Baptist News Global – Conversations that matter

Arkansas Supreme Court, Attorney General, continue to tangle with pastor/judge

The Arkansas Supreme Court won’t restore the authority of a circuit judge who also serves as pastor of a Baptist church to decide death-penalty cases, and the state’s top lawyer wants him barred from any civil cases involving her office in separate but intertwined controversies that began with a prayer vigil protesting capital punishment on Good Friday in 2017.

Beto O’Rourke’s debate invective and the new ‘Back to School’ video are the jeremiads of our time

Firearms aren’t on the slippery slope; the American people are. We’re the ones whose kids are scared to go to school.

United Methodists float plans to split denomination after LGBTQ vote

The United Methodist Church’s deadline for petitions for its next global meeting passed Wednesday, setting the terms for a final reckoning with LGBTQ issues that have divided the denomination for more than 40 years.

Pastafarian pastor leads prayer at Alaska government meeting

A pastor wearing a colander on his head offered the opening prayer on behalf of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to open a local government meeting in Alaska, the latest blessing from a nontraditional church since a court…

Gay Christian activist: Baylor need not abandon theology to embrace LGBTQ students

“I do believe we can hold a conservative view of marriage and still love and support LGBTQ folks,” Gay Christian activist Justin Lee said at a talk at Baylor University.

‘Prophetic or pastoral?’ A trio of black women preachers expose this false dichotomy

In American Christianity today, many pastors and other ministry leaders in the dominant culture are afraid of being prophetically pastoral. As a result, the Church and the Gospel suffer.

Transitions for the week of 9-20-19

Recent church staff changes, anniversaries, ordinations and deaths within the moderate and progressive Baptist network.

Helen Graves, wife of one seminary administrator and mother of another, dead at 105

Her great grandmother was a Cherokee who walked the Trail of Tears and she remembered women’s suffrage, but Helen Graves didn’t live long enough to see her dream of a female president. The widow of a longtime seminary dean and mother of a seminary president died Sept. 6, a few months after celebrating her 105th birthday.

Jarrid Wilson’s suicide – and the urgency of pastors being free to be themselves

Who better than a pastor – called to live in a peculiar way on behalf of a group of people unable to live this way most days – to practice the art of prophetically being one’s authentic self, rather than attempting to be one’s best, most marketable self?

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‘Prophetic or pastoral?’ A trio of black women preachers expose this false dichotomy

Gay Christian activist: Baylor need not abandon theology to embrace LGBTQ students

Jarrid Wilson’s suicide – and the urgency of pastors being free to be themselves

Helen Graves, wife of one seminary administrator and mother of another, dead at 105