For example, I have a friend who is a generation older than me who has changed his mind about various debatable matters over the years. Let’s call him Jerry. From time to time, his close friends and colleagues will say to him, “Jerry, you haven’t always believed that about such-and-such hot topic,” and he’ll concede the point and talk about why he changed his mind. But when Jerry’s longtime “comb-over” was suddenly gone after a short time away, replaced with hair plugs that granted him a full head of wavy hair, it wasn’t just his close friends who noticed. Everybody in my circles talked about those hair plugs. Another socially awkward friend somewhat infamously asked Jerry about them, and that story has become the stuff of legend.

Okay, I’ve stalled long enough. Here goes nothing. I’ve changed my mind about soccer. For years, I was ambivalent about the sport. But, as I am wont to do sometimes, I developed a shtick where I greatly exaggerated my ambivalence and pretended like it was stone-cold hatred. I mostly did this to provoke playful back-and-forth with my friends, extended family, and students who like soccer. What follows is a sampling of that two-decade schtick.

“I don’t follow soccer because I’m an American.”

“Oh, I see you like soccer. I thought you were an American.”

“Soccer is Kommunist Kickball.” (I won’t lie: I’m still proud of that one.)

“Soccer is dumb because a bunch of mostly anonymous players run around in circles aimlessly for 90 minutes. Most of the time, nothing happens. Occasionally, when something does happen, people riot.”

“Soccer players flop more than LeBron, but unlike with LeBron, nobody cares.”

“Listen, I know Uncle Andrew is great and all, but he isn’t a trustworthy adult when it comes to soccer. I didn’t raise you to like soccer.” (Note: all parties in this particular case know it is a schtick and play along accordingly.)

Now again, I never really hated soccer. My high school added soccer my sophomore year. Many of my closest friends played on the varsity squad, so I participated in training camp with them the summer before my senior year and contemplated trying out for the team myself. Since I wasn’t very good, though, I decided against it. Instead, I wrote a blues song about how bad I was at soccer. (No, seriously. I still remember the lyrics.)

Fast forward a couple decades, and I sent my kids to soccer camp one summer because I thought they would enjoy it and they needed the exercise. Turns out I was wrong about the former assumption. I won’t backtrack one bit from the latter contention. They still need he exercise.

I’ve always pulled for the US men’s and women’s national teams in the Olympics and World Cup, and even occasionally watched a match or two during those events. But that was more about patriotism than anything else. I mean, I also root for the US in curling, and I don’t even know how it works.

I’ve cheered on our men’s soccer team at North Greenville University, but that is because I enjoy watching our student-athletes compete. I’ve attended a couple of Greenville Triumph matches over the years, but that was mostly about spending time with family.

Again, ambivalence.

It’s not like I don’t like sports. I’m a diehard Atlanta Braves fan. I’ve also enjoyed Minor League Baseball over the years, and have been blessed to live in three cities with a local team. Baseball is, and will always remain, my favorite sport.

I’m also a big fan of college football, where I’ve rooted for the Georgia Bulldogs for most of my life. Like many men in the South (and elsewhere), I can easily lose an entire day to college football if I let myself. I’m less invested in the NFL, but I cheer for the Falcons and enjoy most any NFL game when I take the time to watch it.

I really enjoy basketball, both college and professional. March Madness is my favorite sporting event of the year, and I’ve been a North Carolina fan since our years living in the Raleigh-Durham area. As for the NBA, I cheer on the Atlanta Hawks, but I’ll watch just about any game that’s on television.

But soccer? Not so much. It’s . . . fine. Hence, the schtick. “Oh, you like soccer. Good for you, comrade.”

I’ll admit the schtick has been a lot of fun, and I’ve gotten loads of mileage out of it over the years. But things have changed—so much so, that the time has come to bury my old friend for good. RIP, soccer schtick.

The change didn’t happen overnight. My conversion to soccer didn’t have a Damascus Road moment. It was more of a slow-burn, a growing realization that ambivalence had given way to interest, which eventually evolved into full-on enjoyment. Here were the key moments in my personal soccer testimony.

In 2010 and 2011, I spent time on a couple of overseas mission trips where soccer was everywhere. Our mission team members played soccer with the kids in the villages. Local adults and children wore soccer jerseys (and cricket jerseys). The international news channels we watched on television in our hotel rooms reported on soccer matches in England, Continental Europe, South America, and even the US. Though I knew this was the case, those trips were the moment I realized just how much soccer is a global phenomenon.

In 2018, we moved to the Greenville area. A year later, the Greenville Triumph played their first match. My aforementioned brother-in-law is president of the local supporters’ club, the Reedy River Riot. We attended a match that first year, and one of my sons has continued to attend a match or two a year with Uncle Andrew. It has been fun to see the Triumph grow a local following, even though I’ve not been very invested myself until more recently.

In 2024, Leah and I took a trip to England. We ate dinner in a London pub, where a match was on the television. Several locals were very invested, and we started paying attention as well. Then we went to Oxford, where we spent a couple of days with a good friend and his college-aged son, who were also visiting from the US. They were planning to head to London to watch a Tottenham Hotspurs match; the son was a big supporter of the club. Leah and I continued to notice matches on the television, club jerseys and hats everywhere we went, etc. I won’t lie to you: it softened the heart of this Anglophile toward soccer considerably.

I returned home and began to quietly follow the English Premiere League that summer. I followed Chelsea the closest, for a variety of reasons, though for the sake of time I won’t rehearse them all here. I watched a couple of matches on television that summer, and I took one of my sons to a Greenville Triumph match. I was starting to enjoy this whole soccer thing. But sureptitiously. I told no one. This period of quiet interest—I was “seeker-sensitive” towards soccer—continued throughout 2025.

Then the men’s World Cup happened this summer. Leah and I were both hooked from the start. We watched numerous matches; some together, some separately. We cheered on the US national team until they were eliminated, then we cheered on England until they met the same fate. We delighted in all the stories of foreign visitors discovering the US for the first time. As I traveled, I met folks from all over the world nearly everywhere I went. Leah and I watched soccer so much—and read so much about it online between matches—that we started to figure out some of the rules, strategy, and other nuances that had previously been so mysterious. The fact that the World Cup is structured as a bracketed elimination tournament helped immensely. Leah said it reminded her of March Madness, which again, is probably our favorite sporting event of the year.

When the World Cup was over, I missed it. I mean, I missed it. I began counting down the days until the English Premiere League started back up. Since the season started a few days ago, I’ve streamed matches in the background several afternoons while I was working on class notes, writing, or answering emails. (Note: Arsenal just defeated Aston Villa 1-0 as I’m typing this newsletter.) I purchased a Chelsea jersey and hat; I’m not just following them, I’m a supporter. I also began to watch MLS games on television sometimes in the evenings, and I even attended an Atlanta United match a few days ago. This past weekend, I took both my boys to a Triumph match, and we had a great time. I can hardly wait for my next live match, which will likely be the NGU men’s team.

The truth is, I have come to really like soccer. I like to watch it, both live and on television. I like to follow the English Premiere League. I like to keep up with what is happening in other leagues, especially during the “transfer window,” which is the time of year when clubs can buy, sell, or loan players. (By the time I publish this, Enzo Fernandez may finally have secured a transfer from Chelsea to Manchester City for crazy money.) I like that it is a truly international sport, and I like many things about fan/supporter culture. I like soccer.

As I wrap this up, I acknowledge that 2006 Nathan would be really disappointed that 2026 Nathan has embraced soccer with such gusto. But 2026 Nathan is having a blast. Soccer truly is a beautiful game.

Writing Update

I have written a new opinion column for WORLD titled “Students Turn Against Free Speech.” Research from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) shows that, “For the first time, a majority of students would favor blocking any controversial speaker, whether conservative or progressive, from coming to campus. Abortion and transgenderism were singled out as especially problematic topics.” I conclude: “The stakes are simply too high for Christians to passively watch a generation of college students abandon free speech, open debate, and robust intellectual inquiry on major American campuses.” I would encourage you to read the whole thing.

I’ve mentioned this before on this newsletter, but when you are an educator, time moves differently than it does for most other people. The year doesn’t really begin in January and end in December. Rather, it begins in August and ends in May, at least for those of us who teach at schools that follow a more traditional academic calendar. The holidays come mid-year. Summer is a season unto itself, with different rhythms. Yes, teachers work over the summer. But for many of us, the summers offer a different pace, different schedule, and, often, completely different responsibilities than we are accustomed to during the “school year.”

This week marks the beginning of the 2026-2027 academic year at North Greenville University (NGU). Most graduate and online courses began on Monday. Today is the first day for traditional undergraduate courses. One of my classes will meet for the first time today. Another one begins meeting tomorrow. Tonight, I’m hosting a back-to-school event for about forty undergrads. For me, today is the real New Years Day. I even have some resolutions (or at least goals) I aim to accomplish over the next nine months.

This year marks my nineteenth year as a full-time professor, and my twentieth year as a teacher. (I was an adjunctive instructor for a year while I was finishing my PhD.) When I taught my first college course in the fall of 2006, I was only six or seven years older than most of my students. A few of my non-traditional students at what is now Judson College were quite a bit older than me. In 2026, I’m old enough to be the father of ever single student I teach at NGU. Time flies, friends.

In the fall of 2006, the first class I ever taught was Church History I. This fall, I’m teaching Church History I again, for the first time since the spring of 2017. I can hardly believe it has been nearly a decade since I taught this course. From 2015 to 2023, I was primarily an academic administrator with a minimal regular teaching load. I did teach a one-semester Christian History survey course twice when I was the Dean of the School of Theology and Missions at Union University, but it was really a completely different course because it was a 30,000-foot view of all of church history. The vast majority of the courses I taught during my administrative years were graduate-level courses, and about half of them were doctoral seminars at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where I’ve continued to supervise PhD students since I departed the full-time faculty there in 2015.

This fall, following nearly a decade of wilderness wandering, I’ve come home to Church History I. The course begins with the New Testament era and concludes with the time right before the Reformation. Though my expertise is modern church history in the English-speaking world, Church History I was always my favorite course to teach. I love introducing students to the strange new world of the Early Church Fathers, the ecumenical councils where the classical Christian orthodoxy was articulated, the intellectual world of early African Christianity, the first apologists and missionaries and monks, the gradual division between Eastern and Western expressions of Christianity, medieval clashes between church and state, the coalescence of Western Culture, the theology of Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. What a joy to introduce a new generation of students to their Christian heritage.

I will open the course four quotations, each of which have informed the way I think about the Christian past.

Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age. (From C.S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time”)

Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that that gives tradition such a bad name. (From Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition)

The modern view that history is a luxury, a hobby for “buffs” and know-it-alls, puts us fundamentally out of step with our spiritual forebears. The past tense is essential to our language of faith; without it our conversation is limited and thin—and growing thinner all the time. (From Margaret Bendroth, The Spiritual Practice of Remembering)

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. (Galatians 4:4-5, ESV)

Just reading these quotes gets me excited for the Church History I class!

I’m also teaching a course on Human Flourishing for the Honors Program at NGU. Here is the course description: “An interdisciplinary Honors seminar on how Christians should understand authentic human flourishing. The course engages with Scripture and the Christian intellectual tradition to explore the meaning, implications, and pursuit of ‘the good life.’” I created this course, I teach it regularly, and I love the conversations it provokes among my students. Every iteration of the class has its own unique personality. I can hardly wait to meet with my Human Flourishing students this afternoon.

I know this is a bit rambly, but I hope you see something of my love for teaching in my words. I’m grateful to God for the immense privilege of being a professor, especially at a Christ-first university like North Greenville. Please join me in praying that the Lord would bless us mightily during this new academic year.

I haven’t written for this newsletter in five weeks. That wasn’t my original intention. But right about the time the smoke trails from all the fireworks had cleared away on July 4, I knew I needed to take a short break from online writing, including this newsletter. This post marks my return, though it more of a general update than fresh content. I’ll aim for the latter next time.

A lot has happened in the past few weeks. First and by far most important, we marked a couple of joyful milestones in Leah’s cancer journey. She finished her chemotherapy the week of July 13. On July 15, she “rang the bell” when she returned to the cancer center to turn in the “slow-drip” pump that she would take home for 48 hours at the end of each infusion day. You can see some pictures of that joyous day on Leah’s Substack.

A few days later, on July 28, Leah had a follow-up CT scan to see if there were any signs of cancer. Then, on July 30, we met with the oncologist to discuss the results, at which time he shared the great news: Leah’s cancer is in remission! She also wrote about this on her Substack. We are so deeply grateful. There will be many more tests in the months and years to come. With those tests, there will no doubt be some degree of anxiety. But, we will continue to trust the Lord with every step. I know many, many readers of this newsletter have prayed for Leah since her diagnosis in December 2025. I cannot thank you enough.

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July was also a month of travels. So. Many. Travels. The week in between Leah’s eleventh and twelfth treatments, I was in Southern California for a meeting. The following week—the one where she rang the bell—Leah and I stayed at a beautiful lake house about an hour from Greenville that is owned by a couple in our church. Three of our kids were off at various camps, and the fourth stayed home to take care of our dog. It was a huge blessing for Leah to recover from her final treatment in such a wonderful setting. We’re so grateful to our kind friends, who are one of TWO families at Taylors First Baptist that have allowed us to stay at their lake homes this summer.

The following weekend, Leah and I traveled to the Impact 360 Institute in Pine Mountain, GA. I spoke at a retreat for some university students. Leah and I also got to hang out with the students and our friends on the Impact 360 staff. This was only the second time she had traveled more than about 2.5 hours from Greenville since December, and the first time she had been gone for more than one night. As an added bonus, we stayed at Callaway Gardens, which was delightful.

The next week, I traveled without Leah back to Pine Mountain to meet the new Impact 360 Residents, all of whom are enrolled in the MA in Leadership degree at NGU. I serve as program director for that degree, and teach three of the courses, so I get to know the students well. Check out the following links if you want to know more about the Impact 360 Residency and the MA in Leadership.

The next week—which was last week—we took a short family vacation to Saint Simons Island in Georgia, which is one of our favorite places on earth. We didn’t think we would have a real vacation this year, but the Lord opened the door. We planned it relatively last minute, but still too soon to know what the status of Leah’s cancer would be on the other side of chemo. What a joy to celebrate her cancer’s remission at the beach, with all four of our kids, after everyone had been going in different directions all summer.

My final bit of travel, which came right as the vacation ended, was a short trip to Nashville for the annual gathering of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s Research Institute. This event is a highlight of every year. At this particular gathering, four of the fellows who contributed to Baptist Social Ethics (more below) presented summaries of their chapters. President Evan Lenow also shared his vision for the ERLC with the Research Institute. I’m so thankful for the privilege of serving Southern Baptists as the senior fellow for religious liberty at the ERLC.

I was delighted to preach twice during my weeks away from this newsletter. On July 19, I preached to Taylors FBC from Proverbs 16:3, which reads “Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established” (ESV). The sermon was part of our summer series from the Proverbs. A couple weeks later, on August 2, I preached for the eighth summer at The Chapel on Glassy Mountain. My message, which was more of a homily, was a shorter version of my sermon to Taylors from Proverbs 16:3.

In the midst of all the cancer treatments, travels, and preaching, I’ve also done a lot of writing—just not for this newsletter (or any other online outlets). I spent the entire month, plus a few extra days into August, finishing up the edited volume Baptist Social Ethics. I co-edited the work with my good friend Jason Thacker. In addition to editing all the chapters (almost 30!), I also wrote my own chapter, and Jason and I co-authored an introductory chapter. This is one of the two largest books I’ve ever edited, so it took up 100% of my writing time between about July 1 and August 7, when we submitted the completed manuscript to B&H Academic.

As of today, the new academic year begins for NGU faculty. I’ve been working all day on syllabuses and class notes. I’ll do the same tomorrow. On Wednesday and Thursday, we’ll have our annual faculty workshop. New freshman will move on campus this Saturday. Next Wednesday, August 19, on-campus classes officially start and we’re fully off to the races. I’m particularly excited to be teaching Church History I for the first time since 2017. Lord willing, I’ll teach Church History II in the spring of 2027. In the case of the latter class, it will be the first time I’ve taught it since 2015. I’m updating my lectures for both classes, which is a blast for a nerd like me.

