In 1998, I launched The Meetinghouse. It is the most significant and satisfying thing I have done in my 50 plus years of gospel work.
I’ve done other things: pastor churches, publish books, launch and lead organizations, and sustain a wonderful network of friends and colleagues around the country. But in and around much of this, I have maintained my work in The Meetinghouse, writing, speaking, and listening, all around the theme of Religion and American Life. It has been wonderful, and I thank my friend and former boss, Dr. Bill Crouch for pushing me to launch a radio program when I joined the faculty of Georgetown College in 1997 as Dean of the Chapel. That was the way it all began.
Neither the program nor the station survived, but the commentaries I read on air transitioned to print and I distributed them weekly to newspapers across the Commonwealth of Kentucky. A few years later, Mercer University Press published a collection of 125 under the title On the Other Side of Oddville. I still have a few of these books, and my wife would like it very much if you would take one off my hands (and out of our garage!).
What started on the radio and continued in print took other forms in more recent years, like studio broadcasting and my four-state, seven-event Tangle Tour last year. It has all been fun; who knows what yet might happen. I thank all of you who have contributed financially to this work, and I ask you to keep it coming!
Mostly, over these 25 years, I have tried to keep an even hand on reporting and assessing things related to religion and our common life. I interviewed people from the widest assortment of religious persuasions: among Christians, from Albert Mohler to Wil Gafney; and among other faiths, rabbis like Marc Gopin and Imams like Ihsan Bagby (whose student Hadeel Abdallah at UK was just named a Rhodes Scholar), plus a good number of persons not professing any religion, such as Tom Krattenmaker.
I have learned a lot and made many friends.
But now, the landscape has changed. For the first time in my life, I survey a scene dominated by a religious movement that is dangerous. The Religious Nationalism that has arisen from Catholic and Evangelical cultures in the United States has achieved enormous political power. They have detailed plans to re-orient governments at the national, state, and local levels away from neutrality in matters of religion and toward implementation of a religion-based agenda that imposes ideological constrains on millions of people and undermines the democratic ideals that have sustained the American experiment for 250 years.
It is a sobering situation. It is a dangerous situation. These religious fanatics now wield enormous power in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government. They control much of what goes on in many of the red states, like the one in which I live (South Carolina).
I want to make clear: I am part of the resistance, and The Meetinghouse is part of the resistance.
I believe deeply that this conservative movement, launched 60 years ago in defiance of the Civil Rights Movement, is the most serious threat to American life and health since the Civil War. I intend to raise my voice and print my opinions in defiance of this creeping religion-fueled fascism. It is terrible for freedom and fairness in the United States, but it is a fundamental denial of much that is true and precious about the faith and practice of Christianity. It is yet another false version of what it means to follow Jesus (although many professing Christians have gleefully joined in its march to power).
At this critical juncture of American life, I renew The Meetinghouse as a voice of defiance, as a vehicle of truth against fantasy, and as a place of learned opinion about things that matter. Please join me in this fresh resolve to tell the truth to those newly in power on behalf of so many of us without power. God help us all.
Read also my recent column on what happened in the November election. See also the sobering reporting of Mark Wingfield on the “City Elders” movement.
In 1998, I launched The Meetinghouse. It is the most significant and satisfying thing I have done in my 50 plus years of gospel work.
I’ve done other things: pastor churches, publish books, launch and lead organizations, and sustain a wonderful network of friends and colleagues around the country. But in and around much of this, I have maintained my work in The Meetinghouse, writing, speaking, and listening, all around the theme of Religion and American Life. It has been wonderful, and I thank my friend and former boss, Dr. Bill Crouch for pushing me to launch a radio program when I joined the faculty of Georgetown College in 1997 as Dean of the Chapel. That was the way it all began.
Neither the program nor the station survived, but the commentaries I read on air transitioned to print and I distributed them weekly to newspapers across the Commonwealth of Kentucky. A few years later, Mercer University Press published a collection of 125 under the title On the Other Side of Oddville. I still have a few of these books, and my wife would like it very much if you would take one off my hands (and out of our garage!).
What started on the radio and continued in print took other forms in more recent years, like studio broadcasting and my four-state, seven-event Tangle Tour last year. It has all been fun; who knows what yet might happen. I thank all of you who have contributed financially to this work, and I ask you to keep it coming!
Mostly, over these 25 years, I have tried to keep an even hand on reporting and assessing things related to religion and our common life. I interviewed people from the widest assortment of religious persuasions: among Christians, from Albert Mohler to Wil Gafney; and among other faiths, rabbis like Marc Gopin and Imams like Ihsan Bagby (whose student Hadeel Abdallah at UK was just named a Rhodes Scholar), plus a good number of persons not professing any religion, such as Tom Krattenmaker.
I have learned a lot and made many friends.
But now, the landscape has changed. For the first time in my life, I survey a scene dominated by a religious movement that is dangerous. The Religious Nationalism that has arisen from Catholic and Evangelical cultures in the United States has achieved enormous political power. They have detailed plans to re-orient governments at the national, state, and local levels away from neutrality in matters of religion and toward implementation of a religion-based agenda that imposes ideological constrains on millions of people and undermines the democratic ideals that have sustained the American experiment for 250 years.
It is a sobering situation. It is a dangerous situation. These religious fanatics now wield enormous power in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government. They control much of what goes on in many of the red states, like the one in which I live (South Carolina).
I want to make clear: I am part of the resistance, and The Meetinghouse is part of the resistance.
I believe deeply that this conservative movement, launched 60 years ago in defiance of the Civil Rights Movement, is the most serious threat to American life and health since the Civil War. I intend to raise my voice and print my opinions in defiance of this creeping religion-fueled fascism. It is terrible for freedom and fairness in the United States, but it is a fundamental denial of much that is true and precious about the faith and practice of Christianity. It is yet another false version of what it means to follow Jesus (although many professing Christians have gleefully joined in its march to power).
At this critical juncture of American life, I renew The Meetinghouse as a voice of defiance, as a vehicle of truth against fantasy, and as a place of learned opinion about things that matter. Please join me in this fresh resolve to tell the truth to those newly in power on behalf of so many of us without power. God help us all.
Read also my recent column on what happened in the November election. See also the sobering reporting of Mark Wingfield on the “City Elders” movement.
Recent Posts
Related Posts
A Pandemic of Violence
The Triumph of Greed
What Would Revival Look Like?
Was This My Last Sermon?