Last week, I was in Amsterdam for the annual academic colloquium of the International Baptist Theological Study Center. Among the scholars present there was my friend Fyodor Raychynets, a distinguished Baptist pastor and theologian, and a leader of the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary in Kyiv, which I had the privilege of visiting several years ago. I …
An Interview with Ukrainian Baptist Theologian Fyodor Raychynets
Joint article by Lisa Sharon Harper and David P. Gushee. Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison. — Mark 6:27 On the day we write this post, during the week Tyre Nichols was buried after being murdered by Memphis police …
Black America flipped the script on a racialized democratic state to make it more perfect. It is Black people’s fight that makes the United States exceptional. —Randal Jelks (2022) Many of us are profoundly worried about the health of American democracy. If so, we need to attend deeply to the deadly contradiction between structural racism and …
The Black Resistance Tradition and Its Fight for U.S. Democracy
I get lots of messages that follow up on my 2014 book, Changing Our Mind. That book, aiming to reach evangelical Christians, argued for an end to Christian stigma and rejection of LGBTQ people and an incorporation of same-sex relationships into the covenantal-marital standard I believe is the best expression of Christian sexual ethics. Most evangelicals, it …
Dear Dr. Gushee: Can Sexual Orientation Ever Be Considered Grounds for Divorce?
Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. (Matthew 1:23) It is a commonplace observation of mainstream historical-critical New Testament scholars that the accounts of Jesus’ birth contain historically questionable and even fantastical elements. For those whose …
I turned 60 years old this past summer. I have not quite gotten over it yet. Sixty is just different. It definitely feels at least three years older than 59. “They” say age is just a number. So maybe this is not about what the calendar says my age is. Maybe it is about what it …
Four recent events in my life maybe converge to a theme: After six apocalyptic years, I want some normal. First event: I am walking around Zurich, Switzerland, in September. From what I have learned about Switzerland, I am confident this is a country whose current politics are pretty normal, as politics go. They are not facing a …
On the morning after, with more results still to come in, so far the most important takeaway from the midterm elections is that Donald Trump keeps hurting the Republican Party, whose soul he has eaten, and this is grounds for hope. It is an unrelenting rule of American politics that the party that holds the White …
The United States is bitterly divided along what we now call red/blue, conservative/liberal, Republican/Democrat lines. Of course, not everyone fits into those boxes, but enough do for the statement to be accurate. The mutual suspicion and social separation between the two camps is intensifying. As we prepare for the midterm elections and we see so many …
The Unsolvable Political Problem Facing Those Who Lead Purple Churches
Just after Labor Day, I flew to Zurich to begin 10 days of meetings, podcasts and speeches in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. The event introduced me to the growing post-evangelical scene in Europe, as well as the situation facing LGBTQ Christians. I was struck by several profound similarities to our situation here in the United …