Visually Mapping COVID-19 across the U.S.
Everyone handles stressful times differently. My wife reads a lot of articles about what is happening with COVID-19 but she doesn’t really dive into the numbers. I, on the other hand, am a numbers person. I’ve been regularly watching the numbers for a while. I’ve used several different sites to track what is happening. Finally, […]
A Journey to Eastern Christianity
The following is a talk which my departed grandmother invited me to give for her Sunday School class at First United Methodist Shreveport and which, due to some confusion, was given in its entirety to the wrong class. Because of that, I have never shared it until now. The talk zones in on Fr. Seraphim […]
Lighting tips to make video recording yourself a little less painful
With the development of the COVID-19 virus and it’s speed of transmission, much of the world now finds themselves in quarantine. As a result, all manner of jobs are being shifted into the virtual sphere- if you can accomplish the task via video, you are now expected to make that adjustment, and if you […]
Republicans can’t be Christian
Republicans can’t be Christians I am going to say something controversial, “Republicans can’t be Christians.” To the vast majority of Christians, I just said something unthinkable, especially if one is of the evangelical stripe of Christianity. I can feel the anger swelling up in some readers as they instantly find this notion absolutely ridiculous. […]
White privilege in the White House
If the Presidency of Donald J. Trump has one overarching theme thus far, it would have to be the attempt to undo everything the Obama administration accomplished. In fact, the Trump presidency “brand” could simply be captioned “Anti-Obama”— a label that both appeals to Trump supporters while simultaneously angering his opponents. Yet no matter where […]
Never too Old to be too Young
I grew up in a small country Southern Baptist Church in rural California. When my family moved there our family of six doubled the size of the church. But, the church did grow over the years. As a Teenager When I was in high school, our youth group was “thriving”- there were probably 8-12 of […]
Remolding Idols of Clay
I grew up in a Southern Baptist world filled with sacred tunes of both the vintage and contemporary variety. Ironically, the tune that has framed my spiritual experience more than any other stemmed not from a nineteenth-century revivalist hymn writer but from a soft rock band born in the synthesized seventies. Styx released “Show Me […]
This is my Creed: Christ with me
On the Louisiana College campus, there’s a carillon at the top of one of the buildings that plays awful bell arrangements of popular traditional hymns at certain times during the day. When I was a student there, I would go back and forth between loving and hating it, but one day as it played “All […]
How Lies Spread
Over the last few years, I’ve been concerned about the state of truth in our nation and the proliferation of lies. As a Christian, I believe deeply in the reality of truth and it’s importance. But, I have been seeing the decline in the commitment to truth in all sorts of areas. I’ve seen it […]
The Religious White
Some of my earliest memories are filled with images of Pentecostal worship—from both above and beneath the pews, as I often slept under them during worship services. For most of my life, I’ve enjoyed preferred seating at local expressions of a world-wide spiritual movement known as Pentecostalism. My religious devotion first developed in Northeast Arkansas, […]