I’ve been reading a lot during my time away, but I’ll refrain from a regular “What I’ve Been Reading” update. I’ll pick that back up next go ‘round. Lord willing, that will be next week, when I’ll try to offer up some new content for the first time in ages. Until then, thanks again for your prayers over these past eight months, and for your patience with the silence of this newsletter for the past five weeks.

This weekend Americans are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. As a red-blooded American patriot, tomorrow I’ll be grilling hamburgers and hotdogs, watching baseball, and, weather permitting, taking a friend’s pontoon boat out on the lake. But in this edition of the newsletter, I want to go back in time fifty years ago, to the 1976 Bicentennial. Let me tell you about two of my all-time favorite Americans.

Journalists famously dubbed 1976 “The Year of the Evangelical,” and Billy Graham was the most famous evangelical in America. Graham was more famous than convicted Watergate conspirator Charles Colson, whose bestselling memoir Born Again (published November 1975) recounted his conversion to faith in Christ. Graham was even more famous than his fellow Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter, who was mounting a successful candidacy to become the next President of the United States. Graham wasn’t only the most famous evangelical in America, he was arguably the most famous evangelical in the world.

1976 was a busy year for Graham. He hosted large evangelistic “crusades” in Seattle and San Diego. Both events resulted in televised specials that we aired on network television. He gave the keynote address at the annual meeting of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. He also spoke to the Pan-African Christian Leadership Assembly, which was a large evangelism summit held in Nairobi, Kenya. Graham also published one of his most popular books, Angels: God's Secret Agents, in 1976.

Because 1976 was the Bicentennial of 1776, Graham was also speaking a lot about America’s Christian heritage, the need for national revival, and related themes. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) has been publishing excerpts from some of Graham’s writings and messages that are especially pertinent for the America 250 commemoration. Yesterday, the BGEA shared “10 Quotes from Billy Graham on America.” These quotes come from Graham’s various books. Today, they published a post titled “Celebrating America’s 250th: Billy Graham’s Encouragement at America’s Bicentennial.”

Graham rightly acknowledged that American history had been deeply shaped by Judeo-Christian values. Graham knew that America wasn’t a Christian nation in any formal sense, but he also recognized that Christianity had played an outsized role in American identity from the time of the nation’s founding. Graham liked to focus on how America’s historic commitment to religious freedom should be contrasted with the atheistic totalitarianism of the USSR. Graham wasn’t just an evangelist, he was a Christian Cold Warrior who was clear-eyed about the threat posed by communism.

Billy Graham and Johnny Cash were good friends. While the former was the most famous evangelist in the USA (and the world), the latter was arguably the most famous evangelical celebrity in America. Cash frequently performed at Graham’s crusades, including in Seattle in 1976. While Billy Graham was speaking hither and yon throughout 1976 about how America was a great nation in need of spiritual awakening, Cash also remained busy. He released two albums: “One Piece at a Time” and a live album titled “Strawberry Cake.” CBS aried a four-week summer variety program called “Johnny Cash and Friends” that summer. Perhaps most notably, Cash served as the grand marshall of the official Bicentennial Parade, which was held in Washington DC on July 4, 1976.

Like Graham, Cash was a patriotic evangelical Christian, though Cash was probably less conservative politically than his friend. While Graham famously broke with his southern segregationist past in the mid-1950, Cash was far more vocal than Graham about how America sometimes failed to live up to her noble ideals. He used his music to highlight injustices against various stigmatized minorities, including black Americans, Native Americans, and the incarcerated. Though he was a Korean War veteran, and remained steadfastly supportive of American troops, he also raised concerns about the Vietnam War.

These two men represent two different, yet valid perspectives on Christian patriotism. Graham’s patriotism was optimistic-yet-realistic, while Cash epitomized a critical-but-hopeful Christian patriotism. Neither were “Christian nationalists,” but both were unabashed in their love for their nation and their desire to see God bless America. Graham believed in fallen structures and systemic injustices, though he focused more on personal sins. Cash certainly believed that personal sins mattered, but he highlighted the corporate effects of the fall upon groups of people. These different inflections informed the shape of their respective approaches to Christian patriotism.

Both these streams of Christian patriotism are still very present among American evangelicals. In fact, I’m not convinced they are always mutually exclusive. Many believers probably fluctuate between the two at various times; I know I do. More than one thing can be true at the same time. America is in many respects an exceptional nation, a beacon to much of the world, with a nobly history worth celebrating. But the United States is also an imperfect nation with a deeply checkered past, guilty of many sins worth lamenting. Life is always complicated East of Eden.

In 1954, the phrase “one nation under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. Two years later, “In God We Trust” became our national motto. Both moves were made during the Eisenhower Administration, in the middle of the Cold War, to differentiate America from the atheistic sensibilities of the communist world. Billy Graham’s sort of patriotism reminds us that these moves, though relatively recent historically, are nevertheless deeply rooted in America’s heritage. Johnny Cash reminds us that these phrases, though symbolic and meaningful to millions, will always also remain aspirational.

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Writing Projects Due

I have two writing projects due on August 1—one major and one minor. I’m spending most of my time on work days trying to wrap those up. The major project is Baptist Social Ethics, a collection of scholarly essays that Jason Thacker and I are co-editing for B&H Academic. Almost 30 Baptist thinkers have contributed to the volume, including ethicists, biblical scholars, theologians, and church historians. Jason and I work together to edit every chapter. I also wrote a chapter titled “Confessional Foundations for Baptist Social Ethics,” and co-authored the introduction (the equivalent of a second short chapter) with Jason. This book has been three years in the making, and Lord willing, it will be out the fall of 2027.

The minor writing project is a different book chapter titled “Debating Domestic Slavery: The Fuller-Wayland Correspondence in Context.” The nineteenth-century Baptist leaders Francis Wayland and Richard Fuller engaged in a literary debate over the Bible and slavery on the eve of the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845. I’m looking at some of the ideas that shaped each man as he made his respective arguments. This chapter will be included in a volume of Baptist history essays that will be published in honor of my dear friend and PhD supervisor Keith Harper, who died from cancer last year. Scholars call these sorts of books festschriften, which is German for “celebration writing.” There is a long tradition of honoring senior scholars with a festschrift near the conclusion of his or her career. Regrettably, Keith did not live to see this book honoring him, though it was secretly already in the works prior to his diagnosis and death. I’m honored to revisit a topic related to the first book I ever published, which was co-edited with Keith.

Online Articles

I’ve written two short articles that were published in the past few days. Last week, I wrote a “First Person” opinion column for Baptist Press titled “Laboring for the Overturning of Obergefell.” Simply put, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) was a disastrous court decision, both morally and constitutionally, and for that reason Bible-believing Christians and other social conservatives should not make peace with it. As I wrote in the column, “In the same way that believers advocated for the overturning of Roe, even when it seemed to many observers to be unlikely, we must do the same with Obergefell. The stakes are simply too high to let bad decisions remain permanent decisions. So, let’s pray and get to work.”

Earlier this week, I wrote a short essay for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission titled “Six Themes from One Nation Under God.” In that article, I offered some reflections from the “One Nation Under God” event that the ERLC hosted at the SBC annual meeting last month in Orlando. The ERLC Research Institute also published a short book on this theme, which is available for free online at the ERLC website. The book is a short read, and I think many of you would find it encouraging as our nation commemorates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Books I’ve Recently Read

Walter R. Strickland II, Swing Low: A History of Black Christianity in the United States, vol. 1. (IVP Academic, 2024). I was glad to finally reading this excellent book written by my friend Walter Strickland. It is a wonderful narrative history. Because Walter is first and foremost a theologian, he gives more attention to the intellectual currents among black Christians than is sometimes the case among historians who focus almost all their attention on social or cultural considerations.

Daniel K. Williams, The Search for a Rational Faith: Reason and Belief in the History of American Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2026). As a church historian who also teaches apologetics, I was very eager to read this new history of American apologetics. Williams is one of my favorite historians who writes about modern Christianity in America. I look forward to writing a review of this book for the Southwestern Journal of Theology. For now, I’ll say it is a very helpful resource, though some contemporary apologists will perhaps be frustrated that they weren’t featured (and there are a couple of curious omissions from the book).

Matthew Spalding, The Making of the American Mind: The Story of Our Declaration of Independence (Encounter, 2025). This book is a sort of popular-level commentary on the Declaration of Independence. It recounts the story of the document’s drafting and adoption, talks about the ideas that informed the Declaration, and shares what happened to each of its original signers. I really enjoyed it.

Matt Rusten, Pastoring for Monday: Help Your Congregation Integrate Faith and Work (IVP, 2026). One of the recurring themes in my classes at North Greenville University is the integration of faith and work. Most of the students I teach aren’t “called to the ministry,” but are preparing for other paid vocations. While I also touch on this topic at times in my teaching at Taylors First Baptist Church, it isn’t as prominent a theme as it probably ought to be. I found Rusten’s new book a great resource for helping pastors think about how to most faithfully equip their church members to take a kingdom-minded approach to their “secular” jobs (and other responsibilities).

Cancer Update

Earlier this week, Leah completed the eleventh out of her twelve scheduled chemo infusions. Lord willing, the week after next will be her final treatment. Thus far, every indication has been that the treatments are working. The hardest part has been the side effects of the chemo, which can raise from frustrating to unpleasant to debilitating, depending upon the week. A few days after her final infusion, Leah will have a CT scan and a follow-up with the oncologist. We hope to hear at the end of this month that there are no signs of cancer. Please pray that is the case. You can follow Leah’s cancer journey on her Substack.

Last week, the Southern Baptist Convention gathered in Orlando. As in previous years, I wanted to offer some reflections on the annual meeting. I share these in no particular order.

I was disappointed at the outcome of the presidential election, but I wasn’t surprised. My disappointment isn’t any sort of knock on Willy Rice. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that I voted for my good friend and fellow Taylors First Baptist Church pastor, Josh Powell. If you know me at all, this should come as no big shock, since I broke with my normal practice by formally endorsing Josh for the presidency the day after his nomination was announced.

I wasn’t surprised that Willy won. He is the pastor of a large church who is especially popular with other pastors. He launched his campaign in the fall of 2025, and he advocated a platform; both moves were unprecedented. It remains to be seen if the success of this strategy influences the shape of future presidential elections. He preached at the pre-convention the Pastor’s Conference, which historically has given candidates a late-hour boost. But the most important factor, by far, is that there were more than twice as many messengers from Florida (2,160) than the next closest state (see the image below). That is some major home-field advantage! So, congratulations to President Rice. I’ll be praying for you a lot in the coming days.

I was honored to complete my final turn as SBC Recording Secretary. While I regret that Leah was unable to join me one more time because of her health, my 19-year-old daughter, Georgia, was an eager and able assistant. We had a great time together. Congratulations to Travis Kerns on his election as the next Recording Secretary. The baton should be easy to pass since Travis is the associational mission strategist for the Three Rivers Baptist Association, of which Taylors FBC is a member. Travis’s office is literally a seven-minute drive from my office at North Greenville University. My final act as Recording Secretary will be editing the 2026 Southern Baptist Convention Annual, which should be available in August.

The Resolutions Committee did excellent work, not only in the crafting of the resolutions themselves, but also in how they presented and defended them from amendments that would’ve either changed the intent or tried to position them as part of some political movement within the SBC. You can read all eleven of the adopted resolutions on the SBC website. Kudos to my good friend (and still my NGU colleague for another two weeks!) Hunter Baker, who chaired the committee. I know some folks are ambivalent or even negative about the SBC adopting resolutions, but I continue to believe this is important for the convention to go on the record about important matters of faith and practice—especially those being discussed in the wider culture.

Registration Secretary Don Currence, the most popular man in the SBC, was delightful as always. I thoroughly enjoyed casting the convention’s vote for him one last time. Second Vice President Craig Carlisle, the second most popular man in the SBC, was elected First Vice President. I told Craig he will always have my support for whatever he runs for; I’m a guaranteed vote. I’ll miss hanging out with both of them on the platform next year. The same goes for the parliamentarians, with whom I love to work. Also, shout-out to my fellow South Carolinian Bryant Sims, who did a great job chairing the Committee on Order of Business.

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The IMB Sending Celebration was, as always, the highlight for most of the messengers in attendance. It was followed closely by the IMB, NAMB, and Send Relief reports and presentations. This is why the SBC exists: “for eliciting, combining, and directing the energies of the denomination for the propagation of the gospel.” But another great highlight this year was the standing ovation that Danny Akin received at the start of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary report. Besides my parents, no other individual has had as profound an impact on my life over the past nearly quarter century than Dr. Akin. I’ll write more about this as he comes closer to his official retirement at the end of July. Dr. Akin is a godly man and stellar leader, and the ovation was much-deserved.

I was very pleased with how the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission fared in Orlando. There were no moves to defund the commission. There was a lot of traffic at the ERLC booth, and those who came by were excited by the resources being provided. The One Nation Under God event was very well attended. RaShan Frost knocked it out of the park in his “TED Talk” (it was a short sermon), and the panel went great. The folks I talked to are genuinely excited that Evan Lenow is the new ERLC President and are hopeful for the future of the commission. Everyone agrees that Gary Hollingsworth has exemplified trust-building statesmanship during his interim presidency.

Al Mohler’s “Truth and Unity” amendment has probably been the topic that has made the most news—both leading up to, and following, the annual meeting. The amendment passed with a nearly 75% vote. Since it is a constitutional amendment, it will need to be approved by at least a 2/3 vote next year as well. I suspect that will happen, though it will be interesting to see the various arguments for and against it during the next twelve months. There are still folks who think the implications of the amendment are unclear, and at least potentially problematic, as well as others who want the SBC to embrace a more overtly patriarchal position. I think the former group is smaller than it was four years ago. I think the latter group is tiny, but has an outsized voice on social media.

Here is what is clear. The Baptist Faith & Message has affirmed a complementarian view of church leadership since 2000. When Southern Baptists have addressed this issue in recent years, 90% have affirmed complementarianism as a condition for friendly cooperation. Southern Baptists have also gone on the record celebrating the truth that God calls women to numerous ministry leadership roles. Don’t believe the hype, which is being promoted by both rightwing activists and progressive voices: Southern Baptists aren’t becoming more conservative on the issue of women in pastoral ministry. This is a debate about how best to apply our settled convictions to the matter of cooperation.

Two other reflections, both of which are more adjacent to the annual meeting. As in recent years, a real highlight was the South Carolina Baptist Convention (SCBC) event on Monday night. Tony Wolfe and his team did a great job, as always, with this new and increasingly popular tradition. I’m a huge, over-the-top champion of state Baptist conventions. And the SCBC is a really healthy convention that is marked by a spirit of trust and cooperation, and very little tolerance for Baptist bull hockey. Very little of the drama that attaches itself to the SBC trickles down to the state convention, primarily for two reasons. First, we all actually know each other, so even the pastor your disagree with on some things is a real person and not some figure “out there,” somewhere, who is easy to dehumanize as the bad guy. Second, Southern Baptist social media isn’t taken very seriously by the vast majority of South Carolina Baptists. Baptists in the Palmetto State are a happy lot, and I’m so thankful to be part of the family.

Finally, a word about North Greenville University. I was able to spend some time at our booth on Sunday afternoon and Monday afternoon, and it was absolutely hopping. We had a constant stream of engaged alums, prospective students and their families, and other friends old and new. Our Friends and Alumni event on Tuesday night was a smashing success. Like the South Carolina Baptist Convention, who is our most important ministry partner, NGU is a healthy, happy place. It is a joy to be part of the North Greenville faculty.

What I’m Writing + Cancer Update

ERLC has published a short book titled One Nation Under God: Reflections on 250 Year on Faith and Democracy (Leland House, 2026). The editor is RaShan Frost. I contributed a chapter titled “The Christian Mindset in a Secular Culture,” which applies some of the wisdom of Carl Henry to our contemporary society. You can download a free electronic copy of the book online at the ERLC website.

