ROCKY MOUNT, Va. — Many women have an obsession with purses. They love to dress in style and complete their look with a fashionable handbag. Recently two teens in Rocky Mount, Va., carried women’s obsession with purses to a new…
Ridgecrest pulls the plug on what might have been one of N.C.’s largest solar energy projects
RIDGECREST, N.C. — Ridgecrest Baptist Conference Center has withdrawn from a project that would have created one of North Carolina’s largest solar energy projects because of the amount of land required. Ridgecrest Baptist Conference Center is about 20 miles east…
N.C.’s Rowan County latest in Mid-Atlantic to grapple with sectarian prayers at official meetings
SALISBURY, N.C. — North Carolina’s Rowan County is the latest jurisdiction in the Mid-Atlantic to grapple with the role of sectarian prayers at official government meetings. The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina filed a lawsuit against Rowan’s board…
Obama names Baptist church-state expert at Wake Forest divinity school to direct faith-based office
WASHINGTON — Melissa Rogers, a Baptist church-state expert on the faculty of Wake Forest University School of Divinity, has been named director of the White House’s Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Rogers, director of the Center for Religion and…
OPINION: Graceful ears
Even before my hair started to go and betray me, migrating lower on my face and body while my head began to show through up top, my ears have always extended at a quite profound angle. They are, in fact…
OPINION: Yoga and a Christianity for the body
I’m no yoga apologist. In fact, my wife Miska does Bikram Yoga where they heat the room to 105 degrees and then strain, contort, sweat great drops of blood and try not to collapse on the floor for one and half hours….
Churches’ prom project reminds teenage girls that real beauty is on the inside
Two young women’s groups in different parts of Virginia recently partnered to prepare teens in Amherst and Nelson counties for a day of outer beauty — their senior prom — while also highlighting the inner beauty of women who love…
HERITAGE: Faith, freedom and forgiveness
Great events assume a life of their own. It is true with weddings. They start small with the excitement of an engagement and little by little the plans develop. So it is with an event planned for three days in…
Rising stress boosts clergy depression
Bryan Hatcher was a Baptist pastor once, so he gets it when ministers buckle under the strain of long work weeks, budget pressures and that feeling of constantly being in a fish bowl. And because he has since provided years…
Free at last, but what happens now?
Men just released from state prisons in Huntsville, Texas, arrived by bus in Fort Worth and gathered at the Tarrant County Probation Office. But before they re-entered the free world, they heard straight talk from someone who understood what they…
Free at last, but what now? Churches an help former inmates enter new life
Men just released from state prisons in Huntsville, Texas, arrived by bus in Fort Worth and gathered at the Tarrant County Probation Office. But before they re-entered the free world, they heard straight talk from someone who understood what they…
Experts say debt, public opinion and other factors boost chances for depression in clergy
Bryan Hatcher was a Baptist pastor once, so he gets it when ministers buckle under the strain of long work weeks, budget pressures and that feeling of constantly being in a fish bowl. And because he has since provided…