Mississippi’s Michael Cassidy stands charged with fourth-degree criminal mischief for “vandalizing” the Satanic Temple’s display in the Iowa capitol. Well, there’s been a bunch of vandalizing going on, including that directed at a 25-foot-tall statue of a mounted Confederate general,…
When I watch what’s unfolding in Israel, with Hamas to the southwest and Hezbollah to the north, I think of two books I’ve read. One on Islam I picked up in a Southeast Asia airport — Malaysia and the Club…
The other day at a friends-of-the library, used-book sale, I picked up a copy of Substitute: Going to School with a Thousand Kids. The author recounts a month’s worth of experience in Maine, doing time as a substitute teacher with…
Willie McLaurin and I have something in common: We both have had to step down from leading a Southern Baptist Convention entity — he as interim president of the Executive Committee, I as president of Midwestern Seminary. He just resigned…
Though seventeen years in Chicago made me a Cubs fan, I’ve been a Dodgers follower since 1955, when, as a seven-year-old, I rejoiced that they’d finally bested their nemesis Yankees in the World Series. I was a newcomer to the…
Khartoum is wracked by violence, and my mind goes back over two decades to a couple of trips I took to that city, which is positioned dramatically at the confluence of the muddy White Nile and the dark Blue Nile….
This past December, we attended a Christmas Eve service at a church in Southeast Asia. In the midst of the singing and preaching, they presented a drama featuring Herod and his court as he dealt with reports from the Wise…
Recently, a dozen archbishops from the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches signed a letter rejecting the traditional notion that the Archbishop of Canterbury is the “first among equals” and the “focus of unity” in the Global Anglican Communion. They’d…
Yesterday, I passed through airports in two decidedly non-Christian nations. In one terminal, “Merry X-mas” played in foot-high letters on a digital screen; in the second, a bigger-than-life Santa stood under “Merry Christmas” cutouts with an arm upraised in greeting….
Nashville was on the short list (with Milwaukee the alternative) to host the 2024 GOP convention, but our Democrat-besotted city council would have none of it and so turned its back on a financial windfall. A local PR firm dumped…