Last week, Christ and Culture published a short essay that Leah and I co-authored about her cancer journey. In actuality, Leah wrote 80% of it. I just made a couple of suggestions and then added some thoughts at the end. The title says it all: God’s Grace in the Midst of Cancer. If you read Leah’s Substack, you’ll notice a lot of familiar notes in the essay. We’re thankful that our friends at the Center for Faith and Culture at Southeastern Seminary asked us to write on the topic.

Speaking of Leah’s cancer, today was her tenth of twelve planned chemo infusions. We received some test results that confirmed the treatments are continuing to work. Side effects are always hard, but the last infusion was way better than the previous three in that respect. We’re praying this one is also relatively mild over the next few days. I’d love for you to pray for that as well. Lord willing, Leah will ring the bell on July 13, and be declared cancer-free a few days after that. Until then, we continue to move forward one day, one week, one treatment at a time, entrusting her care to the Great Physician and the medical professionals whom he has gifted for such a time as this.

One of my writing projects this summer is a short commentary on the Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M), which is under contract with Courier Publishing. This past school year, I taught through the BF&M for the EQUIP Institute at Taylors First Baptist Church. I called the series “What Baptists Believe.” I’ve been editing those lessons into short chapters. Lord willing, the book will be available this time next year, in time for the 2027 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting. What follows is adapted from the preface to the book.

The Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M) has been part of my life for nearly three decades. I can remember exactly where I was when I first became fully aware of the confession. It was the summer of 1998. I was serving as the summer youth minister at Pineview Missionary Baptist Church in Waresboro, GA. I was nineteen years old, and this was my first church staff role. I was greener than a grasshopper, but I was on fire for the Lord. I had recently taken out a subscription to The Christian Index, the Baptist state paper in Georgia. The paper became my entry point into both Georgia Baptist life and the wider world of my Southern Baptist tradition.

In June of that summer, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to amend the Baptist Faith and Message by adding an article on the family. The amendment received a lot of coverage in both secular and religious media, including The Christian Index, because Southern Baptists took a public stand against progressive trends in the wider culture. I was aware of the debate, but the amendment hardly registered with me personally. After all, it reflected what I had been taught at my home church, Central Baptist Church in Waycross, GA. However, I soon learned not all Baptists thought the same way I did about gender roles in the family.

One woman in my church—a dedicated youth volunteer—made a point of telling me she wouldn’t be submitting to her husband any time soon. I was flabbergasted. When I spoke to a couple of pastor friends, they weren’t surprised, but they also assured me that what I had been taught represented what the vast majority of Southern Baptists believed the Bible to affirm about the topic. I decided then and there I needed to become more familiar with the Baptist Faith and Message if I wanted to know what my tradition believed represented biblical doctrine and ethics.

I’ve lived with the Baptist Faith and Message ever since. The summer of 2000, the confession was revised, right before my senior year of college. During that year, I served as interim pastor of Rock Springs Baptist Church in Dublin, GA. The church had a Wednesday night Pastor’s Bible Study, and we spent several months studying the recently revised Baptist Faith and Message article by article. The congregation really appreciated walking through the confession. Many church members, some of them senior saints, told me this was the first time they had ever thought seriously about what Baptists believe.

Since that time, I’ve taught the Baptist Faith and Message to hundreds of church members, college students, and seminarians. I strongly believe that the confession ought to be used as a teaching tool in local churches to reinforce core Baptist beliefs and priorities.[1] I’ve long hoped to eventually write an accessible commentary on the confession, in the spirit of O. C. Wallace’s classic commentary on the New Hampshire Confession and Herschel Hobbs’s influential commentary on the 1963 edition of the Baptist Faith and Message.[2] This book will represent the culmination of that desire.

There are other helpful resources about the Baptist Faith and Message that have been published since its revision in 2000. Three in particular stand out. In 2001, the faculty of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary published a short booklet expounding briefly on each of the articles.[3] In 2007, LifeWay Christian Resources published a study guide that was co-authored by three members of the committee that drafted the latest edition of the confession.[4] This resource was intended primarily for study groups in local churches. Also in 2007, two Southern Baptist professors published a collection of essays that provided a more scholarly commentary on the BF&M.[5] This resource was intended primarily as a textbook for college or seminary courses.

I’ll engage periodically with each of these helpful books in my own commentary, as well as other relevant resources. However, it’s my desire to minimize citations so that it remains as accessible as possible. My intended audience won’t be primarily pastors or seminary students, but ordinary members of Southern Baptist churches. In an increasingly post-denominational age, I want every member of every Baptist church to know (and ideally profess) the core beliefs that unite Baptist followers of King Jesus.

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The Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting

I hope to see some of you in Orlando next week. On Sunday afternoon around 3:30-5:00 and Monday afternoon around 1:30-3:30, I’ll be hanging around the North Greenville University booth in the exhibit hall. On Monday evening, I’m attending the Ethics and Religious Liberty Convention’s event “One Nation Under God: Reflections on 250 Years of Faith and Democracy.” I’ll be moderating the panel discussion. On Tuesday and Wednesday, I’ll be firmly planted on the “business stage” as I record the minutes of the annual meeting in my final turn as Recording Secretary. I’ll also be attending the annual Southeastern Seminary Friends and Alumni luncheon on Wednesday.

I look forward to casting a vote for my good friend and fellow pastor Josh Powell, who will be nominated to serve as the next President of the Southern Baptist Convention. Josh was recently interviewed by SBC This Week, where he shared his thoughts about the state of the SBC, why he felt led to be nominated for the presidency, etc. I appreciate Josh’s hopeful vision for Southern Baptists and our cooperative mission in obedience to the Great Commission.

Cancer Update

Leah received another chemo infusion this week. She has struggled with significant side effects her previous couple of treatments, mostly related to headaches, nausea, digestive issues. It has also taken her longer to rebound between treatments. Frankly, she has been pretty discouraged. We discussed all this with the nurse practitioner this week, and Leah tried a different anti-nausea medication. While Monday afternoon and evening were still rough, by Tuesday she was feeling much better. We’re so thankful that the new medicine has made such a big difference.

Thanks to so many of you who continue to pray for her (and for our whole family) during Leah’s cancer battle. If you want to follow her updates, please check out her Substack. Her most recent update was published Wednesday.

Notes

[1] Nathan A. Finn, “The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 as a Teaching Tool,” Baptist Press (December 13, 2024).

[2] O. C. Wallace, What Baptists Believe: The Hampshire Confession: An Exposition (Nashville, TN: Sunday School Board, 1913); Herschel H. Hobbs, The Baptist Faith and Message (Nashville, TN: Sunday School Board, 1971). The former volume has been reprinted on numerous occasions, while the latter work was revised in 1996, just two years before the confession was amended and four years before the latest revision was adopted by the SBC.

[3] An Exposition from the Faculty of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary on The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 (Louisville, KY: The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2001).

[4] Charles S. Kelley Jr., Richard Land, and R. Albert Mohler Jr., The Baptist Faith & Message (Nashville, TN: LifeWay Press, 2007).

[5] Douglas K. Blount and Joseph D. Wooddell, eds., Baptist Faith and Message 2000: Critical Issues in America’s Largest Protestant Denomination (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).

We are just a few days away from the 2026 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Orlando, FL. In preparation for that event, I want to offer some reflections on the question, “What is the Southern Baptist Convention?” This is a topic I’ve thought about a lot over the years, because I think there is more than one way to answer it. In fact, there are at least four different potential answers, depending upon one’s context.

First, the technical answer is that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is an annual meeting of cooperating Baptist churches. According to our charter and constitution, the Southern Baptist Convention is “body” that bears that name. Specifically, the purpose of that body is as follows.

It is the purpose of the Convention to provide a general organization for Baptists in the United States and its territories for the promotion of Christian missions at home and abroad and any other objects such as Christian education, benevolent enterprises, and social services which it may deem proper and advisable for the furtherance of the Kingdom of God.

Article III of the constitution speaks to the make-up of the body: “The Convention shall consist of messengers who are members of Baptist churches in cooperation with the Convention.”

Article IV speaks to the authority of this gathered body: “While independent and sovereign in its own sphere, the Convention does not claim and will never attempt to exercise any authority over any other Baptist body, whether church, auxiliary organizations, associations, or convention.”

In a very real sense, the SBC is the annual meeting. Legally, the SBC exists in its fullness for two days each year, after which time it is embodied in the Executive Committee, which functions as the SBC ad interim (between annual meetings).

Second, the SBC is an ecclesial tradition. There is a Southern Baptist tradition, a people, that existed in many ways prior to 1845, took particular shape in 1845, and continues to this day. This tradition is marked by certain beliefs, priorities, and emphases. The tradition has a history, and that history includes major figures, themes, and controversies.

The Southern Baptist tradition also includes the various state conventions and regional associations. These aren’t technically the SBC, but are related to the wider tradition. And the tradition includes individuals who self-identify as Southern Baptist. This is probably what most people mean when they refer to the Southern Baptist Convention, the SBC, or simply “Southern Baptists.” As a church historian, I’ve written a lot about the Southern Baptist tradition over the years.

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Third, the SBC is a network of churches. I’m using that word “network” in an informal sense. Simply put, there are around 46,000 churches across the United States that have taken one or more steps to identify as Southern Baptist. This is the pool of autonomous Baptist churches that have the opportunity to cooperate with the SBC in the technical sense by sending messengers to the annual meeting. I find that pastors in particular often think of the SBC in this way. Many of the SBC entities also use this sort of language. And speaking of the entities,

Finally, the SBC is an ecosystem of ministries. These are the national entities the Convention has incorporated or adopted to spearhead specific ministries on behalf of the SBC. Think the two mission boards, the six seminaries, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, LifeWay, and Guidestone. Though auxiliary, Woman’s Missionary Union could also be included herein. The SBC in this sense is overseen by the SBC in the first sense, is part of the SBC in the second sense, and serves the SBC in the third sense.

So, which of these understandings of the SBC will be highlighted in Orlando? Well, all of them. We will conduct our business as the SBC in the first sense. But almost everyone who is present—messengers, guests who are members of cooperating churches, exhibitors who work for various Baptist-related entities—will be the SBC in the second sense. We’ll talk a lot about the SBC in the third sense, and report after the fact on how “much” of the SBC was represented in the annual meeting. And we’ll hear reports from the SBC in the final sense. We’ll also visit their booths and attend their auxiliary events.

When the Southern Baptist Convention—in every sense of that phrase—is in Orlando, I will complete my run as recording secretary. Though I’ll be on the platform for almost all of the annual meeting itself, I’ll be at the ERLC event on Monday night, and will be at the North Greenville University both on Sunday and Monday afternoons. I hope to see some of you there.

What I’m Reading

Michael Kruger, The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate (IVP Academic, 2013). In recent years, I’ve found myself spending more and more time teaching about the canonization process and defending the canon of Scripture. Later this summer, I’ll be leading a seminar on this topic at Taylors First Baptist Church. Kruger’s excellent book is part of my preparation for that event.

Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage: What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy? (Zondervan, 2015). I’ve wanted to read this book for years, but had never done so. From time to time, Leah and I have the opportunity to lead marriage conferences. We’re also preparing to do some pre-marital counseling with some young engaged couples in the next few months. I thought it high time I read this book. I found it to be very helpful.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas (2026). The Pope recently released his first encyclical, which dealt with the doctrine of humanity in an age of artificial intelligence. He also included an extended reflection on Catholic Social Doctrine. While I disagreed with him on some points, mostly related to the differences between Protestants and Catholics, I found his overall arguments to be compelling and helpful. I might return to this in the coming days.

What I’m Writing

I contributed an essay titled “Carl F. H. Henry, Biblical Inerrancy, and the Pursuit of a Consistently Evangelical Identity” to the latest issue of the Southwestern Journal of Theology. The entire issue is dedicated to David Dockery, the president of Southwestern, who has been a dear friend and mentor to me.

I contributed a chapter on the history of higher education in America to the new book Faithful Faculty: Vocational Flourishing in Christian Higher Education (B&H Academic, 2026), which is edited by my good friends Donny Mathis and Jacob Shatzer. This book is intended to help new faculty onboard and thrive in Christian colleges and universities.

Speaking of Christian colleges and universities, my latest column for WORLD Opinions is titled “An Opportunity for Faithful Higher Education.” In an era where many conservatives are understandably concerned with the state of higher education in America, Christ-centered schools have an opportunity to fill that void.

I’m currently on the campus of Gateway Seminary in Ontario, CA, where I presented a paper today on “Andrew Fuller’s Critique of Sandemanian Restorationism.” The paper was part of a conference related to Andrew Fuller’s life and legacy, hosted by the Jonathan Edwards Center at Gateway Seminary. My paper will be included as a chapter in a forthcoming book titled Print and Piety: The ‘Eminent Usefulness’ of Andrew Fuller’s Legacy, which will be edited by my friend Chris Chun and published in 2027 by Brill Academic.

Cancer Update

Leah has a new post on her Substack. I’d encourage you to read it. Here is the bottom line: we have every indication that her chemo treatments are working—thanks be to God!—but they are also getting harder and harder for her physically. We have four more treatments to go, but every time the side effects get worse, and she rebounds more slowly. Please continue to pray for my wonderful wife, and for all of us, as we continue this cancer journey.

This spring, I taught an apologetics course for the first time. To be clear, this wasn’t the first time I’ve taught “about” apologetics. My undergraduate Honors courses and graduate Leadership courses at North Greenville University—all of which are interdisciplinary and informed by biblical and theological reflection—address apologetics in various ways. In fact, I strongly suspect at least some of my students would say I talk about apologetics all the time.

Be that as it may, this spring was my first course officially devoted to the topic. CHST 3398: Apologetics is an upper-level elective offered by NGU’s College of Christian Studies. According to our academic catalog, the course focuses upon “A defense of the historic Christian faith in light of classical and contemporary objections, and an evaluation of the apologetic methods used in that defense.”

This course has been a long time coming for me, both personally and professionally. In some ways, I’m coming back full circle to the earliest days of my Christian life. I first became interested in apologetics the summer after I graduated high school. I was a brand-new Christian, though I had been raised in the church and, like a lot of youth group kids, knew most of the right answers before I came to personal faith in Christ. Anyway, that summer I was introduced to Josh McDowell’s book A Ready Defense. I read the whole thing, and at almost 500 pages, I’m fairly certain it was the longest non-fiction book I’d ever read to that point in my life.

I had heard McDowell speak at a Georgia Baptist Youth Evangelism Conference when I was 15, so I knew who he was. But A Ready Defense became a formative book for me, setting the trajectory of my early Christian life. I talked about apologetics with my friends and with the pastors whom I knew. As I began to teach and preach in local churches or other settings (mostly youth rallies and retreats), I frequently talked about apologetic topics and themes.

McDowell turned out to be a bit of a gateway drug for me. Throughout my time in college and at the start of my seminary years, I was shaped by a number of other apologetics books: C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity; Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith; Francis Schaeffer’s He is There and He is Not Silent; Craig Blomberg’s The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. I also read many apologetics books related to cults and alternative religions, intelligent design, and postmodernism.

(As an aside, especially for my current students who may be reading this: I never read any of these books for a course. Every semester, I tried to read at least one or two books not required for any of my classes. Most semesters, I managed to read four or five. I also read a lot during Christmas holidays and summer break. It can be done, my young friends. We always carve out time for things that we care about.)

Over a five or six year period, much of my personal reading outside the classroom was related to apologetics or closely related themes like the relationship between faith and culture. But by the time I finished seminary, apologetics had become less interesting to me. Over time, I became increasingly ambivalent about apologetics, and I remained so for a number of years.

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There were many reasons for this change. A major factor was a shift in my primary interests. My upper-level graduate courses and doctoral studies focused on systematic theology, church history, and missiology. I was very interested in the history and theology of my own ecclesial tradition, the Southern Baptist Convention. My first academic job was teaching church history at what is now Judson College at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Other than discussions of the history of apologetics in church history survey courses, the topic rarely came up in my classes.

Another reason was my concern that some popular apologists seemed to me to be mostly interested in winning debates or scoring points with their fans. I still stand by this concern. If anything, I actually think this dynamic has only gotten worse in the world of online influencers, sound bites, and the algorithmically fueled, dopamine-rewarded temptation to “own” our opponents.

