By Kristen Thomason “As I look back over my ministry, I have some regrets,” says Rev. Dr. Drew Hill, senior pastor at Memorial Baptist Church in Arlington, VA. “How did I miss huge themes like justice and righteousness, never preaching on them?” Hill was born in rural Missouri, the eighth child of a Baptist pastor. … Continue reading
By Chris Hughes Outside the brick walls of the historic First United Methodist Church in Charlottesville, Va., chaos was rising to a fever pitch. White nationalists and white supremacists by the hundreds were rallying throughout the quaint college town to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. They proudly brandished … Continue reading
By Chris Hughes If you were to have set foot onto the campus of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, between 1925 and 1959, there is a good chance you would have been given a very warm greeting from a man named John Thomas, the head custodian at the time. John Thomas was a … Continue reading
By Grayson Hester Preston Clegg, pastor of Second Baptist Church in downtown Little Rock, Ark., doesn’t like the idea of missing out on joy. In January 2019, Clegg joined scores of Little Rock residents in celebrating the inauguration of the city’s first democratically-elected Black mayor, Frank Scott. Having been friends with Scott long before the … Continue reading
The talking heads on cable news are a microcosm of the American conversation. It’s either a scenario of a multi-personality dialogue, where they are all talking over each other, or it’s an overwhelmingly one-sided perspective of all that is going wrong with the opposition. The far-right has its ideology, and the far left joins them … Continue reading
By Elizabeth Batuka, Student.Church Intern As I reflect on my experience this semester, I am reminded of the instance where Jesus is presented with five loaves and two fish and he multiplies them to feed the starving multitude. This is one of the miracles recorded in all the gospels. I sometimes wonder whether this miracle … Continue reading
By Robert P. Jones As I came of age in Woodville Heights Baptist Church, on the white working-class side of Jackson, Miss., I internalized a cycle of sin, confession and repentance as a daily part of my life. Though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, this was a double inheritance. Beneath this seemingly … Continue reading
With removal of Robert E. Lee statue, the Arthur Ashe Jr. memorial stands alone on Richmond’s Monument Avenue By Robert P. Jones The news broke this week that the Virginia Supreme Court has cleared the state to remove the last Confederate monument still standing on the city’s Monument Avenue, the massive tribute to General Robert E. Lee. … Continue reading
By Tiffany Stubbs Have you ever had a call and no matter how many times you answer, you get the same call with the same question? The question could be from a myriad of things, but what if the inquiry were based on your willingness to bring truth to power? How does one navigate the … Continue reading
By Paul Baxley Normally on the Martin Luther King Holiday, we find ourselves listening to Dr. King’s inspirational address given during the 1963 March on Washington, in which he challenged all who heard him with his powerful dream that “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be … Continue reading