While conservative evangelical and Catholic churches across America celebrated Friday’s Supreme Court ruling rescinding a federal right to abortion care, sermons and prayers in other congregations ranged from lament to outrage to calls for simply getting along with each other….
Women of childbearing age are least likely to see strict abortion laws as best deterrent against abortion
There is the question of whether abortion should be legal in the United States, but there’s also a separate question about whether restricting abortion effectively reduces the number of procedures done. Abortion opponents believe outlawing abortion is the best way…
Uyghur American elected chairman of U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom
The first Uyghur American appointed to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has been elected the group’s chairman. Nury Turkel was elected unanimously to the post by his fellow commissioners. Also, Abraham Cooper, a recognized authority on antisemitism, was…
Maybe seminaries should offer a class in mergers and acquisitions
I should have figured this out right away, but it took me several months of driving by the mid-sized Baptist church building on the busy freeway to connect all the dots. The church I knew had been battling decline for…
Georgia Baptists hit snag on sale of 16-year-old headquarters property in suburban Atlanta
A state Baptist convention’s planned sale of its multi-million-dollar office building has hit a snag with county zoning officials. The Georgia Baptist Mission Board needs to sell its 40-acre property located in Gwinnett County, Ga., and it has a buyer…
At Faith and Freedom conference, evangelical Christian voters once again abandon their concern for marital fidelity
Providing further evidence that evangelical Christian voters no longer care about some moral failures as disqualifying, those attending the Faith and Freedom Coalition gathering in Nashville June 18 applauded Herschel Walker, despite recent revelations that he fathered three children not…
Church-state separationists join Justice Sotomayor in blasting the Supreme Court’s ruling in a Maine school voucher case
Church-state separationists lambasted a June 21 decision of the United States Supreme Court that granted parents in Maine access to taxpayer-funded vouchers to send their children to private religious schools. Meanwhile, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a scathing dissent from the…
New platform of Texas GOP is laced with Christian privilege
The Republican Party in the nation’s most populous state controlled by that party has a new platform that invokes the name of God 17 times, calls for special privilege for Christians and demands that Christian prayers, Bible reading and the…
When it comes to leading corporate prayer, are we really all in this together?
Let’s talk about corporate prayer. Houston, we’ve got a problem. Yes, I know it is dangerous to hold oneself out as an expert on anything related to prayer. My true confession is that I’m a whole lot better at praying…
One year later, awareness of Juneteenth is growing
Over the past two years, the word “Juneteenth” has been one of the most-searched terms on the Baptist News Global website. That quest for understanding coincides with a sudden growing awareness of this milestone day in civil rights history, fueled…
Still no external review of North American Mission Board finances
For at least two years, critics of the current leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention North American Mission Board have been seeking some way to crack open the mission board’s books, where they believe fraud is being hidden. This week,…
The SBC rebuffed its most extreme factions but remains extremely conservative
By some accounts, the Southern Baptist Convention once again rejected its most extreme factions during this year’s annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif. But by any outside measure, the nation’s largest non-Catholic denomination remains extremely conservative. Defining the term “conservative” within…