Lonnie King Broadcast Services

By LONNIE KING If you’ve followed RRLS for very long, you’ve probably figured out that some of my most random trains of thought begin in equally random places. Sometimes it’s an old game show. Sometimes it’s a political headline. This week? Laundry detergent. More specifically, a Facebook ad for environmentally friendly detergent sheets. Yes…I actually watched a Facebook ad all the way to the…

How Donald Trump turned entitlement into a governing philosophy By LONNIE KING There may be no sentence that more efficiently communicates entitlement than this one: “Do you know who I am?” We recognize what it means immediately. It is rarely a sincere request for identification. It is not usually asked by someone who fears they have been forgotten. It is a warning. The speaker is telling…

By LONNIE KING The recent death of Senator Lindsey Graham prompted me to think about something I suspect many of us will wrestle with more than once in our lives. How should we respond when someone dies whose public life we found deeply disappointing? I’ve intentionally waited before writing these thoughts. Not because my opinions suddenly changed, but because I wanted to be certain I wasn’t…

By LONNIE KING Somewhere in evangelical culture there’s an unwritten bylaw that says: if someone believes something wildly different than you, put on your spiritual hazmat suit and back away slowly. Don’t debate the atheist. Don’t date the deconstructing ex-youth-pastor. Don’t follow the guy on Instagram who “asks too many questions.” He might rub off on you. Here’s the part nobody says out…

By LONNIE KING I was three cups of coffee deep into the weekend, scrolling Instagram the way you do when you should be doing literally anything else, when I ran into a reel that stopped my thumb cold. It featured a wildly-agitated man in a sheriff’s uniform, standing in a parking lot in Cleveland, Oklahoma — population somewhere south of 3,300 (the kind of town where the water tower probably…

By LONNIE KING Even though I’ve lived stretches of my adult life in San Antonio and the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, I still think of myself as a lifelong Houstonian. Houston is the place I’ve always come back to, the city I’ve defended, bragged on, and quietly believed was better than the rest of Texas when it came to race. That’s the myth I grew up with: Houston as the more diverse, more…

By LONNIE KING I came across a video recently that stopped me mid-scroll. Not because it was shocking, but because it was familiar. The creator described a conversation about Paul, biblical authority, and what we expect people to do with those teachings. It wasn’t my conversation, but it might as well have been. I’ve seen versions of it play out enough times to recognize the pattern…

A Game Show Asked a Better Question Than I Expected By LONNIE KING Sometimes wisdom shows up in unexpected places. For me, it happened while watching a 1970s episode of To Tell the Truth. One of the contestants claimed to have founded a 500-person community in India called Auroville. The concept fascinated the celebrity panel. The community had no traditional government, no police force, and…

By LONNIE KING I’m writing this from Michigan, where I’ve spent the holiday weekend doing the most radical thing an American can apparently do in 2026: sitting in a room with family members and just…being with them. I’m at my in-laws’ house. And having a wonderful time. To be sure, I believe some of the people at this gathering see the political world very differently than I do. I’m not going…

By LONNIE KING I was scrolling past the usual noise last week when a video ad stopped me. James Talarico, the Texas Senate candidate I intend to vote for in November, was looking straight into the camera.  And because I legitimately believe in him, his political ethics and the way he comports himself in public, I will always pause a moment to watch and listen to what he may have to say. This…

By LONNIE KING Every Fourth of July, somewhere between the potato salad and the fireworks, someone will confidently declare that “America was founded as a Christian nation.” It’s usually delivered the way you’d deliver the weather: not as an opinion, but as a fact. A settled point. A done deal. And in the current religious and political climate we live in here in these United States of…

By LONNIE KING I was thinking recently about something I’ve seen for years in sports broadcasting— Fans are absolutely convinced certain announcers hate their team. Not occasionally. Constantly. I’ve heard it my whole career. Used to participate in the complaining myself when I was younger. A national broadcaster praises the opposing team too much? Biased. A commentator criticizes a coaching…

Or Do We Just Not Know What They Won’t Prevail Against? By LONNIE KING There’s a verse in the Bible that gets quoted a lot whenever modern Christianity feels threatened. Jesus tells Peter: “Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18, KJV) For many people in modern American Christianity, that verse has become a kind of…

By LONNIE KING In 2015, at a campaign event in Iowa, Donald Trump dismissed Senator John McCain — a decorated war hero who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war, and presidential candidate in 2008 — by saying: “He lost. … I don’t like losers.” It was a short remark, but it said a lot. It wasn’t just an insult to McCain; it was a window into a worldview. The kind of worldview that…

By LONNIE KING I was watching a recent CNN segment when an unexpected thought crossed my mind. The discussion centered on reports that military personnel attending an upcoming UFC event at the White House would be required to meet specific fitness standards. Republican commentator Scott Jennings dismissed the story as fake news, citing information he said came from the White House. Moments…

By LONNIE KING I joke that I’m a “former Baptist,” but like glitter and Vacation Bible School songs, Baptists have a way of sticking to you long after you think you’ve washed them off. I haven’t been part of a Baptist church for a while now, and yet I still find myself weirdly obsessed with what the Southern Baptist Convention is up to. It’s like watching your ex on Facebook: you don’t want to…

By LONNIE KING I’ve never pretended to be a true MMA purist. I’m not the person who can list every contender in every division or who faithfully watches the undercard on a random Friday night. But I am a fan of the spectacle: the nights when the lights are bright, the walkout music hits, and everything feels larger than life. When I was younger, that meant WrestleMania pay-per-views. I knew…