In case you missed it, there’s been a huge debate about the Black Lives Matter protest the other week that disrupted presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ speech in Seattle. I’ve had a lot of push-back from Facebook friends for my support of the BLM protesters. So I thought I would share some of what I learned from a very helpful workshop at Gather By The River, the progressive, LGBT-affirming United Methodist gathering I attended in San Antonio a week ago. Our... Read more
Over the past several years, I have become facebook friends with a number of Christian grassroots community organizers from Africa and Asia. Grassroots organizations in the Global South have a lot more trouble getting support for their work than top-down organizations that come from the US, because they aren’t trusted and they often can’t accept tax-deductible donations. They also don’t speak English as a first language, so it is challenging for them to articulate their vision and their needs in... Read more
For two and a half years, I spent my Mondays at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, where I would attend the 12:10 mass in the crypt. This Monday, because we’re in town for a campus ministry conference, I had the distinct joy of coming back to mass after more than a year away. It may be bizarre for a Protestant to say this, but I felt like I was “back at home”... Read more
Kevin DeYoung’s 40 questions for rainbow-flag waving Christians has been making rounds across the internet along with excellent responses from Alise Chaffins, Ben Irwin, AW Hooker, and Matthew Vines, among others. I often wonder if fundamentalists today ever stop to notice how much they resemble the first century Pharisees who were constantly pinging on Jesus to justify his loving acts with their scripture. To me, the most important tool the gospels give us for discerning Christian morality is the contrast... Read more
I must confess I’ve had some stereotypes in my head when it comes to small town churches. I’ve been terrified that they would run me out of the ministry if I ever got assigned to one. So one of the surprising blessings of my trip to Texas this Fourth of July weekend was attending worship at First United Methodist Church in Smithville this morning. They shared the gospel with me through some simple gestures of radical hospitality that I witnessed.... Read more
This year’s Virginia Annual Conference had the theme “From Members to Disciples.” It’s a common dichotomy in Christianese. A “church member” has come to mean someone who is little more than a name on a list, while a “disciple” indicates someone who has an active personal relationship with God. Throughout my career as a pastor, I have wracked my brain constantly trying to figure out how to help our “members” become “disciples.” But somehow at annual conference this year, I... Read more
Today the Supreme Court declared that same-sex marriage is the law of the land. I know that many conservative Christians feel very troubled by this ruling. Since the issue for most conservatives is a genuine concern that our Bible’s authority is being trampled by social pressures, I wanted to offer my own understanding of what the Bible teaches about human sexuality. I do not think that the Bible’s authority has to be compromised in order to affirm that God has... Read more
White supremacy. It’s not just terrorists in white hoods who burn crosses and lynch black people. It’s an ideology that has completely permeated the social consciousness of white people to the point that it’s become invisible to us. It’s not white peoples’ fault that we’ve been born into this mess, but it’s our responsibility to deconstruct and dismantle it so that we don’t unwittingly pass the same harmful anxieties and presumptions onto our children. Since open racism became unfashionable, white... Read more
I have many anti-gay Christians in my life and I love them at least as much as they love the gay Christians in their lives. It’s true that I disapprove of the idolatry of gender norms, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that you can’t be both anti-gay and Christian. I just think they’ve thrown a big wet blanket over the gospel that is no less suffocating than the moralistic teachings of the circumcision party the apostle... Read more
On the last day of our United Methodist Louisiana annual conference this year, a young teenage prodigy belted out a song whose main chorus line was “I just want to do something that matters.” The song didn’t mention anything about Jesus; it was more of a generic Disney anthem. The lyrics included references to “writing a symphony” and “fighting for world peace.” She sang it right after a presentation from young adults in the conference. I guess the idea was... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
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