The latest controversy between Baylor University and the Baptists — rejecting grant funding to study LGBTQ exclusion in the church — has roots that stretch back more than 100 years, far preceding late 20th-century and early 21st-century struggles for control…
On not getting over fundamentalism
This past week, I received a link to an article on the Christian news satire website, The Babylon Bee. The article was titled “Baptist Conclave to Choose A New John MacArthur.” It was clever and funny. It pictured 12 older…
Getting over fundamentalism
Forty years after that long hot summer of 1925 in Dayton, Tenn., where the Scopes “Monkey Trial” was held, Southern Baptist preacher Carlyle Marney vividly recounted his memories. His parents were daily readers of the Knoxville News Sentinel, which claimed…
Meddling with Methodism and domesticating the Baptists
American religious historian Nathan Hatch famously argued that when you scratch beneath the surface of piety and polity that distinguishes them, Baptists and Methodists are actually more alike than they appear because the same cultural forces of democratic populism shaped…
What happened at Harvard is bigger than Harvard
The president of Harvard was forced to resign due to overwhelming public pressure. Being an enthusiastic teacher, an experienced scholar, an efficient administrator and a proven fund raiser was not enough. Declaring the president’s actions to be a violation of…
Christianity after Christendom
In 1850, there were about 700,000 Baptists in the United States, evenly divided between North and South. As the nation expanded and grew, Baptists advanced in membership and social standing. As they expanded, they divided into divergent denominational groups, and…
Remembering Bob Seymour: Being wise as serpents and harmless as doves
One of the best friendships I made when I moved to North Carolina was with Bob Seymour, founding pastor of Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church in Chapel Hill. We shared the same birthday and often celebrated together at one…
God’s freedom and ours: 10 points for thinking about Calvinism
The Christian consensus from the time of the Second Council of Orange in 529 A.D. has been that human willing and divine sustaining are not at odds, but are compatible with one another.
Pentecostal power
Pentecostal power
Pentecostal power
By Curtis Freeman In the church where I grew up, we used to sing with great fervor: “Lord send the old-time power, the Pentecostal power!” I never was quite sure what that song was about. I suspected it had more…
Should Baptist churches adopt open membership? Yes.
By Curtis Freeman The Baptist movement began 400 years ago with the self-baptism of John Smyth, but the roots of immersion lie beyond that first gathered community whose mode was affusion, or pouring. Edward Barber was probably the first to…