The Southern Baptist Convention released a large-scale study on worship leaders in SBC churches last week, and while the results may be alarming, they should not be surprising. Anyone who’s been paying attention for the last four decades should recognize...
A federal judge cleared the way for the nation’s first religious charter school to open in Oklahoma, bucking an earlier U.S. Supreme Court ruling against the idea. The Sept. 24 order by District Judge David Russell in Oklahoma City clears…
Most Texans are good neighbors to Muslims, but far-right Republicans in the state are making life difficult for them, three speakers said at the Texas Tribune Festival Sept. 24. The panelists — Fahad Ahmed, an Irving City Council member; Mohammed…
The Southern Baptist Convention released a large-scale study on worship leaders in SBC churches last week, and while the results may be alarming, they should not be surprising. Anyone who’s been paying attention for the last four decades should recognize…
“I will always stand up for the separation of church and state,” James Talarico told a standing-room-only crowd at the Texas Tribune Festival Sept. 24 in Austin, Texas. Talarico is a Presbyterian seminarian running for the U.S. Senate from Texas…
In my childhood, there were moments when Mama would say, “I’ve had about all I’m going to take of you, young man.” I mention Mama because Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas needs Mama’s admonition. Jeffress has this haughty habit…
The Christian community and the broader church leadership landscape recently lost a true giant. Kennon Lee Callahan — researcher, professor, author, pastor and legendary church consultant — died on the second Sunday of September, just two months shy of his…
The U.S. government was founded to serve the American people, not to proselytize them, said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. But U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins have…
Freedom of religion and freedom of speech are deeply interwoven, and a threat to one is a danger to the other, representatives from more than 20 faith and civil rights organizations said. “We come together as librarians, diverse clergy, constitutional…
On Sunday afternoon, I was in Dallas preparing for our FaithWorks board meeting. I had just left Royal Lane Baptist Church and a screening of Jesus Was a Migrant, a film featuring our work, when I saw a notification of…
An alliance of faith, labor and civil rights is needed to address the interlocking challenges of racism, xenophobia, militarism and authoritarianism currently looming over American democracy, said Willie Francois III, second vice president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention. “There…
Changes made to the governing documents of Highland Park United Methodist Church in 2022 were to “ensure that if the church maintained its ecclesiastical connection with the UMC, it was legally insulated from the ecclesiastical and doctrinal strife within UMC,”…
Days before Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s planned visit to Washington, D.C., former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback told a gathering of religious freedom advocates the Chinese government is “at war with faith.” Brownback said the Sept. 16…
