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(Source: Facebook) Yesterday, while taking break from playing golf and ranting on Twitter, Donald Trump thought it would be a good idea way to boost his polls numbers and distract from a mountain of investigations to threaten North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Rather than being horrified by the obvious implications of Trump’s threat, Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, TX, released a statement enthusiastically endorsing the idea of a nuclear... Read more

(Credit: DJ Singh, Flickr Creative Commons) I thought I knew the story of Jonah. I mean, I know Jonah was swallowed by a big fish, not a whale and that’s like honors-level Sunday School stuff, right? Right?? Ok, maybe not. But I was feeling pretty confident this past Sunday when my pastor started preaching about Jonah. And then he hit me right away with a Jonah fact, I’ll be honest, I had no clue about. Turns out when Jonah was... Read more

(Source: Twitter) Yesterday, the pistol packing president of Liberty University, Jerry Falwell Jr., took to Twitter to lambast Senators Collins, McCain, and Murkowski for not voting in favor of ripping healthcare away from millions of Americans. It’s an odd thing to be outraged about considering Falwell is a self-professed follower of Jesus. You know, that guy from Nazareth who said getting into heaven depends on whether or not we care for the least of these. Falwell followed his indignation up... Read more

(Credit: Caelie_Frampton, Flickr Creative Commons) Yesterday, the supposedly Pro-Life Party™ committed one of the most egregiously anti-life acts in living memory. To be sure, planet earth will not shrivel up and die tomorrow, but by pulling out of the Paris Accord, Donald Trump and the party that pushed him to do so, made it clear that they couldn’t care less about the future of life on this planet – either its quality or even its possibility. It was an astounding act... Read more

(Video screengrab: CNNPolitics.com) If the American Health Care Act becomes law, it will lead to the death of untold numbers of people and those souls will depart as the direct result of action taken exclusively by people claiming to be pro-life. For a generation now, the Republican Party has used the siren’s call of being “pro-life” as a wedge issue to divide voters and unite their base. It may have begun as little more than an attempt to wrangle up a few more... Read more

“I don’t want to be a damn flower.” The thought raced through my mind before I even knew what my brain was saying to itself the first time I showed up in the oncologist’s office to find out if the giant mass growing in my chest was cancer or not. The flower itself was beautiful, both in appearance and sentiment. A white orchid brushed with just the slightest touch of pink, it was a kind memorial to a woman I’ll never know who lost... Read more

(Credit: Wikipedia) On April 8, 1966, Time magazine created an uproar with a stark, black and red cover that asked “Is God Dead?” Laity and clergy alike were outraged. Time received somewhere around 3,500 angry letters to the editor, the most it had ever received for a single article. The idea that God could die was outrageously unthinkable to some and outright blasphemy to others. Which was incredibly ironic considering the day Time published its infamous edition. April 8, 1966 was Good Friday.... Read more

(Credit: The Taking of Christ by Carravagio via Wikipedia) Can I make Holy Week about myself for a second? I know, I know. It sounds really narcissistic, but most of us do it anyway. Heck, your pastor will probably do it tonight if your church has a Maundy Thursday service. Maybe not himself, exactly, but there’s a good chance he or she will do what pastors and laity alike have done for millennia and try to guess who they would... Read more

(Credit: Matt Northam, Flickr Creative Commons) Several years ago, I managed to visit the assassination sites of Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy on the same day. It wasn’t intentional, per se. It just sort of happened. I was living in Memphis at the time and my friend Joseph was passing through town to pick me up on our way to a theology conference in Dallas, Texas. Before we crossed the Mississippi River, he asked if it was... Read more