Recent Articles
Resisting Using Directness and Kindness
This week’s flurry of activity could have sent me into a dark, despairing trance, but I refused to follow that path. While I am as outraged and frustrated as others, I also want to focus on the future when the country realizes the consequences of putting Trump back in office.
Faith and Justice Coalition Gathers to Reignite “Beloved Community” BYLINE: Aretha R. Flucker
Is the beloved community still a possibility? Christians, Jews, organizations, institutions, and congregations sought to answer this question at “United in Hope: The Beloved Community,” hosted by the Faith and Justice Coalition of Tarrant County on January 19.
Stewarding Pathos: Mariann Edgar Budde’s Rhetoric Lesson
I don’t know Mariann Edgar Budde, but I suspect that the integrity of her words, which we soaked in so cathartically, flowed from the maturity of scars, not open wounds.
Trump Administration Immigration Concerns: A Conversation with Fellowship Southwest’s Stephen Reeves
On this side of the border, for the last week or so, our partners have received goodbye messages from Department of Homeland Security officials they had worked closely with for years who were resigning, effective Monday. There is a general sense of fear for the migrants and uncertainty about the future.
Our Second Gilded Age: TikTok Bans and the Capitol’s CEO Convention
If someone purposefully set fire to your house and then handed you a fire extinguisher, would you thank them for saving it? TikTok users are asking this question this week after the app sent out a pop-up notice praising President Donald Trump for ensuring the app is...
Calling Conversations Over A Beer
2025 marks my 11th year in congregational ministry, and I couldn’t be more thankful for all the voices, both good and bad, that have brought me here. Now, I have the opportunity to do the same—to be that affirming presence for someone, to tell them they belong and that their perspective and voice are needed.
Pew Study Finds Women and Men Experience Loneliness at Similar Rates
Amid elevated media attention to what has been labeled the “male loneliness epidemic,” a new Pew Research study has found that men and women are almost equally likely to feel lonely. When asked if they feel lonely “all” or “most of the time,” 15% of women and 16% of men surveyed said “yes.”
Resist Violence
There is an increasing likelihood that violence will knock on your door, seeking to recruit you. It will present its grand vision and a ruthless payment plan laid out for generations.
Drawing Wider Circles: New Athlete Ministry Offers Expansive, Inclusive Faith Communities
Throughout my athletic career, I attempted to build community through sports ministries that met for Bible study in locker rooms, on the road and over coffee. These ministries are global powerhouses that offer Christian athletes a sense of community and faith formation at all levels of sport. However, they don’t affirm or bless LGBTQ+ athlete identity.
New Pew Report Finds Economic Inequality Is of Global Public Concern
When asked to name their top public concern, economic inequality found widespread consensus among 36 nations, with the affluent’s political influence topping the list of lead causes.
The National Day of Racial Healing Seeks Answers to How We Heal From the Effects of Racism
Tomorrow, January 21st, is the ninth annual National Day of Racial Healing (NDORH). This year’s theme is “How We Heal” and seeks to address the effects of racism. Working to create a sense of belonging and shared connection, participants are invited to learn about each other’s backgrounds, cultures, perspectives and lived experiences.
Toward Better, Not Quieter Discourse
Good political conversation is life-giving. It is also a crucial form of peacemaking.
Standing at the Door: Facing a Second Trump Presidency
The next four years will be trying, but let us not move forward in despair. People of faith must unite to find solidarity in the beauty and love in this world. As people of good faith, we can move forward, focusing on the lights that push out the darkness.
DEI in the Church
What I know to be true–especially now–is that if churches want to live out the Gospel in their communities, they have a responsibility to create safe spaces for marginalized people. And to do that, change is not an option. It is a requirement.
Amid a Perfect Storm
On January 20th, we will observe two significant national events–Trump’s inauguration and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I don’t know that I could ever imagine a greater dichotomy than that represented by these two men: their lives and legacies, their character, personality, faith, differing commitments to equality, non-violence, loving one’s neighbor and the common good.
Carter, Trump and the Kennedy Paradigm
If my theory about the Kennedy paradigm is correct, Nixon’s prevarications focused voters’ attention on morality, leading to the election of Carter in 1976. A similar conclusion might be drawn regarding Biden’s election in 2020. Weary of Trump’s endless stream of false and misleading statements, voters chose Biden, a devout Roman Catholic, albeit one who is given to overstatements and exaggerations.
The Truth Will Set You Free? Anticipatory Grief Ahead of Trump’s Re-Inauguration
In the anxiety of such anticipation and the inability to see exactly how such events will play out, we can easily feel isolated or choose to remove ourselves from the clamor of the chaos in hopes we can ignore it until it all goes away. But our faith compels us to choose another path.
MLK Day and Presidential Inauguration: Convergence or Collision?
By turning away from the pageantry of the inauguration, we are not shirking our responsibility as citizens. We are reclaiming it. Critics may call this an abdication of civic duty, but in truth, it is an act of defiance against the mythologies that have consistently failed to honor Black genius, labor and humanity.
Russell Brand’s Brand Of Christianity
Although few groups receive as much derision from white, conservative evangelicals as Hollywood celebrities, you’d be hard-pressed to find something that excites them more than a celebrity who becomes a Christian. They’ll go from “Shut up and act!” to “Tell us more!” quicker than the amount of time it takes to set up a plexiglass shield for the drummer in their worship band.
“It’s Happening to Everybody”: Diving Into Ethel Cain’s “Perverts”
In a doom-scrolling world where attention spans are practically non-existent and Top 40 hits are two minutes long, Ethel Cain’s “Perverts” is a practice of patience. But it is a worthwhile musical journey if you are open-minded enough to take it.