I was also less convinced that apologetics is really all that helpful. I’d joke sarcastically that too many apologists were answering questions that most skeptics weren’t asking. Most of the skeptics and doubters I knew weren’t denying the existence of God or the resurrection, but instead were arguing that conservative Christians are bigots because of our traditional sexual ethics. This was even true during the height of the so-called New Atheism movement in the late-2000s.

A couple of other reasons for my shift away from apologetics were more theological in nature. First, I was convinced—and remain convinced—that the greatest need of every sinner isn’t to be convinced of her doubts but to be convicted of her sins. Don’t unbelievers need clear gospel explanations more than apologetic arguments? I was also frustrated that some popular apologists weren’t as solid in their overall theology as I wished they were. An apologist might have good arguments for the historicity of the resurrection but have a deficient view of justification or the atonement.

I’ll be transparent with you: much of my ambivalence toward apologetics was born out of my own ignorance and arrogance, even though I still think some of those concerns weren’t totally off-base. (Like the one about apologetic arrogance.) I’m simply sharing with you my thinking on this topic during the dozen or so years between about 2004 and 2016.

But then, gradually, there was another shift in my thinking back toward the value of apologetics. It happened in stages. First, I was really encouraged by how Tim Keller was making such a huge impact in New York City and among many thoughtful skeptics in the wider culture by integrating biblical theology, expository preaching, spiritual formation, and apologetics.

Second, after nine years of teaching church history at Southeastern Seminary, I became the dean of the School of Theology and Missions at Union University. I was at Union from 2015 to 2018, which coincided with a number of troubling trends in American culture.

• The US Supreme Court invented a constitutional right to homosexual “marriage” in Obergefell v. Hodges

• Bruce Jenner became the face of transgenderism when he changed his name to Caitlyn and appeared on a photo shoot for Vanity Fair magazine

• Donald Trump was elected President in 2016 with 81% of the white evangelical vote despite being personally irreligious and having a long track record of sexual infidelity

• The first significant studies of Gen Z were published, all of which showed that the rising generation was screen-addicted, obsessed with their individual identities, drawn to moral relativism, and ambivalent about organized religion

• Prominent African American intellectuals were arguing that Christianity is an oppressor religion

• The sex abuse crisis among evangelicals, including Southern Baptists, was contributing to greater skepticism in the wider culture

• More and more people in America were arguing that Christianity is morally abhorrent because of its retrograde sexual ethics, especially in the years after the Obergefell debacle

• Progressive Christianity—which is the current form of the older liberalism that J. Gresham Machen rightly argued over a century ago is a rival to authentic Christianity—began making a comeback during the Obama years and continued to gain purchase in some circles into the Trump years

The bottom line is that it was increasingly clear to me that Americans in general—including many professing Christians—had more doubts about Christianity than had been the case a decade earlier. While at Union, I implemented a minor in Apologetics to address some of these issues more intentionally in our curriculum.

In 2018, I became the chief academic officer at North Greenville. I found that my own speaking and writing ministry (especially at the more popular level) was focusing more on apologetics and cultural engagement than church history and theology. And even when I was speaking or writing on those topics, there was often apologetic application. I also began reading more widely on apologetics for the first time in many years. Hardly a month goes by today that I don’t read at least one book related to apologetics, in addition to shorter articles and podcasts.

Fast-forward to the fall of 2025. After prayerful consideration, I approached the leadership in the College of Christian Studies at NGU about reviving the Apologetics course. To my knowledge, it had not been taught in about a decade, and a growing number of students were asking for it. I was given the opportunity to teach the course, and as best I can tell it went really well. I know I thoroughly enjoyed the course, and my feedback from the students has been encouraging.

A decade ago, I would’ve never guessed I’d be teaching apologetics. Of course, a decade ago I didn’t envision that I’d be doing all that much teaching of any sort, since I was primarily an academic administrator! But I’m so thankful the Lord has renewed my own interest in this topic, and that in his kind providence that interest intersects with a need among our students. Lord willing, this semester won’t be the only time I teach this course, but it will become a regular part of my rotation of offerings.

What I’m Reading

W. David Buschart and Ryan Tafilowski, Worth Doing: Fallenness, Finitude, and Work in the Real World (IVP Academic, 2025). One of the topics I teach and speak on fairly regularly is the relationship between faith and work. So, I read a lot on this topic. Many of the books sound similar, and not a few of them seem especially suited to readers in upwardly mobile white collar professionals in capitalistic contexts rather than blue collar workers or those who labor in more oppressive economic contexts. Buschart and Tafilowski urge us to take into greater account human finitude, which is part of our creatureliness, as well the impact of the fall, in our discussions about the relationship between faith and work. This book is more theological than practical, but that is okay. The faith and work conversation could use a little more intentional theological reflection.

Matthew Z. Capps, Drawn by Beauty: Awe and Wonder in the Christian Life (B&H Academic, 2025). Though I’m not an expert by any means, Christian reflection on beauty and the arts has long been an interest of mine. But you know who is an expert on this topic? My good friend Matt Capps. He offers a theological mediation on beauty that is applied to spiritual formation. While this is a meaty topic, the book is not too scholarly for the average pastor or other ministry leader to appreciate. This is a great book that I’d highly recommend.

Nathaniel Blake, “The Pro-Life Movement Has an IVF Problem” (May 1, 2026). IVF is a procedure that many conservative Christian ethicists have raised concerns about because of, among other reasons, its incompatibility with a consistent commitment to life beginning at conception. For this reason, the Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution in 2024 “On the Ethical Realities of Reproductive Technologies and the Dignity of the Human Embryo.” Despite these ethical concerns, IVF remains popular among many Christians who struggle with infertility. It is also championed by many Republican politicians, including President Trump. This article is a great introduction to the debate over IVF.

What I’m Writing

This week, the Oxford Handbook of Baptist Studies (Oxford University Press, 2026) officially releases. I was honored to contribute the chapter on Landmarkism. While this book is definitely more of a resource for scholars, and will mostly be purchased by academic libraries rather than human beings, I trust my chapter will be especially helpful to scholars and graduate students interested in Landmarkism. I also expect some friendly critique from my Landmark friends who like to pick at me for being inconsistently Baptist according to their lights. (You know who you are.)

Cancer Update

Last week, Leah received her seventh chemotherapy treatment out of twelve. We’re now over halfway to the finish line. She felt pretty low for much of the week due to side effects, but by Friday she was feeling a bit better—just in time for a marathon day due to North Greenville’s spring graduation! Lord willing, her treatments will end in mid-July. Leah has posted a new update on her Substack. We’re so exceedingly grateful for the prayers, meals, financial gifts, and other acts of kindness throughout this ordeal. Thank you.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The familiar words above are taken from the First Amendment to the US Constitution. In recent years, the “First Freedom” enshrined in this amendment—religious liberty for all—has increasingly become a flashpoint in our societal debates. As a general rule, conservatives believe that too many progressives are promoting a coercive secularism that undermines religious freedom, especially for Christians and others who demur from LGBTQ+ ascendancy for religious reasons. For their part, progressives believe that too many conservatives are really just bigots who wish to impose their offensively retrograde morality upon everyone else. The clash of worldviews is real in these debates, with both sides believing they have the moral high ground.

Though my language in the paragraph above is mostly descriptive, I don’t feign neutrality in these debates. Progressive elites are working aggressively and tirelessly to remake American society in their image. When conservatives respond defensively, they are accused of being angry culture warriors. We are all witnesses to a widespread gaslighting campaign where those who are committed to revelation and reason are accused of being on the “wrong side of history” while those who are committed to deconstruction and decadence are actually on the wrong side of reality.

In recent years, when conservatives have argued all this is happening, progressive elites and their allies have responded with a combination of ignoring the facts, redefining the past, cancelling dissenters, or pretending like they are being oppressed or victimized or traumatized. The real threat is white evangelicalism, Christian nationalism, conservative Roman Catholics, African-Americans and hispanic who reject identity politics, women who reject or even just raise questions about contemporary feminism, anyone who rejects revisionist views of sex, and—especially—anyone who doesn’t detest Donald Trump.

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Late last week, the Department of Justice’s Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias released a report that documented the various ways the Biden Administration actively opposed socially conservative Christians. Progressives will dismiss the report because it was produced in response to one of President Trump’s executive orders, which by definition makes it untrustworthy at best and evil at worst. Conservatives—including those who have never voted for Trump nor identified with the MAGA movement—should respond that (1) all this is breathtakingly obvious who anyone who has been paying attention, and (2) much of it was happening during the Obama Administration as well. Resonating with the report should have nothing to do with how one feels about Donald Trump. As Ben Shapiro has famously said, facts don’t care about your feelings.

Here are is a list of the report’s key findings, all of which were already known to social conservatives and some of which have been in the news recently. I am citing them directly from pages i-vi of the report.

The Biden DOJ pursued aggressive prosecutions against non-violent, prolife, Christian demonstrators under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act but responded less aggressively to violent attacks against pregnancy resource centers.

The Biden Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated, monitored, tracked, and scrutinized traditional Catholics who had engaged in no criminal misconduct.

The Biden Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigated churches because of what their pastors preached and Christian organizations because they applied biblical teachings to daily life.

The Biden Department of Education (ED) focused its enforcement actions against Christian universities, levying enormous fines that dwarfed the penalties for Larry Nassar’s and Jerry Sandusky’s sexual assaults.

The Biden Health and Human Services (HHS) and DOJ scaled back ongoing enforcement efforts to vindicate conscience rights, withdrawing a notice of violation against the University of Vermont Medical Center after it coerced a Christian nurse into participating in an abortion despite her religious objections.

The Biden Administration was one of the loudest supporters of a congressional proposal that would eliminate religious protections for Christians and other religions that hold traditional social values.

Even though Congress rejected a similar attempt, the Biden Administration tried to mandate the adoption of its views on sexual orientation and gender ideology, with limited religious exceptions.

Because it viewed traditional Christian values as harmful to children with gender dysphoria or same-sex attraction, the Biden HHS took multiple steps to prevent Christian families from living out their religious beliefs.

The Biden Administration took a dismissive approach to conscience rights and religious accommodation rights on the issue of abortion.

The Biden Administration sidelined Christians in favor of their preferred constituencies.

The Biden Administration ignored human rights crises that affected Christians.

The Biden Administration denied Christians and faith-based organizations equal access to government services, benefits, and programs.

Biden agencies’ religious accommodation process often functionally penalized Christians who sought to exercise their religious rights.

The Biden Administration regulated and suppressed religious speech that it did not like and curtailed Christians’ ability to jointly worship and study the Bible

All of these key findings are further explained in the report. Yes, parts of the report are fairly nakedly partisan in praising the Trump Administration as the only hope for American Christianity. Those biases, which should surprise no one, do not change the facts: powerful progressives have worked hard to curtail the influence of socially conservative Christians in American society, have undermined religious liberty at home, and have been ambivalent about advocating for religious liberty abroad. This isn’t some new revelation, but is simply documenting in a more formal way what has been happening for years.

Religious liberty for all is a constitutional guarantee. The role of the government is to protect that liberty, not threaten it as a casualty of the culture wars. Christians in particular should continue to champion our First Freedom and support organizations that are advocating for religious freedom and educating the next generation in the importance of the First Amendment.

What I’ve Been Reading

Bobby Jamieson, Everything Is Never Enough: Ecclesiastes’ Surprising Path to Resilient Happiness (Waterbrook, 2025). I’ve heard a lot about this book, and have been wanting to read it for months. This week, I started working through it. I love the book of Ecclesiastes, and thus far I’ve really appreciated how Jamieson unfolds the major themes in the biblical text. It will be a required book for my Human Flourishing course this fall at North Greenville University.

Eddie LaRow, “The Church’s Gender Gap Problem,” First Things (April 30, 2026). Eddie is one of the most insightful thinkers I know who is writing about the relationship between faith and culture, especially among Generation Z. This article weighs in on the growing gender gap in the church, which is also a topic I’ve written on in the past. Eddie’s newsletter After Progress is also worth your time.

What I’ve Been Writing

The Center for Faith and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary republished my recent newsletter, “Why I’ve Changed My Mind about Cultural Christianity,” as an article for their website. It is an honor to serve as a Fellow for the Center for Faith and Culture.

As American readers will know, this year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. In honor of the anniversary, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission is hosting an event at the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting. The event will be on June 8, 2026 from 4:30-6:30pm EST. The location will be the Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando, which is adjacent to the Orlando Convention Center. Following an early dinner, I will moderate a panel discussion on the theme of the event. The panelists include the following leaders, all of whom are fellows for the ERLC Research Institute.

• Evan Lenow, President-elect of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission

• Dustin Bruce, Dean of Boyce College and Assistant Professor of Christian Theology and Church History at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

• Dan Darling, Director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

• RaShan Frost, Director of Research and Senior Fellow for Human Dignity at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission

• Adam Groza, President and Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Gateway Seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention

The event costs $25, and you can register online. I hope to see some of you there, as well as at the Annual Meeting itself.

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What I’m Writing

Earlier this week, I published a column for WORLD Opinions titled “Church-State Relations Rightly Understood.” I interacted with recent comments from Dan Patrick, chair of the presidentially appointed Religious Liberty Commission, who rejects the very notion of the separation of church and state as anti-Christian bigotry. I argue that, rightly understood, church-state separation has deeply Christian roots. You can read the article online at WORLD Opinions.

I also published a blog post for the International Alliance for Christian Education recommending an excellent new resource from the Center for Academic Faithfulness and Flourishing (CAFF). The resource, Paul Kaak’s white paper “Academic Faith Integration in Christian Higher Education,” can be downloaded at no cost from the CAFF website. It is an excellent introduction to the integration of faith and learning for those of us who teach in Christian colleges and universities.

What I’m Reading

Carl Trueman, The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity (Sentinel, 2026). I’ve been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to read Trueman’s latest book. He lectured publicly on this material during his recent visit to North Greenville, and I had the opportunity to discuss some of it with him in our conversations while he was with us. Trueman argues that it isn’t enough to say the modern world is characterized by the disenchantment of secularism. We are also plagued by the desecration of man because of our nihilistic rejection of God, which has resulted in a variety of destructive assumptions and actions toward his image-bearers. Here is a good rule of thumb: you should read everything Carl Trueman writes.

N. T. Wright, Spiritual and Religious: The Gospel in an Age of Paganism (Zondervan, 2025). Wright is often a mixed bag, and this book is no exception. He has the irritating tendency to act as if he is the the only scholar who really gets it, and he rarely has much nice to say about conservative evangelicals (especially in the United States) without clearing his throat and offering five caveats so readers know he isn’t one of those sorts of right-wing Christians. But if you can get past all that, he has a number of excellent insights in this book about the re-paganization of Western Culture. Secularism doesn’t replace religion. Rather, it tears down traditional religious authorities, especially Christianity and Judaism, clearing the ground for older, more barbaric religious inclinations to grow.

Podcast Opportunities

I enjoyed joining Dan Darling and RaShan Frost on the ERLC Podcast. RaShan interviewed me and Dan about Christian citizenship. Last year, Dan and I collaborated as lead authors of a church guide on this topic, titled “Dual Citizens: A Practical Guide to Christian Citizenship and Civic Engagement.” This is the topic the three of us and others will discuss further at the ERLC event at the SBC Annual Meeting.

I also had a blast rejoining Benjamin Quinn, Dan Darling (of course), and Kristen Kellen for the latest headlines episode for the Christian and Culture Podcast. I love this (nearly) monthly opportunity, which has been a bit more sporadic for me this spring because of Leah’s health and the changes we’ve needed to make to our schedules. We talked about Artemis II, Chiles v. Salazar, and how to respond when ministry leaders fall into public moral scandal.

I’ve been mulling over this particular essay for a long time. At least, I’ve been pondering the major theme. I’ve had lots of discussions with close friends and conversation partners about this topic. Some of them are pastors. Some of them are ethicists. Some of them are working in the world of public policy. Some of them are professors in Christian universities and seminaries. Many of them are fellow Baptists, but some of them are Presbyterians. All of them have helped me refine my thinking through a combination of their good questions, thoughtful pushback, and encouraging affirmations.

