While listening to music recently, my mp3 player on “shuffle” and me in a state of relaxation, the 1956 version of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” began to play. As the sounds of piano and trumpet filled the air, I was transported by my imagination to
There is nothing in Scripture that prohibits full acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, and ordaining their unions as sacraments in the Church. Since the Bible is used to justify homophobia, I want to deal with this issue from a biblical perspective, fully recognizing, as with the
We could spend a lifetime debating the various interpretations of scripture and sadly, many of us do! Imagine what we look like to non-believers as they watch us argue and fight, often very publicly, over what we believe the Bible has to say – not
In the 6th century AD, over 500 years after the death of Christ, Emperor Constantine, was the first Christian emperor of Rome. Constantine was having trouble with the different religious factions in his kingdom. There was much squabbling and infighting over various points of Christian
I grew up in a small town in South Carolina. My experience with Christianity was in the same Southern Baptist church my mother attended until she got married. Even in college, I still believed that the Bible was the “literal Word of God written by
My journey to understanding the Bible and how it applies to my life has been a long one. As a child, my parents had me baptized in the Methodist faith and we attended church until I was 9. Often, my parents would drop me off
One of the greatest issues facing individuals coming out of an experience with the Worldwide Church of God and its related organizations is what many pastoral counselors call “Bible abuse.” This is an issue not limited to the Worldwide Church of God experience which I
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. O, Divine Master,
Before I start I should qualify myself by saying, like Paul, that the words that follow are mine. I don’t claim any divine inspiration for the following “rule of thumb” In fact, my mother told me this when I was quite young. But I think
A sharp and clearly-drawn dividing line exists between the Christian Right and Left. While the former holds that divine revelation was essentially complete by the end of the church’s earliest centuries, the latter believes that God continues to reveal truth to those faithful enough to