
Southern Baptists, Sex Abuse, and Systemic Evil
In 2015, highly esteemed Princeton political philosopher Michael Walzer published The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions. The title itself immediately arrested me, as it crystallized a current intuition of mine. I believe the United States and several other countries are currently experiencing religious counterrevolutions to the cultural and moral (often labeled “secular”) revolutions that
Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions
I learned this week that sales of my 2014 book Changing Our Mind are just about to cross 25,000, apparently very rare in the book business. This becomes the occasion for my column this week. Long-time readers of Baptist News Global will remember that this book originated as a series of posts on this site beginning in the summer of 2014.
Changing Our Mind, 25,000 Sales Later
At one level, the Christian debate about the morality of war is ancient and timeless. Juxtaposed against the ubiquitous warfare of human history stands Jesus Christ, who taught enemy-love, nonretaliation and peacemaking, and went to his death on the Cross without defending himself. Anyone who takes the Gospel accounts of Jesus at all seriously must be
Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. … Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls and will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with sighing
The Moral Dimension of the Ministerial Vocation