They say confession is good for the soul. Well, I have a confession to make. Over the past three years or so, I’ve gradually changed my mind about “cultural Christianity.” For most of my adult life, I’ve been opposed, in principle, to the very notion of cultural Christianity. Borderline allergic to it, in fact. When some of my friends were celebrating the collapse of “cultural Christianity” in the late-2000s and early 2010s, I was right there with them. Good riddance. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

To be clear, I’ve never been a theological or political progressive. My objections to cultural Christianity were never about denying the pervasive influence of the Judeo-Christian worldview on American culture. Nor were my concerns due to any sympathy for the post-Christian secularism and rejuvenated neo-paganism that has become increasingly ascendant in our society since the 1960s. As a historian, I’ve always readily acknowledged the seminal role of Christian ways of reasoning on Western Civilization in general and American culture in general.

Why this aversion to cultural Christianity? Well, as a convictional Baptist I’ve been informed by my commitments to a regenerate church and a free church in a free state. I was concerned that cultural Christianity is incompatible with the first commitment and is at best ambivalent with the latter principle. My motivations were more missional than historical or political, more evangelistic than ethical. I thought “cultural Christianity” is more about the first word in that phrase than the latter, at least in the New Testament understanding of what it means to be a Christian.

So, what happened? Have I abandoned my Baptist bona fides? To quote the Apostle Paul, by no means! I still hold to both those aforementioned Baptist priorities, along with all the rest of them, too. I’m not only just as Baptist as I’ve always been, but I think every Christian ought to be a Baptist! (So if you’re reading this and you need to be dunked like they did it in the Bible, you know where to find me.)

No, I haven’t redefined my understanding of Baptist identity. Rather, I’ve adjusted my perception of cultural Christianity. Over time, I’ve come to believe that my concerns were rooted in a basic category error. What I’ve really been opposed to all this time is nominal Christianity, not cultural Christianity. And while the former can certainly be an unintended negative result of the latter, that doesn’t mean the latter is, by definition, a bad thing.

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As I was preparing to write this reflection, I came across James Wood’s recent article in First Things titled “In Defense of Cultural Christianity.” I don’t really know James personally, though we’ve interacted a little bit as fellow contributors to WORLD Opinions. I have a ton of respect for him, even though I’m certain there are points where we don’t fully agree. More on that below. But in his First Thing piece, he is critiquing the views I long held to, and he offers many helpful insights on this topic that resonate with the more recent shifts in my thinking. Here are some relevant quotes from James’s article.

We should first define our terms. “Cultural Christianity” refers either to the relationship of “cultural Christians” to the Christian faith, or to the broader social phenomenon of a “Christian culture.”

A “Christian culture” is one in which public institutions and the balance of social power encourage Christian behavior and promote Christian ideas of the true, good, and beautiful.

“Cultural Christians” are those who appreciate the civilizational benefits of Christianity without embracing faith. Cultural Christians prize Christian culture. They want the civilizational fruit without the religious root. Does this make them hypocrites?

The charge of hypocrisy commonly directed at cultural Christianity is a red herring. Its framing discounts the possibility that many “cultural Christians” are on the path to genuine faith. No responsible believer would accuse a spiritual seeker of hypocrisy for attending his church before ­converting.

James goes on to argue that cultural Christianity doesn’t automatically lead to nominal Christianity, but often paves the way for authentic Christianity—regenerated individuals who have a covenant relationship with Jesus Christ by grace, through faith. He rightly notes that cultural Christianity can function as a “praeparatio evangelica, a process of socialization that disposes them favorably toward the gospel. This dynamic does not guarantee conversion, but it makes genuine faith more likely.”

In other words, cultural Christianity often informs the plausibility structures of unbelievers, which can in turn help them see Christianity as more believable. Of course, it takes a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit to bring eternal life to a dead heart. But the Holy Spirit does his saving work through a variety of human means, including the cultures we humans create. Cultural Christianity often provides unbelievers with categories, assumptions, and instincts that can help them understand the truth of Christianity and their own need to turn from their sin and trust Jesus alone as their King and Savior.

To be clear, the Holy Spirit doesn’t “need” cultural Christianity to change lives. The gospel is both the power to save and public truth in every cultural context. But this is a conversation about American culture, not some other culture. And in the United States of America, our cultural roots are deeply Christian. This doesn’t mean that all, or even most citizens throughout our history have been regenerate. Nor does it mean that even those citizens who were regenerate have always acted in virtuous ways that glorify God and advance authentic human flourishing. What it does mean is that most Americans, for most of American history, until relatively recently, have been far more significantly formed by Christianity than they may have even realized, let alone acknowledged. The reason? Cultural Christianity.

Now as a Baptist, I’m still very opposed to nominal Christianity, which is rooted in phony faith and charactered by religious hypocrisy, even if the nominal Christian doesn’t realize it. But I don’t think the best way to combat nominal Christianity is to reject the value of cultural Christianity. Instead, I want to propose a four-fold strategy for responding to nominal Christianity.

First, believing parents (and grandparents) need to be diligent to pass the faith on to the next generation by raising children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. A godly home is ground zero for disciple-making. This includes teaching young people the difference between a cultural Christianity that is a blessing to a nation and a nominal faith that leads to the eternal damnation of individuals.

Second, churches need to be faithful in preaching biblical truth with clarity, forming disciples with intentionality, faithfully observing baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and sacrificially serving the needs of their members and their wider communities. Churches should cultivate a regenerate membership through the clear proclamation of the gospel and its implications, as well as the practice of redemptive church discipline. Healthy churches offer a corporate apologetic for the truth of the faith.

Third, we need to be intentional and urgent in our evangelistic witness to the spiritually lost, including those who claim to be Christians but are believers in name only. We shouldn’t assume someone is born-again because he claims the Christian label, is socially conservative, was raised in a church, or even is currently a member of a church. Nominal Christians may make great neighbors, but they are also a mission field.

Finally, we need to pray for spiritual awakening. This is one area where I definitely differ from James and his fine article. In much the same way that I was suspicious of cultural Christianity because I confused it with nominal Christianity, I’m not sure he doesn’t make the same mistake by confusing revival with revivalism. As a conservative evangelical, I long for widespread revival that will not only result in the salvation of unbelievers, but also contribute to national renewal.

In sum, I’ve come to believe that the obvious good of cultural Christianity far outweighs the potential shortcomings. It is a good thing that so many of our laws, customs, and values have been shaped by Christianity. Even our historic commitment to the separation of church and state and religious liberty for all has deep roots in the Christian tradition, not modern secularism. (I hope to publish an essay on that topic elsewhere next week.) The fact is America is in the sorry shape it is largely, if not exclusively, because we have rejected our culturally Christian heritage. Our cultural decline isn’t due to too much influence from Christianity, but too much influence from progressive fads that are rooted in secular delusions and pagan decadence.

I long to see the influence of Christianity spread across our land, for the sake of the health of our nation and the flourishing of her citizens. In other words, I desire to see a rejuvenated cultural Christianity that advances the common good. I also want more individual believers and local churches to be intentional in making a clear distinction between cultural Christianity and regenerate faith, lest people be deceived into thinking nominal Christianity is the real thing. As Richard Land so eloquently argues, American may have never been a Christian nation in the fullest sense of that term, but America has always been at her best when she has been a nation of Christians.

What I’m Reading

Peter Harrison, Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age (Cambridge University Press, 2024). I’ve wanted to read this book for some time, and I recently started working through it. Harrison argues that the hard distinction between “natural” and “supernatural” that is taken for granted in the modern world is, well, modern. It is the invention of Enlightenment skeptics, in service to a secularist understanding of the world. Harrison also talks about a subtle-but-significant redefinition of faith that took place at the same time. I expect I’ll have much more to say about this book once I finish it.

Glen Scrivener, The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality (Good Book Co., 2022). I first read Scrivener’s book when it was published, but I re-read it because I assigned it for my Apologetics course at North Greenville. I think it is a really helpful work that draws on the insights of authors like Tom Holland and Joseph Henrich to offer a cultural apologetic for Christianity in Western contexts. Highly recommended.

Carl F. H. Henry, Twilight of a Great Civilization: The Drift Toward Neo-Paganism (Crossway, 1988). I’ve mentioned in past newsletters that I’m reading through Henry’s shorter writings on culture from the 1970s and 1980s. Like the other works, this one is an anthology. I’d previously read some of the chapters, but have now gone back and read the whole thing. Henry understood a generation ago what we experience everyday: secularist worldview assumptions and barbaric neo-pagan values feed off of each other, both as a cause and a consequence of a decline in cultural Christianity.

What I’m Writing

I’m preparing a plenary address for the annual International Alliance for Christian Education Faculty Development Conference. My topic is “Faith and Learning Revisited.” I’m very committed to the integration of faith and learning, and I hope to make a case for that model of Christian teaching and scholarship to those attending the conference. I’m also working on a project related to faith and learning, but I’ll say more about that in the coming months.

I’m also working on a plenary address for an upcoming conference at Gateway Seminary on “Print and Piety: The ‘Eminent Usefulness’ of Andrew Fuller’s Legacy.” My paper is titled “Andrew Fuller’s Critique of Sandemanianism Primitivism.” I serve as one of the series editors of the critical edition of the Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, and I personally edited the volume on Fuller’s classic work Strictures on Sandemanianism. In my conference paper, I will look at how Fuller not only criticized the Sandemanian view of faith (which focused on intellectual assent and downplayed repentance), but he also rejected numerous other practices that were associated with Sandemanianism. The edited conference proceedings will be published by Brill Academic.

Religious freedom for all has been a hallmark of the Baptist tradition since its origins in the early seventeenth century. In 1612, Thomas Helwys established the first Baptist church on English soil in the village of Spitalfields, which at the time was just outside London. That same year, Helwys wrote “A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity,” dedicated to King James I, which was the first book-length defense of full religious liberty written in the English language.

In 1925, Southern Baptists adopted the first edition of the Baptist Faith & Message. The confession included an article on religious liberty that has remained unedited across all three editions of the statement, including the current Baptist Faith & Message (2000).

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and He has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are contrary to His Word or not contained in it. Church and state should be separate. The state owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends. In providing for such freedom no ecclesiastical group or denomination should be favored by the state more than others. Civil government being ordained of God, it is the duty of Christians to render loyal obedience thereto in all things not contrary to the revealed will of God. The church should not resort to the civil power to carry on its work. The gospel of Christ contemplates spiritual means alone for the pursuit of its ends. The state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind. The state has no right to impose taxes for the support of any form of religion. A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal, and this implies the right of free and unhindered access to God on the part of all men, and the right to form and propagate opinions in the sphere of religion without interference by the civil power.

This article makes a number of claims about the nature of religious freedom and its implications.

• We are ultimately accountable to God alone for our beliefs about spiritual or religious matters, and such beliefs should never be coerced

• All people have a right to free and unhindered access to God

• All people have the right to form and share their opinions about religious matters

• The state has no right to interfere in matters of religion or to penalize individuals solely for their religious opinions

• In some sense church and state should be formally separate

• The Christian ideal in a fallen world is religious freedom for all, in nations that are characterized by rightly ordered freedoms

• The state’s responsibility is to protect religious freedom and avoid favoritism toward any particular religious group

• The state has no right to collect taxes to be distributed to a favored religion, as happens in nations with formal religious establishments

• God has ordained civil government, and we should obey earthly authorities except when those authorities contradict God’s revealed will in the Scriptures

• The church should not rely upon the state to advance the mission of the church

There is certainly room for debate on the best way to apply some of these affirmations. However, the larger principle is clear: Southern Baptists are committed to religious liberty for all people as the best temporal arrangement to maximize human flourishing and facilitate the free and unhindered spread of the gospel.

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Southern Baptists have not only confessed our belief in religious freedom, but we also have a long track record of reaffirming and strategically applying our belief through resolutions. Let me offer some examples from recent years.

In 2024, Southern Baptists adopted a resolution On Defending Religious Liberty. The full text of the resolution is below.

WHEREAS, The Lord Jesus Christ drew a clear distinction between his church and the governments of this world (Matthew 22:15-22) and reserved the judgment between believers and unbelievers for himself alone (Matthew 13:36-43); the Apostle Paul urged Timothy to pray for religious liberty (1 Timothy 2:1-5) and demonstrated that religious belief is subject to personal persuasion (Acts 17:22-31); and the Apostle John revealed “each one” will be judged “according to their works” (Revelation 20:12-13); and

WHEREAS, Baptists in America have consistently championed Constitutional protections against the establishment of state religion and for the free exercise of religion, believing the importance of religious liberty necessarily made it the “first freedom” to be articulated in the Bill of Rights; and

WHEREAS, Messengers to the meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention, from its inception in 1845, have adopted numerous resolutions advocating religious liberty and recognized that true faith cannot be legislated, coerced, or inherited; and

WHEREAS, When adopting the Baptist Faith and Message in 1925, Southern Baptists saw a need to emphasize religious liberty by adding Article XVIII on “Religious Liberty” (subsequently Article XVII in the 1963 and 2000 editions), thereby affirming the lordship of Christ, the separation of church and state, that “a free church in a free state is the Christian ideal,” and that “the state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind”; and

WHEREAS, Through nature and conscience, others have come to recognize that our natural rights and responsibilities derive from our Creator, an open truth that the founders of the American nation also explicitly recognized; and

WHEREAS, Baptists have historically affirmed that nothing in the public square is truly neutral and have promoted active and holistic participation in society which should reflect biblical values as outlined in Article XV of the Baptist Faith and Message, “The Christian and the Social Order”; and

WHEREAS, Our Christian witness is better preserved by the separation of church and state, and Scripture and history have shown that true revival comes through the Spirit of God by means of fervent prayer, gospel evangelism, and biblical discipleship; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, June 11-12, 2024, boldly affirm that God has endowed every human with religious liberty, for “God alone is Lord of the conscience” (Article XVII); and that “Civil government being ordained of God, it is the duty of Christians to render loyal obedience thereto in all things not contrary to the revealed will of God” (Article XVII); and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage and support robust Christian engagement in the public square, including individual Christians who pursue elected or appointed office in order to influence government by living out their Christian worldview while advocating Christian morals with respect for the consciences of all people; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we reaffirm the 2023 resolution “On Christ’s Sole Lordship over Every Human Conscience” in its declaration that “we decry any effort which seeks to supplant the sole lordship of Christ over consciences through confusing the separate covenants and responsibilities of the church and the state”; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we reaffirm Article XVII of the Baptist Faith and Message, which states that “the gospel of Christ contemplates spiritual means alone for the pursuit of its ends” and “the state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind,” along with numerous Southern Baptist resolutions throughout our history which reject government restriction of religious opinion and limit government infringement of religious expression; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we oppose any effort to establish a state religion of any nation, including the United States of America; that we refute the idea that God has commanded any state to establish any religion or any denomination; and we reject any government coercion or enforcement of religious belief, including blasphemy laws; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we oppose any effort to use the people and the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention to establish Christianity as the state religion of the United States of America; and be it finally

RESOLVED, That we object to any suggestion that our historic, God-given distinctive of religious liberty should be abandoned in favor of a state-mandated religion.

In 2025, we made clear that religious liberty is important both in the United States and abroad with a resolution On Advocating for International Religious Freedom. Again the full text is below.

