By Robert Dilday An amendment to the Virginia constitution aimed at permitting prayer in public schools and government meetings should be rejected by the state’s General Assembly, according to Virginia’s oldest Baptist network of churches. A resolution adopted during the…
Church budget choices reveal ethics
By Robert Dilday & Ken Camp It may not feel like it to number-crunchers huddled around a Sunday school classroom table, fine-tuning annual financial proposals for an upcoming church business meeting. But church budgets are moral statements that reflect ethical…
How much should we pay the pastor?
By Robert Dilday It may be one of the most uncomfortable — and sometimes contentious — questions in congregational life: How much should we pay our senior pastor? Ministers struggle between commitments to a self-sacrificial calling on the one hand…
Many ministers saddled with seminary debt
By Robert Dilday When Congress overwhelmingly approved a measure last month to relieve spiraling student debt, churches probably didn’t realize the problem hits closer to home than expected — many pastors are leaving seminary and divinity school with tens of…
Slavery’s blot still stains city, panel says
By Robert Dilday Like many American cities, Richmond, Va., has reduced the more visible signs of rancor among different races, but racial reconciliation remains elusive, said a panel of activists and observers of Virginia’s capital. The panelists shared their views…
Scholar says faith prompted Emancipation
By Robert Dilday A “profound spiritual odyssey” prompted Abraham Lincoln’s forging of the Emancipation Proclamation, one of “the most revolutionary documents ever signed by an American president,” a prominent religious historian told a conference on racial reconciliation. “Not much attention…
White Baptist led slave church in antebellum South
By Robert Dilday The responses of Christians in the American South toward the institution of slavery and those it enslaved were inconsistent and complex — bequeathing a legacy which continues to complicate racial reconciliation 150 years after emancipation, said the…
High court to hear prayers case
By Robert Dilday The Supreme Court agreed May 20 to hear a case centering on whether sectarian prayers at the beginning of official government meetings violate the First Amendment — an issue which has roiled county governing and school boards…
Vote to retain church brings backlash
By Robert Dilday A Virginia Baptist association’s March vote not to oust a church for ordaining a gay minister has prompted a number of members to leave or consider doing so, renewing suggestions that the congregation at the center of…
CBF ministers urge immigration reform
By Robert Dilday Ministers affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina rallied in Winston-Salem April 2 to call on their representatives in Washington to support “comprehensive, fair immigration reform” that supports “the common good.” “Our Scripture repeatedly calls…
BTSR announces new location
By Robert Dilday Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond will move this summer to a new location in an office complex about four miles north of its current campus, seminary officials announced April 2. The nearly 17,000-square-foot building in Villa Park,…
DC Baptists agree to differ on gay marriage
By Robert Dilday Leaders of the District of Columbia Baptist Convention said in a statement March 27 that while the convention’s “diverse body of believers” holds strong opinions on both sides of the same-sex marriage debate, its churches remain focused…