Will churches stop in-person worship once again as the Delta variant of COVID-19 roars across the country? Will those churches that continue to meet in person return to requiring masks and social distancing? These are the urgent questions facing church…
Facebook is the new voice of temptation whispering to the church in the digital wilderness
In my various stints as a pastor, I have at times joked with friends and colleagues that one way to raise more money for the church would be to sell ad space in the bulletin or offer title sponsorship of…
God bless the USA but don’t mess with Texas: Reflections on America by a native Texan returning to Texas
I recently returned to Texas after living in Boston for the last several years. I grew up in Texas. I’m not unaccustomed to the culture here, but sometimes I’m a bit taken off guard by aspects of West Texas culture…
Pastor Greg Locke is all over the internet spreading conspiracies; here’s why you shouldn’t believe him
Two years before he divorced his wife of 21 years and married his secretary, pastor Greg Locke rose to internet fame through a Facebook video decrying the morality of Target restroom policies that allowed people to use the restroom they felt expressed…
Let’s reimagine how your church property might serve the community
This is the last in a series created by a partnership between Baptist News Global and the Campbell University Center for Church and Community. Each month’s columns explore one of the seven types of capital described in the Community Capitals Framework developed by…
Southern Baptists join Catholic bishops in asserting ‘no Constitutional basis’ for abortion at all
There is no constitutional basis for abortion in America, and states should be able to regulate it without interference from the federal government, according to a court brief filed July 28 with the U.S. Supreme Court by the Southern Baptist…
From purity pledges to the Equality Act: How evangelical concern about sex has shifted and what it has to do with creation
When more than 200,000 evangelical purity pledges were being planted at the National Mall in 1994 at the height of the True Love Waits movement, nobody would have imagined that the next 25 years would bring about a total revolution…
The plantation lived on through Texas Baptist evangelism
Recently during worship, my minister sang a song of lament he composed about the whitewashed history of violence and slavery in the United States. In “This House,” Aaron Austin sang: “They said it was history, time to move on. They…
New national survey flips the narrative on mainline Protestants and the ‘nones,’ but why?
Two giant questions leaped off the page as the interpreters of American religion began reading the latest data dump from Public Religion Research Institute July 8: How could this data about mainline Protestants be correct, and why is the data…