Notes on Neurodivergence | My First Role Model
When I was in the third grade, my class was given the project of creating a wax museum. We were to dress up as someone famous, becoming “wax models” and giving a speech on the person we had chosen. Through this experience, I discovered my primary role model and inspiration–Amelia Earhart.
Jimmy Carter: Guardian of Empire
Five weeks before his martyrdom, Oscar Romero wrote a letter to Jimmy Carter. Challenging the president, Romero wrote: “Because you are a Christian and because you have shown that you want to defend human rights . . . I ask you, if you truly want to defend human rights, to prohibit the giving of this military aid to the Salvadoran government.”
The Third Way of Giséle Pelicot
Giséle’s look was part of the seismic shift that happened during the trial. She became someone, while her abusers became no one, or “everyman.” But how did this happen? How did her courage subvert a system of shame?
Creation Care: A Call To Action After Historic Wildfires
Creation is not merely a backdrop for human activity; it is sacred, and we are entrusted with its care. As stewards of God’s creation, we are called to protect the Earth and its resources—not to exploit them for short-term gain.
How Old Am I?
Some say it’s rude to ask a woman her age and a lady never tells it. It’s considered an impolite social custom and, in some cases, offensive given the realities of ageism. But today’s my birthday and I invite you to guess mine.
“Coming Out” of the Baptismal Waters: How Queerness Saved my Baptism
These are the mental gymnastics of evangelicalism: God loves me. I love God. I’ll disappoint God if I do something wrong. I can’t disappoint God. God might send me to Hell to suffer forever if I do enough things wrong. But God loves me unconditionally and works everything together for my good.
Truth Matters
Truth is not relative. It is grounded in the moral imperatives of the Triune God. Facts matter and are critical to our stability and mutual flourishing in this grand experiment of democracy.
A Living Wage: Making It on a Pastor’s Salary
We learned that a living wage is possible for persons in the ministry and that it is possible to get by on a pastor’s salary. The profession may not be financially lucrative, but some things in life are more valuable than money.
Look Back | Jimmy Carter Reflects on The Moral Agenda of Jesus
Editor’s note: The following appeared in EthicsDaily.com on July 24, 2012.
Jesus’ moral agenda is summarized in Luke 4:18-19.
Unfortunately, U.S. Christians in general and Baptists in particular have neglected it, especially the part about prisoners.
That was the observation of former President Jimmy Carter in a video interview with EthicsDaily.com last week at the Carter Center.
“I don’t think there is any doubt but that Luke 4:18-19 describes Jesus’ moral agenda,” said Carter. “That part of Luke best encapsulates in a very brief way the entire thrust of Jesus’ ministry.”
“I think of all the several facets describing Jesus in Luke 4 about his own moral agenda, the one we have neglected most, and violated most, is the release of the captives, that is prisoners,” he said. “We’re going backward, not forward” in terms of the prison issue in the United States.
He lamented the nation’s “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” approach to punishment.
“Unfortunately, led by some Christian leaders, our country has gone from a basic philosophy of rehabilitation of a prisoner to a punishment only – and the more severe and extended the punishment,” the better it is, he said.
“And this has resulted in the massive increase in America exclusively of the number of people serving prison sentences,” said Carter.
Writing in a June 2011 opinion editorial in the New York Times, Carter noted the massive increase in the number of Americans incarcerated.
“At the end of 1980, just before I left office, 500,000 people were incarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number was nearly 2.3 million,” wrote Carter. “There are 743 people in prison for every 100,000 Americans, a higher portion than in any other country and seven times as great as in Europe. Some 7.2 million people are either in prison or on probation or parole – more than 3 percent of all American adults.”
Not only is a larger percentage of U.S. adults in prison, but the recidivism rate is sky high and prisons are busting state budgets.
The Pew Center on the States reported last year that 43.4 percent of released prisoners returned to prison within three years.
In “State of Recidivism: The Revolving Door of America’s Prisons,” Pew said: “Total state spending on corrections is now about $52 billion, the bulk of which is spent on prisons. State spending on corrections quadrupled during the past two decades, making it the second fastest growing area of state budgets, trailing only Medicaid.”
Seeing both the biblical imperative to care for the prisoner and the broken nature of the criminal justice system, Carter also sees a convergence of commitment around the issue among Baptists involved in the New Baptist Covenant (NBC) movement.
The NBC initiative brought together some 15,000 racially and ethnically diverse Baptists in early 2008 around the Luke 4 passage to seek reconciliation and to advance the common good. Subsequent NBC meetings were held around the country in 2009 and 2011.
At an April planning meeting for the 2014 NBC gathering, EthicsDaily.com proposed producing a documentary on what goodwill Baptists were doing on the prison ministry and prison reform fronts. Carter and other planners expressed strong support for the documentary and commitment to a central programming focus on restorative justice.
EthicsDaily.com interviewed Carter for its forthcoming documentary.
“I think one of the things the New Baptist Covenant can do – and any other Christian, who thinks about the teachings of Christ – is to reduce the punishment and emphasize the rehabilitation and forgiveness and love that we need to extend to people in prison,” said Carter.
“When the black Baptist leaders speak out and say what do Baptists need to do, the main issue they have brought out is we need to do something about the abuse of people in prison who happen to be African-American or other minorities or mentally ill,” he said.
“They have convinced me at least that this is maybe the most vivid remaining demonstration or essence of racism,” said Carter, who observed that a disproportionate number of those who are incarcerated are poor African-Americans.
Fighting Wildfires 1,344 Miles Away
Watching the video footage from Los Angeles was horrifying, but it was even more so for Missy and me. We felt like we were fighting a wildfire 1,344 miles away. Our oldest son lives southwest of the Eaton fire, near Pasadena.