WHEREAS, Scripture communicates that every human being is created in the image of God and has inherent value and dignity as determined by our Creator (Genesis 1:26-27, 2:7, 9:6); and

WHEREAS, Scripture tells us that there is one mediator between God and man, and that mediator is not the civil government but Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5); and

WHEREAS, God has made humans moral agents who are free to come to him by faith without coercion. For this reason, Southern Baptists advocate for religious freedom, a vital component to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20); and

WHEREAS, Advocating for religious liberty is a hallmark of Southern Baptist belief and practice and applies equally to all peoples, in all places, at all times, with our current confession stating that “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and He has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are contrary to His Word or not contained in it” (Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Article XVII); and

WHEREAS, Many of our brothers and sisters around the world live in fear for their lives and livelihood as a result of professing Christ and practicing their faith in nations which are led by leaders who deny religious liberty and freedom of worship, and these brothers and sisters experience persecution for their religious convictions at the hands of the governments and ruling authorities of their homelands; and

WHEREAS, Christians lament the plight of our brothers and sisters globally who experience religious persecution, because Scripture commands us to “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15) and that “if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26); now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas, June 10-11, 2025, affirm that God has endowed every human being with the freedom of conscience and with the corresponding freedom to practice their religious convictions without undue interference from civil power (Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Article XVII); and be it further

RESOLVED, We affirm that religious freedom is a human right given by God for all humanity to steward, and aids our work in fulfilling the Great Commission; and be it further

RESOLVED, We express support and solidarity with our brothers and sisters experiencing persecution worldwide; and be it further

RESOLVED, We urge the United States government to continue its efforts to advance religious freedom globally through its congressional and diplomatic bodies, in accordance with relevant statutes, including the International Religious Freedom Act and the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act; and be it further

RESOLVED, We implore Southern Baptist pastors, churches, state conventions, and entities to, whenever possible and appropriate, speak up for our brothers and sisters being persecuted at the hands of wicked governments; and be it finally RESOLVED, We likewise implore Southern Baptist pastors, churches, state conventions, and entities, in keeping with our confession to “work with all men of good will” (Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Article XV), to, whenever possible and appropriate, work with the United States government and other groups to advance religious freedom among their respective spheres of influence.

While these two resolutions are more programmatic, many other resolutions have addressed threats to religious freedom in specific foreign nations or due to specific cultural issues in the United States. Examples include a 2019 resolution On Religious Persecution And Human Rights Violations In North Korea And China, a 2021 resolution On the Equality Act, and a 2022 resolution On Religious Liberty, Forced Conversion, and the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report.

The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission provides Southern Baptists (and other evangelicals) with many resources related to religious freedom, many of which are available online at the ERLC website. In the past six weeks, ERLC has published an explainer for the Chiles v. Salazar decision and shared a letter where ERLC “joined over 200 organizations and individuals in signing an International Religious Freedom (IRF) Roundtable letter urging the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee leadership to support the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Reauthorization Act of 2025. This letter urges top lawmakers to prioritize USCIRF reauthorization by advancing this bill out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and setting the stage for a future House floor vote.”

It is my great joy to serve as Senior Fellow for Religious Liberty at ERLC. In that role, which is part of the ERLC Research Institute, I create resources that help Southern Baptists think about religious freedom and closely related topics. For example, I authored an essay on “Southern Baptists and Religious Liberty” that provides an overview of the topic. I have also recorded a short introductory video on the topic, and teamed up with my good friend Dan Darling as a lead author of the church guide “Dual Citizens: A Practical Guide to Christian Citizenship and Civic Engagement.” From time to time, I also speak at events about religious liberty, comment on recent events to the press, and write on the topic for various online outlets (including this newsletter).

There is no doubt religious liberty can be complicated. Some progressives want to curtail it, often to impose unbiblical views of gender and sexuality on social conservatives. Some Muslims want to exploit it so that they can advance their worldview in communities where they comprise a sizable part of the population. Some conservatives want to redefine it or even reject it in service to various forms of religious establishment or quasi-establishment. These threats are real, but Southern Baptists should remain resolutely committed to the “first freedom” guaranteed in the First Amendment to the US Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” After all, we were arguing for this principle long before America’s Founding Fathers came around to the idea of religious liberty for all people.

What I’ve Been Writing

Speaking of religious freedom, I have a new column at WORLD Opinions today on “Remembering the Forgotten Believers of Israel.” I write about a recent incident where state authorities closed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (among other houses of worship) for Palm Sunday. The reason was because of the threat of violence due to the war with Iran. This move, though well-intentioned, resulted in considerable backlash, including from Mike Huckabee, the US Ambassador to Israel. Fortunately, Israeli officials backed off this overt violation of religious freedom. My takeaway from the incident: “We must support Israel’s right to exist and defend herself while also advocating for the religious freedom of religious minorities in Israel.” I’d encourage you to read the column.

What I’ve Been Reading

Andrew Walker, Faithful Reason: Natural Law Ethics for God’s Glory and Our Good (B&H Academic, 2024). I’ve owned this book since it was published, but I’m just now getting around to reading it. I already know what Andrew believes from our various conversations about natural law, as well as his shorter writings on the topic. I also already know I agree with his belief that Baptists and other Protestants need to recover a Christ-centered commitment to the natural law tradition. But I still wanted to read the book. So, I am.

Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution (Polity, 2022). Perry is a liberal feminist who has awaken to the truth that the sexual revolution has had many terrible effects, especially for women. She is no Christian, nor is she a conservative. Her prescriptions are often wrongheaded, but her diagnosis is mostly on point. This is a reminder that even non-Christians are capable of discerning basic moral reality on the basis of natural law—which is a key point Andrew Walker makes in the aforementioned book.

Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (1976; reprint, Crossway, 2022). I have never read this classic work from Schaeffer, though I have wanted to for years. This year is the 50th anniversary of the book, so I reckon now is as good a time as any to read it.

Cancer Update

Leah has had a good week. We are so thankful that her white blood count numbers had improved enough that she could resume her chemotherapy. She also received some test results indicating the chemo is working. Praise the Lord! The side effects were a doozy earlier in the week, but she is doing well and is in great spirits. You can read more about all this on Leah’s Substack.

Today is Good Friday for Christians in the West. Millions of believers around the world will commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. My own church will hold a Good Friday service, which will include a celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Even though that service will meet during the lunch hour, hundreds of our members, as well as many visitors, will make time to participate.

It may seem a strange thing to be marking the death of a religious leader almost two millennia after his death, no matter how praiseworthy his life. But there is good reason for Good Friday. Jesus’s life ended on a hillside outside the walls of Jerusalem, where he was crucified as a result of calculated collusion between Roman authorities and Jewish officials. But that was not the end of Jesus’s story, nor the stories of his followers, whether then or now.

Early Sunday morning, Jesus’s dead brain waves began to fire anew. His stone-cold heart began to beat again. His closed eyes opened, and his stiff limbs began to move. The one who was dead and buried was now once again alive. This was no resuscitation of someone who briefly died, like happens from time to time. This was the full-blown resurrection of a man who had been dead for parts of three days, whose body had been prepared for a proper Jewish burial, and then entombed according to custom. Jesus was “dead as a doornail,” as the old saying goes. But unlike any and every person who has briefly tasted death and then revived, only to eventually die again at some future date, Jesus’s resurrection has no expiration date. It is everlasting, fully embodied, life—both the first instance and the prime cause of the same everlasting life offered to all those who believe in him by grace, through faith.

Good Friday is only “good” because of the miracle of Easter Sunday.

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The modern hymn “Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery” paints a wonderful picture of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Come, behold the wondrous mystery
Christ, the Lord upon the tree
In the stead of ruined sinners
Hangs the lamb in victory
See the price of our redemption
See the Father’s plan unfold
Bringing many sons to glory
Grace unmeasured, love untold

Come, behold the wondrous mystery
Slain by death, the God of life
But no grave could ever restrain Him
Praise the Lord, He is alive

What a foretaste of deliverance
How unwavering our hope
Christ in power resurrected
As we will be when He comes

Carl Henry on the Political Implications of Easter

Carl Henry strongly believed these precious gospel truths. Regular readers will know that I have an ongoing scholarly interest in Henry, who was arguably the most significant American evangelical theologian during the latter half of the twentieth century. In 1986, Henry published a short collection of essays titled Christian Countermoves in a Decadent Culture. Almost all the essays originated as speeches, sermons, or commencement addresses Henry had delivered. As best as I can tell, only one of the essays was written specifically for the book. The title of that essay is “The Modern Importance of the Resurrection.”

Henry’s essay is a robust reflection on the meaning of the resurrection. He focuses on Jesus’s various words to his followers in Matthew 28, all of which are spoken after the resurrection. He reflects on the love of Christ for sinners, and he writes about the redemptive implications of Jesus’s death and resurrection, both for individuals and the entire created order. Henry combines biblical exposition, theological reflection, cultural analysis, and apologetic insights. It is a great essay, though unfortunately it isn’t available anywhere online.

My favorite passage in the essay is about the political implications of Jesus’s resurrection.

Another point that follows from Christ’s resurrection bears on political realities, on the rulers of the nations. The last time you read of Pontius Pilate in the New Testament, two prominent Christians are begging the pagan Roman governor for the body of Jesus. We read about it in John’s Gospel: “Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. aking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs.” (John 19:38-40). But nobody has to ask for the body of Jesus today. The next time world rulers and kings see the body of Jesus will be on that coming judgment day when all will bow the knee to the King of kings and Lord of lords. Khomeini will be there, and Mao Tse-Tsung, and Adolph Hitler, and Gorbachev, and Botha, and Shamir, and Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan, too. The Risen Jesus will be the judge of all men and nations.

Henry adds a final thought about how the resurrection anticipates the Second Coming near the conclusion of his essay.

Finally, the visible resurrection of Jesus is the pledge that Jesus will return personally and visibly to consummate his kingdom in triumphant power and glory…. We shall behold him—either as the Judge before whom mankind cowers, or as the Redeemer whose return the people of God cherish.

Henry wrote these words forty years ago. All the named earthly rulers have passed from the scene, most recently Mikhail Gorbachev, who died in 2022. But we could add many more names to the list today, including Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu and Emmanuel Marcon and Kim Jong Un and Giorgia Meloni and Volodymyr Zelensky and Viktor Orbán and Keir Starmer and Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping and Friedrich Merz and . . . the list could go on. One day, each of them will bow the knee to King Jesus, whether by grace through faith in him alone, or in response to that great and terrible reality check that awaits all unbelievers at the last day (Philippians 2:9-11). This is the destiny of all men, guaranteed by the triumphant resurrection life of Easter over the sacrificial and substitutionary death of Good Friday.

What I’m Reading

Carl F. H. Henry, Christian Countermoves in a Decadent Culture (Multnomah, 1984). You already knew about this one. I just finished the book this morning. I have engaged with it in the past in my research, but had not previously read it from start to finish. This is one of four collections of Henry’s shorter writings published between 1984 and 1994. I’ve now read three of them in their entirety, and will begin the final one in a few days.

J. Budziszewski, Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy (Creed & Culture, 2026). My good friend John Basie recommended this one to me. I have long appreciated Budziszewski’s work on politics, natural law, and higher education. In his most recent book, he takes aim at the disordered thinking that passes for normal in our post-Christian society. His list of 30 commonly accepted “lunacies” is both refreshing and, at times, convicting.

Adam Higginbotham, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space (Simon & Schuster, 2024). I love all things NASA, and I enjoy both books and documentaries on the topic. I’m beyond excited about the Artemis II mission to the moon. Leah read this book when it first came out, but I have held off until now. One of my earliest clear memories is of the Challenger disaster. I was in first grade at the time. My whole class followed the lead-up to the launch closely for weeks because a school teacher named Christa McAuliffe was part of the astronaut crew. To this day, when I see footage of the Challenger explosion, it makes me emotional. I’ve really enjoyed the book so far—I’m about 100 pages in—but I expect it will mess with me a bit when I get closer to the disaster itself.

Cancer Update

Some of you may know that for the past two weeks, Leah has had to postpone her next chemo treatment. She has written about this for her own newsletter. Leah’s white blood cell and neutrophil counts have been too low to move forward. She is waiting for those numbers to go back up, which should happen naturally. However, she also received two injections this week that will hopefully help jumpstart that natural process. For the time being, she feels fine, but she is also significantly immunocompromised. She has stayed close to the house these past couple weeks and avoided crowds when she has needed to venture out.

On Sunday, Leah will miss attending our church’s Easter services in person, which will be the first time she has ever been out for an Easter Sunday. But she will be able to watch the services from home on the internet. We don’t believe watching an online service is the same thing as attending a worship service. Corporate worship is intended to be embodied, not virtual. However, we’re also thankful for the technology that allows a form of participation from home, and we are mindful that for many Christians this less-than-ideal option is regularly the best option for them because of sickness, frailty, or other physical ailments.

Please pray that Leah doesn’t get sick. Also, please pray that her chemo treatments can resume again on Monday. Finally, please that the Lord would fully heal Leah of her colon cancer. Thanks to everyone who has felt led to come alongside us in various ways. We are so very grateful.

Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Chiles v. Salazar that a Colorado law banning licensed counselors from discussing certain types of counseling with minors is unconstitutional. The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission has published a helpful explainer about the ruling and its implications.

According to the New York Times, the statute, adopted in 2019, prohibits “any practice or treatment” that attempts to change a minor’s “gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” Proponents of the law want to ban so-called conversion therapy, a blanket term used by LGBTQ+ activists and other progressives to criticize any form of counseling that believes same-sex attraction is contrary to God’s design for human sexuality. The American Psychological Association, known for its leftwing worldview assumptions, strongly opposes the idea that someone’s sexual orientation can change.

Christianity Today provides some additional helpful background to this case:

More than a decade ago, states began passing laws targeting hypnosis, shock therapy, and other controversial practices to alter same-sex attraction. Some of these legislative moves also included efforts to uphold traditional Christian perspectives on gender and sexuality. While clergy are exempt from bans in most cases, counselors who seek state licensure are not.

According to the religious freedom law firm First Liberty Institute, the Colorado ban “barred professional counselors like Petitioner Kaley Chiles from engaging in religiously-based talk therapy with her clients if she does not provide the ‘gender affirming’ perspective the state requires.”

In other words, the state of Colorado, which has a terrible track record in recent years when it comes to religious freedom, mandated that licensed counselors at least tacitly affirm what Christians believe to be aberrant views of sexuality and refrain from encouraging clients to desire any sort of change in their sexual desires. The statute restricted conservative Christian counselors from doing their work in a manner consistent with their religious convictions.

Again, from First Liberty:

“Americans should never have their professional speech censored simply because the government disfavors that speech,” said Kelly Shackelford, President, CEO, and Chief Counsel for First Liberty Institute. “In this case, the Supreme Court sent a clear message to state governments that the Constitution actually means what it says when it protects the free speech of its citizens. This is a great victory for religious liberty.”

Chiles was represented by attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom, another key non-profit firm that specializes in religious liberty. In a press release about the ruling, ADF offered some additional helpful commentary.

On the issue of gender identity, the law only prohibits counseling conversations in one direction. It allows conversations that push young people toward a gender identity different from their sex but prohibits conversations that help them grow comfortable with their body and realign their identity with their sex when they desire to do that. The law also threatens severe penalties, including thousands of dollars in fines, suspension from practice, and even revocation of the counselor’s license. As ADF attorneys point out, this one-sided censorship comes amidst a growing national mental-health crisis and prevents many Colorado children from obtaining the counseling that they desire—and that is likely to help them. Roughly 90% of children who experience gender dysphoria before puberty will regain comfort with their sex if not pushed toward harmful drugs and procedures.

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I’m especially heartened that the decision was 8-1. All of the conservative justices joined the majority, which is always encouraging. But so did progressive justices Elana Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, who are far less reliable when it comes to matters of religious liberty. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, another progressive, offered the only dissent. (And it was a doozy.) Justice Neil Gorsuch penned the majority opinion. Note the key passage below.

Colorado may regard its policy as essential to public health and safety. Certainly, censorious governments throughout history have believed the same. But the First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country. It reflects instead a judgment that every American possesses an inalienable right to think and speak freely, and a faith in the free marketplace of ideas as the best means for discovering truth. However well-intentioned, any law that suppresses speech based on viewpoint represents an “egregious” assault on both of those commitments.

So why does all this really matter? Here is what the ERLC says, which ought to resonate especially with my fellow Southern Baptists and other social conservatives.

Southern Baptists affirm biblical truth, confirmed by biological reality, that God created us male and female by his good design. We denounce efforts, especially toward minors, that attempt to change one’s identity to something other than who God has created us to be. As the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 states, “He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. The gift of gender is thus part of the goodness of God’s creation.”

