A group of “never-Trump” Republicans targets Christian voters in its first political ad warning that “evangelical leaders who lay their loyalty and faith on the altar of Donald Trump are betraying their congregants and their country.”
In Memoriam: 12 newsmakers lost in 2019
These are a few of the prominent Baptists who died in 2019.
Trump supporters blast Christianity Today editorial calling for his removal
Two Southern Baptist megachurch pastors joined Donald Trump in criticizing an editorial in the flagship evangelical magazine Christianity Today saying the president should be removed from office.
High-profile pastor’s sabbatical renews attention to clergy self-care
A well-known African-American preacher surprised his congregation Dec. 4 by announcing he is going on sabbatical for a time of spiritual renewal and rest.
Abuse survivors cry foul over ERLC’s end-of-year fund-raising appeal
Leaders of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests criticized a Southern Baptist Convention entity’s fund-raising appeal that touts the denomination’s response to the scourge of sexual abuse in the church as “misleading and insensitive” to victims.
Baptist professor claims he was fired for being too anti-gay
A gadfly college professor who clings to the largely discredited practice of “conversion” therapy to change sexual orientation says the Southern Baptist Convention is wavering in its condemnation of homosexuality.
SBC sex abuse investigation voted No. 1 religion story of 2019
An expose by the Houston Chronicle that revealed hundreds of victims of abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention and that spurred calls for the SBC to investigate churches was chosen as the top religion story of 2019 by members of…
Former volunteer convicted of abusing preschoolers at South Carolina megachurch
A South Carolina jury has found 29-year-old Jacop Hazlett guilty of sexually abusing multiple children while volunteering to keep an eye on preschoolers while their parents worshipped at NewSpring Church, a non-denominational megachurch that originated as a church plant sponsored by the South Carolina Baptist Convention.
Did the Pope compare Donald Trump to King Herod? Should he?
Meeting Dec. 5 with a group of 48 Jesuits from Southeast Asia during his apostolic visit to Thailand and Japan, the pontiff mentioned Herod while responding to a question about refugees in Thailand and how to live out a “ministry of hospitality.”
Tom Ascol, Calvinist leader and social justice critic, hospitalized after collapsing at church
Founders Ministries Executive Director Tom Ascol, who in the 1980s helped launch a movement to establish five-point Calvinism as the new orthodoxy in the Southern Baptist Convention, was hospitalized after collapsing at his church Sunday morning.
Arkansas Supreme Court declines to prevent pastor/judge from hearing attorney general’s cases
The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday refused to bar a Little Rock judge from handling cases involving the office of the state attorney general who in 2017 got him removed from execution cases after he demonstrated against the death penalty in his extrajudicial role as a Baptist pastor.
New Liberty University think tank aims to revive ‘Christian American culture’
Liberty University, a private evangelical Christian school in Virginia started in the 1970s by Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, has launched a new think tank described in an introductory video as a “support network for the revival of Christian American culture across the nation.”