Matters of Faith, or It's Faith that Matters | The Port Rail

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What Are You Made of?

November 5, 2016

We all know that little boys are made of “snips and snails and puppy dog tails,” while little girls are made of “sugar and spice and everything nice.” In today’s progressive, politically correct world those stereotypes are of course sexist, demeaning, and probably misogynist as well. How dare we characterize male and females so differently? […]

Repent! Jesus is Coming!

October 15, 2016

If you drive through Cottondale, as I do on occasional trips to Birmingham, there is a guy standing by the side of the road with his sign, “Repent!” And I think it adds, “Jesus is Coming,” or “The End is Near” or something along those lines. I guess the range of reactions is from “that […]

You Reap What You Sow

July 23, 2016

An AP headline in Saturday’s Tuscaloosa News, July 9, screamed in huge letters IS THIS REALLY US? In the old days of yellow journalism, the letters would have been not only big, but also in bold yellow letters to make sure no one missed the point, and, of course, bought the newspaper. The answer to […]

The Proverbial Janitor in the Girls’ Dorm

May 28, 2016

I will no doubt offend many with this column, so just line up. A few days ago I received an invitation to a “live webinar” dealing with “campus facilities and transgender students: creating save and welcoming spaces on your campus.” The invitation came from AudioSolutionz LLC, in Durham, N.C. Since Duke is in Durham, and […]

The Cultural Captivity of the Bible

April 10, 2016

While listening to my daily audio Bible reading the other day, my online reader was working his way through Deuteronomy and I perked up. Deuteronomy was fascinating after the dry as dirt readings through Numbers and Leviticus. Those books are bogged down with detailed instructions to how to build the Ark of the Covenant and […]

Why Nobody Likes a Prophet: Bartolomé de las Casas

January 18, 2016

Article, “Why Nobody Likes a Prophet: Bartolomé de las Casas, a Loud Voice in the Wilderness,” in Taylor & Frances Online, in online journal Cogent Arts & Humanities, vol. 3, issue 1, 2016. Abstract This essay focuses on and analyzes the role of prophet that Bartolomé de las Casas (1485–1566) lived out in the conquest […]

Reading History Correctly

October 11, 2015

Now that the Pope Francis’s visit is history let’s consider the canonization of Father Junipero Serra as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. The controversy that arose with Serra, an eighteenth century Franciscan friar who helped bring Christianity to California is based on native Americans’ complaints that Serra persecuted their ancestors while evangelizing. So […]

The Pope and the Jesuit Order

September 29, 2015

I have heard recently things about the Pope that almost defy the imagination, from him being a Communist to the Antichrist from the Book of Revelations. I don’t disabuse or criticize anyone for holding these opinions, given some credence from Pope Francis’s ramblings across the spectrum of the human existence. He seems to be everywhere. […]

Inside a Mission Trip

August 23, 2015

For the past three summers I’ve packed my bags and headed down to Honduras with a mission team sponsored by the Baptist Medical and Dental Missions International. This team is locally recruited and organized by the Valley View Baptist Church and led by one of its members, Stan Gray. But it’s not all business. Much […]

The Sins of the Fathers

May 9, 2015

There are some contradictory passages in the Bible about whether sons inherit the sins of their fathers, or are born free of them. This question is aside the basic one of all humankind inheriting the sins of Adam. But we are not in a school of theology here and I’ll leave those answers to more […]