“The [B]lack community, maybe more than any other, is affectively linked to churches and their pastors to the degree that criticism of either (no matter how rational) is often viewed as nothing short of an attack on God…. Unfortunately, [B]lack ministers (be they emancipators or collaborators in oppression) are often protected from secular intellectual confrontation […]

As the nation has watched cultural upheaval around the matters of race, politics and religion, it is clear that Western civilization is in the midst of a turning point. A turning away from some of the traditional modalities that went accepted for decades, even centuries, around beliefs, behaviors and practices. A speech on race shortly […]

In the post-Trump vacuum, Black pop-culture was on a roller-coaster of events. First was the profanity-laced voicemail left by Kirk Franklin to his son, the next week was self-proclaimed relationship guru Derrick Jaxn’s fall from grace after it was revealed that he cheated on his spouse. Perhaps less so, the stories of Quavo and Saweetie’s […]

While watching Pastor Mike Todd stand soaking wet on a stage with falling water made to simulate rain, words escaped me as I found myself trying to make sense of what I was watching. Perhaps to the chagrin of some mainline homileticians (those who study preaching), my reflections on preaching, particularly preaching done by African […]

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. The current Error of Trump closed like it began […]

Overshadowed by the 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol was the dual election of Democratic U.S. Senators from the state of Georgia. While the identities of Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff—a Black American and a Jewish American—have often stolen the headlines, the modest political beginnings of Warnock married with his public life as an ordained […]

I was on a spring break trip with students at a remote monastery in New Mexico. No wifi. No cell service. Only receiving emails through the main office at the monastery, almost like a telegram delivery, we learned that the world was shutting down due to the novel coronavirus labeled COVID-19. I had almost slidden […]

I grew up at Jeremiah Wright’s church. I took my first communion at Trinity United Church of Christ moments after he baptized me. Years later, I’m still verklempt at the reasons why Barack Obama feels the need to resurrect the racial ghost of the minister who married him and baptized his children. Most recently, Sen. […]

The collective political imagination of America is never more than four years. It’s doggedly tied to the presidential election cycle. As of the publishing of this, it’s only 16 days until the next presidential election. I’m not sure quite when the future-casting of American democracy got reduced to nothing more than four years, but here […]