Our culture’s drift into acceptance of gender ideology victimizes the children who have been experimented upon by medical professionals under the guise of healthcare. It is vitally important that the state not coerce the speech of counselors who affirm biblical truth and force them to violate their deeply held religious convictions.

The Chiles decision is a major victory for religious freedom. As ADF notes in their press release, “The Supreme Court’s ruling in Chiles v. Salazar will help protect counselors from similar laws in more than 20 states and over 100 localities across the country, freeing them to help struggling youth seeking professional guidance.”

I have not been writing as much for popular outlets since Leah’s cancer diagnosis in December 2025. Between family life and a heavy teaching load, some things just needed to be tabled. But earlier this week, I wrote my first column for WORLD Opinions in three months. Titled “The Moral Whirlpool of Sports Betting,” the column engages with two recent articles published in mainstream outlets that demonstrate the awful effects of ubiquitous, legalized gambling on American society. Here are a couple quotes from the column.

Today, sports gambling is legal in 39 states and the District of Columbia. A fan can’t watch televised sports without being bombarded by commercials for sports betting apps and odds scrolling across the ticker at the bottom of the screen. In some cases, fans can’t watch sports at all without subscribing to a streaming service that is owned by a gambling company. The sports betting revolution has proven immensely profitable for teams, leagues, and even athletes, all of whom benefit from the revenue. But at what cost socially?

Legalized sports betting and other similar forms of gambling represent a moral whirlpool whose ripples continue to expand. How many lives will be shipwrecked before our nation realizes that some so-called freedoms are really just well-disguised pathways to slavery?

I want to encourage you to read the whole column at WORLD Opinions. I also wrote about this topic in a previous column for WORLD, focusing specifically on the unwise partnerships between major universities and sports betting companies.

Let me be crystal clear: widespread, accessible, legal gambling on sports (or anything else) is a grave social evil that is wrecking lives and further degrading the moral fabric of our society. The sports betting industrial complex should be resisted, restrained, and, ideally, undone completely. The status quo is incompatible with authentic human flourishing.

I’m grateful that my denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, is on the record on this important issue. At last summer’s annual meeting in Dallas, messengers adopted a resolution “On the Harmful and Predatory Nature of Sports Betting.” I have reproduced the entire resolution below.

WHEREAS, The Southern Baptist Convention has a long-standing history of opposing gambling in its various forms and recognizes its destructive potential; and

WHEREAS, An increasing majority of states are now promoting and regulating sports betting since the 2018 Supreme Court decision in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association allowed states to legalize the practice, contributing to it becoming one of the fastest-growing enterprises in the world; and

WHEREAS, Sports betting continues to advance and integrate itself into modern athletics at both the professional and collegiate levels; and

WHEREAS, The rapid expansion of legalized sports betting presents significant spiritual, moral, ethical, and societal concerns; and

WHEREAS, The normalization of sports betting commodifies participants, risks compromising the integrity of athletic competition, and jeopardizes the safety of competitors; and

WHEREAS, The sports betting industry fosters a culture of greed while specifically exploiting and preying upon young adults, the impoverished, and those with addictive personality traits; and

WHEREAS, The influence of sports betting has been heightened due to the ease and accessibility of online and mobile platforms, which facilitate decreased accountability and increased fiscal irresponsibility by users, having led to never-before-seen levels of gambling addiction and financial ruin; and

WHEREAS, Sports betting does not comply with the biblical principles of stewardship, work, and integrity, encouraging reckless management of resources entrusted to us by our sovereign Lord (Exodus 20:9,17; Matthew 6:19-34; Luke 12:15; Colossians 3:5; 1 Timothy 6:17-19); now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Dallas, Texas, June 10-11, 2025, condemn sports betting in all its forms; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we denounce the promotion and normalization of this predatory industry in every athletic context; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we express our deep concern regarding its detrimental impact on individuals, families, and communities; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we hold forth the caution of Scripture that “those who want to be rich fall into temptation, a trap, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge people into ruin and destruction” (1 Timothy 6:9); and be it further

RESOLVED, That we call upon corporations involved in this industry to cease their exploitative practices; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we urge our leaders at all levels of government to curtail sports betting and to address its disastrous effects through policy and legislation; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we encourage our Southern Baptist Convention leaders, entities, and pastors to continue to educate our churches on the deceptive sin of gambling through biblical instruction and practical resources while providing compassionate support and counseling to those struggling with gambling addiction and its consequences; and be it finally RESOLVED, That we call upon our fellow Southern Baptists and all other followers of Christ to repent where needed, mourn the ubiquitous presence of sports betting in our culture, and refuse to participate in the sin of gambling.

In addition to the resolution, I’d commend to you the work of my good friend RaShan Frost, who serves as research director for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. RaShan has written an essay on this topic for The Gospel Coalition and produced a very helpful resource for ERLC titled “Pay to Play: A Practical Guide to Addressing Gambling in the Church.” RaShan is also frequently interviewed about this topic on various podcasts, which can be easily found through a simple Google search.

Carl Trueman at North Greenville University

This week, Carl Trueman spent two days at NGU. He spoke at three different public events about topics such as expressive individualism, Critical Theory, and the desecration of human nature. He also spoke to faculty and met with our Kalos Scholars, a group of fully scholarshipped students with whom I have the privilege of working closely. I also interviewed Carl on these topics for NGU’s YouTube channel. I’ve linked to all the material below.

What is Man? (NGU Chapel)

Understanding Critical Theory (NGU Chapel)

The Desecration of Man (NGU Special Event)

Carl Trueman Pushes Back Against Critical Theory, Expressive Individualism, and Transhumanism (YouTube Interview)

What I’m Writing

Today, I finished a short chapter titled “The Christian Mindset in the Modern World.” It is a brief reflection on some of Carl Henry’s writings about American culture in the early 1980s. He was concerned about the growth of secular humanism, which was really just new form of paganism disguised as naturalism. Unfortunately, many of his observations have proven prescient. However, Henry did not despair. He believed that proclamation of the gospel, faithful engagement with culture, and a longing for spiritual awakening offered the hope for national renewal. The chapter will be included in a short book on American democracy and freedom that will be published by the ERLC in time for the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting this summer.

You know what I didn’t teach? Leadership courses. In fact, I would frequently joke in my classes that too many pastors and other ministry leaders spend too much time reading leadership books and not enough time reading theology. I would wax eloquently and sarcastically about pastors who can quote John Maxwell and Jim Collins from memory, but who don’t know how to properly exegete a passage of Scripture.

Fast forward over a decade later, and I still complain about pastors who spend more time listening to leadership podcasts than they do in sermon preparation. But I also see far more value in learning about leadership than I did back in my seminary days. There are a couple reasons for this change of heart.

First, I took on my first serious leadership role outside of church ministry when I became the dean of the School of Theology and Missions at Union University. I read a lot of leadership books during those years, participated in a couple of leadership development programs, and interviewed lots of good leaders about their experiences. One of my closest friends actually made fun of me when he asked what I was currently reading and I responded by telling him about my favorite book on productivity.

Second, the older I became, the more I realized the consequences of poor leadership. Some leaders were highly competent, but they were unsuccessful or even unfaithful because of their character issues. Others were men and women of good character, but they lacked competence as leaders, at least for their current roles. The fallout of poor leadership included struggling institutions, frustrated constituents, and sometimes broken lives. I didn’t want that to be my leadership story, nor the leadership stories of my colleagues or students.

In a fun twist of providence, when I came to North Greenville University as the chief academic officer, almost immediately I had the opportunity to help design an interdisciplinary graduate degree in leadership. Since 2020, NGU has offered the MA in Leadership in partnership with our friends at the Impact 360 Institute in Pine Mountain, GA. The degree is embedded in the Impact 360 Residency. From the beginning of that program, I’ve taught courses in the program. When I stepped down from administrative role to return to the instructional faculty in 2023, I became the program director for the MA in Leadership.

Hello, my name is Nathan Finn and I am a leadership professor.

In recent years, I’ve taught graduate courses on Leadership Theory and Development, Personal Leadership Development, Servant Leadership, and Biblical Foundations for Leadership. This semester, I’m teaching the latter course. A couple weeks ago, the course met for a four-day intensive at the Impact 360 Institute. I began the intensive with a short lecture on the role of the Bible in leadership.

First things first: the Bible is not “about” leadership. Scripture is not a leadership textbook. The Bible is “about” God and his relations to his creation, with emphasis on his human creatures. It has been called the “true story of the whole world” because it offers a grand narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation, and that Story of Stories helps us to make sense of all the other stories that surround us.

However, there is another sense in which the Bible is all about leadership because it has so much to say about leadership from Genesis to Revelation. Furthermore, as God’s inspired, authoritative, trustworthy, and sufficient words, what the Bible says about leadership matters more than any other leadership insights that come from any other sources.

The Bible has a multifaceted witness to leadership. Sometimes we draw a “straight line” from Scripture to leadership principles, models, and methodologies. Other times, we need to prayerfully and creatively draw a “dotted line” from Scripture to its various implications for leadership. Let me give some examples.

When the Bible speaks about leadership, it is most often speaking about what we might today call ministry leadership. The focus is on prophets, priests, apostles, elders, and evangelists. The Bible talks explicitly about this form of leadership, so it is relatively easy for us to draw a straight line from the Bible to application when we are discussing ministry leadership.

The Bible also has much to say about political leadership. There are entire books of the Bible that focus upon judges and kings. However, these are not secular rulers like we are accustomed to in the modern West. Judges and kings knew that they served the people on behalf of God. So, we have to think carefully about how to build a bridge from the Bible to application when we are discussing political leadership.

The Bible has much to say about family leadership. Some of this has fairly direct application to today; for example, how spouses should relate to each other and their children. However, some of it is a bit less applicable. Much of the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, assumes a much thicker view of the family that was more like a multigenerational clan and could even include household servants and slaves. Furthermore, even when the Bible is discussing what we would today call “nuclear families,” there is considerable debate among believers about how much the patriarchal worldview of the Ancient Near East and Roman Empire influences what Scripture has to say. This is why Protestant Christians in particular debate gender roles in the family. So, we have to think carefully about how to build a bridge from the Bible to application when we are discussing family leadership. (Full disclosure: I’m a gender complementarian, which is the view I think best reflects Scripture.)

Sometimes the Bible is speaking indirectly to leadership. For example, Scripture has a lot to say about godly and ungodly character, which can surely be applied to leadership. Most books written about Christian leadership spend considerable time talking about character, including both positive and negative examples. In fact, there are more books about what the Bible teaches on moral leadership or the type of leader one is than there are books on what the Bible teaches about organizational leadership. There is a sense in which the latter topic is “forced,” since the Bible is “about” morality and character in a way it is not “about” organizational leadership.

The Bible also offers many case studies that can be related to leadership principles. Some of these overlap with personal character. Other case studies relate to different types of issues leaders encounter: think about Jethro’s advice to Moses to delegate his leadership and Joseph’s wisdom in managing a large project and Paul and Barnabas coming to an amicable parting over their differing opinions about John Mark. Authors such as John Maxwell, Lorin Woolfe, Richard Stearns, and many others have written general leadership books for Christians that draw upon what the Bible teaches about character and relevant biblical case studies and applies these principles to leadership-in-general.

There is one subcategory of case studies that merits special consideration: books about Jesus and leadership. There is an entire genre of books on this topic, written by individuals from a variety of religious backgrounds. Some of my favorites are written by Ken Blanchard, Gene Wilkes, and Leighton Ford.

The best books on the Bible and leadership take into account the Bible’s multifaceted witness to leadership. Some of my favorites include: Leadership in Christian Perspective: Biblical Foundations and Contemporary Practices for Servant Leaders by Justin Irving and Mark Strauss, Biblical Leadership: Theology for the Everyday Leader edited by Benjamin Forrest and Chet Roden, Servants of the Servant: A Biblical Theology of Leadership by Don Howell, and Wisdom in Leadership by Craig Hamilton.

What I’m Reading

J. T. English, Remember and Rehearse: An Invitation to Participate in God’s Story (B&H Books, 2025). This is a great introduction to the Bible’s narrative, and how it offers the only true story in a world of false stories. I just started it, but I like it a lot thus far.

Ryan Dougherty, Robert Westervelt, and Nicholas Willis, Builder. Fixer. Optimizer.: The Three Leadership Instincts that Impact Everything (TG3, 2026). Speaking of leadership, I heard the authors of this book speak on the topic at the recent International Alliance for Christian Education annual meeting. Their thesis is that every leader has a leadership instinct that is best suited for particular contexts and seasaons.

Ian Toll, Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941–1942 (Norton, 2011). Like all middle aged American men, I enjoy learning about World War II. This book is the first in Toll’s much-lauded trilogy. I hope to read them all in the coming months.

What I’m Writing

Not a whole lot right now. Instead, I’ve been up to my eyeballs in course preparation and grading papers. I hope to have a better update next time.

I recently spoke on a Wednesday night at Taylors First Baptist Church about what Southern Baptists believe about cooperation and stewardship. I walked though the differences between local associations, state conventions, and the Southern Baptist Convention. I discussed the Cooperative Program, and looked at how those dollars are allocated in the South Carolina Baptist Convention and the SBC. I reminded our church about our state convention partner ministries and our national Southern Baptist entities. I closed by sharing a bit about the role of the President of the SBC, since our senior pastor is being nominated for that office.

A few days later, we hosted our annual Christian Worldview Week at North Greenville University. Our two speakers both have strategic leadership roles at Southern Baptist seminaries. Andrew Walker is an ethics professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This August, Andrew will become the Dean of the seminary’s School of Theology. Jamie Dew, our second speaker, has been the President of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary since 2019. (Note: I will make the videos of their respective messages available in my next newsletter.)

These events have reminded me of the importance of praying for upcoming leadership transitions in the Southern Baptist Convention. Three of our entities are currently looking for new presidents: LifeWay Christian Resources, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. The respective searches have been underway for many months, and I have every reason to expect that all three ministries will name their new presidents before the SBC convenes for our annual meeting in Orlando in June.

I want to encourage you to pray for those search committees, the full boards of trustees, the staffs of those entities, and, of course, the candidates who are being considered. I’m privy to virtually zero “inside information” about these three searches, and the very little I do hear I learn by happenstance rather than by intentional effort on my part. But as a rule, I don’t seek out such information, for a couple reasons. I’ve learned over the years that the Southern Baptist rumor mill is highly speculative, often under-informed or misinformed, influenced by confirmation bias (we tend to think our preferred picks are the leading candidates), and rarely edifying.

While I’m not “in the know” about these searches, I’m closely connected with all three entities. I serve in part-time roles with two of them: I’m Senior Fellow for Religious Liberty for ERLC and teach adjunctively in the PhD program at Southeastern Seminary. While I don’t have any formal role with LifeWay, one of its imprints, B&H Academic, has published well over half the books and book chapters I’ve written over the years. So, I’m not indifferent to these searches. I want all three ministries to hire “slam-dunk” presidents—even if my own relationship with one or more of them changes in the future. Southern Baptists need all our entities to have godly, qualified, wise, effective presidents who are deeply committed to our confessional consensus and our cooperative mission.

Here are some ways I’d recommend we be praying for these presidential searches, especially as they (Lord willing!) head towards their final outcomes in the coming weeks.

• Pray that every finalist for every presidency is a godly man who is cultivating a close personal walk with Christ, bearing the fruit of the Spirit, and who exemplifies the qualifications for Christian leadership found in the Pastoral Epistles. We don’t need ungodly or immature leaders.

• Pray the finalists are well-qualified for executive leadership and well-suited for the particular ministry plan of the particular entity he wishes to serve. We don’t need unqualified, inexperienced, or ill-suited leaders.

• Pray the finalists are churchmen who understand the importance of meaningful church membership and believe the local church is “ground zero” for worship and witness. We don’t need leaders who don’t love the church.

• Pray the finalists don’t aspire to “lead something” but feel specifically called and qualified to leading the particular entity where each is candidating should the board extend an invitation. We don’t need leaders who think they are a big deal who are owed some sort of prominent position.

