Opinion

As this year’s Pentecost celebration approaches for congregations, the Spirit arrives as a yearlong pandemic hopefully draws towards an end. But emerging from the pandemic can be even more complicated and controversial for churches than their first responses to it. 

Laura Levens writes that the fiery arguments over women’s ordination, women as pastors, and women’s callings distract from constructive conversations about entrenched racism, Christian Nationalism, and sexual abuse.

Columnist Greg Mamula writes about the holiness of vocation through a letter he penned to his hair stylist after she seemed surprised when he told her “your work is holy.”

Beth Allison Barr, author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood, responds to a metaphor by Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary that compared the ordination of women to a growing rainstorm.

Editor-in-Chief Brian Kaylor reflects on legislation pushing the teaching of the Bible in public schools. He explores significant church-state problems that would arise from such efforts.

Editor-in-Chief Brian Kaylor reflects on news that DNA evidence tested FOUR years after the execution of a Black man in Arkansas suggests the state killed an innocent man. Kaylor also highlights the Baptist prophet who tried to stop the execution.

John Gehring writes that politicizing a sacrament is pastoral malpractice, whether directed against Republicans or Democrats. The pope has said that Communion is “not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”

Editor-in-Chief Brian Kaylor responds to a claim by Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary that Methodists who disagree on LGBTQ issues are from “two different religions.” Perhaps Mohler is right.

Editor-in-Chief Brian Kaylor reflects on preachers spreading anti-vaccination messages amid a continuing COVID pandemic. Kaylor also highlights the medical and biblical wisdom of Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health.

Marybeth Davis Baggett, a former English professor at Liberty University and two-time alumna of the school, urges the school’s leadership to own the roles they played in propagating and perpetuating the sin they now condemn with impunity and suffocating sanctimony.