• Pray the finalists understand that the SBC is a convention of diverse churches and not a coalition of special interest groups to be appeased. We don’t need leaders who are mostly thinking about megachurches, or medium-sized churches, or “normative sized” churches, or particular networks of churches, or church plants, or established churches, or churches comprised of particular minority ethnicities, or churches located in a particular region. All these types of churches are part of the SBC, and all of our entities serve all of these types of churches.

• Pray the finalists understand that the Southern Baptist Convention is not the loudest or most persistent voices that talk about the SBC on social media, especially X. We don’t need leaders who direct their gaze toward personalities who have built their public platforms on sowing chaos, spreading misinformation, or trying to co-opt the SBC for their particular agendas. We need leaders whose social media policy is informed by biblical wisdom: “Don’t answer a fool according to his foolishness or you’ll be like him yourself” (Proverbs 26:4, CSB).

• Pray the finalists are fully committed to the Baptist Faith & Message (2000). We don’t need leaders who are indifferent to our confessional consensus, or who have to clear their throat before affirming the BF&M, or who really want the SBC to move toward some other confession that they personally prefer. Southern Baptists aren’t served well when leaders have their own theological agendas.

• Pray the finalists are champions of our cooperative mission, not just the ministries they want to lead. We don’t need leaders who only really care about the flourishing of their own respective entity, even if the flourishing of their entity should be their primary concern. This is especially important in a cultural context—and sometimes a denominational context—that pushes us toward tribalism.

• Finally, pray that among the pools of finalists are the specific men who are the right men to lead each of these entities for such a time as this. We don’t need leaders who aren’t the right men for the job. We need God’s man for each of these important roles.

What I’m Reading

Leighton Ford, Transforming Leadership: Jesus’ Way of Creating Vision, Shaping Values & Empowering Change (IVP, 1993). In this informative book, Ford discusses leadership principles gleaned from Jesus’s life and ministry, putting them in conversation with the Transformational Leadership and Servant Leadership models. We’ll be discussing this book in my graduate course on Biblical Foundations of Leadership, which will meet as an intensive next week at the Impact 360 Institute.

N. T. Wright, God’s Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal – Biblical Theology from Genesis to Revelation on the New Creation (HarperOne, 2026). I just started this one. It is a follow-up to Wright’s excellent earlier book Surprised by Hope: A Transformative Guide to Living in Light of the Hope of New Creation (HarperOne, 2008). Wright rightly emphasizes that the Bible focuses far more on the hope of the new creation where King Jesus reigns over his resurrected people than a disembodied heaven where our souls dwell for all eternity.

Preaching at Taylors First Baptist Church

I love to preach God’s Word to God’s people! Last Sunday, I had the privilege of preaching to Taylors First Baptist Church. Our current sermon series is through the Gospel of Matthew, and I preached on a beloved passage: Matthew 14:22-33, where Jesus walks on the water. I titled the sermon “A Walk to Remember.” If you are interested, the sermon is available online, beginning just after the 32 minute mark.

Doctoral Seminar on Pastor-Theologians

This week, I taught a doctor of ministry intensive for North Greenville University on our graduate campus in Greer, SC. The topic for the doctoral seminar was “The Pastor as Theologian.” We focused on two recurring themes in the class: (1) why pastors (and other ministry leaders) should take intentional ownership for their ongoing theological maturity, and (2) how to exercise faithful stewardship in promoting theological formation in local churches and other ministry contexts. The former is about We enjoyed some great discussions, ate lunch together each day, and read some great books together. Check out the course reading list below.

• Voddie J. Baucham, Expository Apologetics: Answering Objections with the Power of the Word. Crossway, 2015.

• J. T. English, Deep Discipleship: How the Church Can Make Whole Disciples of Jesus. B&H, 2024.

• Alex Fogelman, Making Disciples: Catechesis in History, Theology, and Practice. Eerdmans, 2025.

• Carl R. Trueman, Crisis of Confidence: Reclaiming the Historic Faith in a Culture Consumed with Individualism and Identity. Crossway, 2024.

• Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Hearers and Doers: A Pastor’s Guide to Making Disciples Through Scripture and Doctrine. Lexham Press, 2019.

• Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Owen Strachan, The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision. Baker Academic, 2015.

• Gerald Hiestand and Todd A. Wilson, The Pastor Theologian: Resurrecting and Ancient Vision. Zondervan, 2015.

New Issue of Integration

I serve as one of the senior editors of Integration: A Journal of Faith and Learning, which is published online twice each year by the International Alliance for Christian Education. Earlier this week, we published our Winter 2026 issue, which is dedicated to the theme “Artificial Intelligence and Christian Higher Education.” We have some stellar contributors, some of whom are leading Christian thinkers in the world of AI and higher education. I contributed the editorial introduction to the issue. Integration is published online and is available for free. Please consider passing the link along to any professors or graduate students whom you know.

Christian Worldview Week

I have the joy of serving as executive director of the Institute for Faith and Culture at North Greenville University. The IFC sponsors a number of initiatives, but our longest-running event is Christian Worldview Week, which has been held each spring semester at NGU for over two decades. This year, our theme is “Confronting Challenges to Authentic Human Flourishing.” Our two guest speakers will be Andrew Walker and Jamie Dew, both of whom are good friends. Each of them will speak during a regularly scheduled chapel service and deliver an evening lecture. Check out the flyer below, which was created by one of my students, Jaxson Thigpen.

Cancer Update

Leah had her third chemo infusion this week. She wrote an update for her newsletter. We’re so grateful for all the prayers, encouraging texts and emails, meals, financial gifts, and other acts of kindness over these past couple months. Please continue to pray that the Lord would heal Leah completely, that the side effects of the chemo would be manageable, and that the Lord would work through this difficult season draw our entire family closer to Him and closer to each other.

I have tremendous respect for Ben Sasse. He is best known for serving from 2015-2023 as a senator from Nebraska. He also served briefly as President of the University of Florida (I won’t hold that against him) from February 2023 to July 2024. His books The Vanishing American Adult (2017) and Them: Why We Hate Each Other—and How to Heal (2018) are both excellent. I have considerable affinity for Sasse’s brand of constitutionalism and social conservatism. I also appreciate his thoughtful perspective on higher education in Amerca.

Sasse is also a brother in Christ. He worked full-time for the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals in the 1990s, during which time he co-edited Here We Stand!: A Call from Confessing Evangelicals for a Modern Reformation (1996) with the late James Montgomery Boice. I read that book when I was a seminary student and appreciated it very much, though I didn’t know who Sasse was at the time.

As you may know, Sasse was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer in December 2025. He almost certainly has only a few months to live. He wrote a moving update about his diagnosis on X on December 23, 2025. It struck a nerve with me because Sasse announced his diagnosis less than a week after Leah received her own cancer diagnosis. (Leah has state III colon cancer, though we are grateful her prognosis is much better than Sasse’s.)

This week, I listened to Peter Robinson’s interview with Sasse for Uncommon Knowledge, which is also available on X. I’ll just say this: it was a powerful interview. Robinson and Sasse discussed cancer, politics, family, American history, and Christian hope. Sasse’s reflections were raw at times, but seasoned with grace and rooted in the gospel. Numerous websites have published reflections about the interview, including Baptist Press and Mere Orthodoxy. I would simply encourage you to carve out an hour and listen to the interview for yourself. It is long, but it is worth it.

What I’m Reading

Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (Zondervan Academic, 2022). I read the outstanding book when it first came out, but I’ve returned to it because it intersects so much with my current teaching and writing. It is not an easy read, but I’d recommend it to every pastor and other ministry leader.

Don Howell, Servants of the Servant: A Biblical Theology of Leadership (Wipf & Stock, 2003). I have read portions of this book over the years, but I’m now reading through it carefully because I assigned it for my Biblical Foundations for Leadership class later this spring. I think it is the best resource out there of its kind.

What I’m Writing

I’m working on a short essay reflecting on Carl Henry’s 1984 book The Christian Mindset in a Secular Society. The essay will be included in a book that the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission will publish later this year in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I’m also still working on my chapter on “Confessional Foundations for Baptist Social Ethics” for the book Baptist Social Ethics that Jason Thacker and I are co-editing for B&H Academic.

Though a Baptist, Manly Jr. graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studied with the great Presbyterian theologians Archibald Alexander (1772-1851) and Charles Hodge (1797-1878). Alexander and Hodge were strong proponents of biblical inspiration, authority, and truthfulness. Their high view of Scripture was passed on to later Princeton theologians such as Archibald Alexander Hodge (1823-1886), Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield (1851-1921), and J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937). For three generations, Princeton theologians continued to refine, defend, and commend the historic Protestant view of Scripture in response to fresh challenges such as higher biblical criticism and Darwinism.

Back to Basil Manly Jr. Upon graduating from Princeton, Manly pastored several churches, most notably First Baptist Church of Richmond, VA (1850-1854). In 1859, he joined his longtime friend and fellow Princeton Seminary alum James Petigru Boyce (1827-1888), as well as John Albert Broadus (1827-1895) and William Williams (1821-1877), in founding Southern Seminary in Greenville, SC. In 1860, Manly wrote “Soldiers of Christ, in Truth Arrayed,” which remains the seminary’s official hymn. In 1877, the seminary relocated to Louisville, KY, where it remains to this day. Manly actually served two different terms on the faculty, first from 1859 to 1871, and then again from 1879 until shortly before his death in 1892. From 1871 to 1879, he was president of Georgetown College in Georgetown, KY.

Manly returned to Southern Seminary in 1879 in response to a major controversy over the doctrine Scripture. Crawford Howell Toy (1836-1919) taught Hebrew at Southern from 1869 to 1879. Toy’s graduate studies had been at the University of Berlin, where he became convinced of historical-critical interpretation and was influenced by Darwinism. Toy’s views couldn’t be reconciled with Southern’s confessional statement, the Abstract of Principles, and in 1879 President Boyce asked for Toy’s resignation from the faculty. Toy subsequently took a faculty position at Harvard Divinity School, and soon thereafter converted to Unitarianism.

In the wake of Toy’s embrace of modernist theology, it was important that Boyce and the faculty regain the trust of Southern Baptists. Manly was a respected educator and denominational statesman. He was also the primary author of the Abstract of Principles in 1858, so his conservative theological bona fides were impeccable. He returned to Southern’s faculty in 1879 and remained there for the remainder of his career. Manly died on January 31, 1892, which is the same day the great English Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon died.

Manly wrote a number of works during his career, most of which were shorter essays in various periodicals. In 1855, he partnered with his father to publish a hymnal titled The Baptist Psalmody: A Selection of Hymns for the Worship of God. In 1863, he was founding president of the first Southern Baptist Sunday School Board, which he established in Greenville with his seminary colleague Broadus. In 1866, Manly became founding editor of Kind Words for the Sunday School Children, a monthly magazine for published by the board. Regrettably, the board ceased operation in 1873, though Kind Words was published in the 1890s. It was not until 1891 that a permanent Sunday School Board was established; that board is now LifeWay Christian Resources. But Manly’s most important published work by far was his introduction to the doctrine of Scripture.

In 1888, Manly wrote The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration, which argued for a traditional Protestant view of Scripture that echoed what he had been taught at Princeton. A year earlier, Boyce had published his Abstract of Systematic Theology, which was an excellent textbook, but included no extended discussion of the doctrine of Scripture. Manly’s Bible Doctrine might be considered a companion to Boyce’s work. Remember the two men were lifelong friends and close colleagues, and both had studied at Princeton. Also, in the aftermath of the Toy Controversy, there can be no doubt that an important secondary concern was countering the growing popularity of modernism among Protestant scholars.

Like his former professors at Princeton, Manly believed his understanding of biblical inspiration, authority, and reliability reflected the teachings of Scripture itself and had been echoed throughout the best of the Christian tradition, especially during and after the Protestant Reformation.1 Whereas Toy was a progressive who wanted to revise our understanding of Scripture in light of contemporary trends among critical scholars, Manly was a conservative who wanted to restate the biblical and historical view of Scripture in a way that resonated with late-nineteenth-century modern Christians. Below is Manly’s “positive statement of the doctrine of Scripture”:2

This may be briefly comprehended in three points : —

1. The Bible is truly the Word of God, having both infallible truth and divine authority in all that it affirms or enjoins.

2. The Bible is truly the production of men. It is marked by all the evidences of human authorship as clearly and certainly as any other book that was ever written by men.

3. This twofold authorship extends to every part of Scripture, and to the language as well as to the general ideas expressed. Or it may be summed up in one single statement: The whole Bible is truly God’s Word written by men.

While Manly helped to solidify an orthodox view of Scripture at Southern Seminary in the 1880s, it was not to last. The story of Southern’s gradual drift into more progressive views of Scripture (among other doctrines) has been told many times elsewhere. Southern’s accommodation of revisionist theological positions was perhaps the best-known example of a wider trend among many Southern Baptist scholars, influential pastors, and other denominational leaders in the mid-twentieth century.

Fortunately, beginning in the late-1980s, under the leadership of an increasingly conservative board of trustees, Southern Seminary began taking steps to reclaim its theological heritage, including the doctrine of Scripture held by Manly and the seminary’s other founders. By far the most important step was the hiring of R. Albert Mohler Jr. as the seminary’s president in 1993. Under President Mohler, the seminary reemphasized the Abstract of Principles and recommitted itself to plenary-verbal inspiration and the infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture. On a wider scale, the same sort of views represented in The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration were codified in the 2000 revision of the Baptist Faith and Message. Article I reads,

The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.

Today, all conservative Southern Baptists are heirs to Basil Manly Jr. and his classically evangelical doctrine of Scripture.

If you want to know more about Manly’s life and ministry, I’d recommend Michael Haykin’s excellent 2009 article in The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, as well as the relevant sections in Greg Wills’s The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859-2009 (Oxford University Press, 2009). If you want to read The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration, you can download it for free from Internet Archive. As an added bonus: the copy of the book scanned for that website is from the personal library of none other than B. B. Warfield.

What I’m Reading

Voddie Baucham, Expository Apologetics: Answering Objections with the Power of the Word (Crossway, 2015). Baucham was a powerful preacher and faithful apologist who passed away tragically last fall. I still remember how much a sermon he preached during a breakout session at the Passion in 1999 impacted me. While don’t agree with all of Baucham’s views, including his insistence on presuppositional apologetics as the only faithful model, I really appreciate how this book addresses the role of apologetics in expositional preacher.

John D. Woodbridge, Biblical Authority: Infallibility and Inerrancy in the Christian Tradition (Zondervan, 1982). This is a classic work that I’ve engaged with periodically over the years, but had never read in its entirety. With all the writing and teaching I’ve been doing recently on the doctrine of Scripture, I decided the time had come to read the whole thing. I’m so glad I did. I don’t know Dr. Woodbridge very well, but he is a friendly acquaintance whom I’ve been blessed to have a couple of wonderful conversations over the years. I have tremendous respect for his work, and this book makes the definitive case that words like “infallibility” and “inerrancy” historically meant more or less the same thing until the 1960s, and both are simply modern ways of referring to the church’s historic belief that the biblical text is fully reliable and trustworthy.

William D. Mounce, Why I Trust the Bible: Answers to Real Questions and Doubts People Have about the Bible (Zondervan, 2021). Over the years, I’ve appreciated Mounce’s resources on biblical Greek and his commentary on the Pastoral Epistles. I’ve also benefitted from Biblical Training, an online repository for biblical and theological resources that Mounce founded. This book is an excellent mid-level defense of the trustworthiness of Scripture.

What I’m Writing

I’m working on my chapter on “Confessional Foundations for Baptist Social Ethics” for the book Baptist Social Ethics. Jason Thacker and I are also editing the book. Almost all the chapters from our contributors have been submitted, so it’s getting real. The final manuscript is due later this spring.

I’m also making minor corrections to my chapter on “Landmarkism” in the Oxford Handbook for Baptist Studies, which will be published late this summer. It was a huge honor to be invited to contribute to this volume.

Cancer Update

Leah’s second chemo infusion was this past week. While the side effects have been unpleasant, the experience went far better than her first round of treatments. We’re so thankful for that. We’re also thankful for the numerous ways that so many people have blessed us with prayers, meals, financial gifts, and other acts of kindness. You can follow Leah’s updates on her newsletter.

End Notes: