Owen Strachan woke up on Martin Luther King Jr. Day with decades of injustice weighing heavily on his mind: Men with long hair. Strachan, who is former president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and is now provost…
How a student’s fashion design project upset the created order at Bob Jones University
Let’s call this controversy Wrap-Coat-Gate. Trustees and administrators at Bob Jones University recently grew so alarmed over a wrap coat designed by a student for a class project that they publicly called the student’s work sacrilegious, blasphemous, dishonoring to Jesus,…
Acts 29 ups the ante by offering church planters $50,000 apiece
In yet another sign of how church networks are replacing denominational identity, the Acts 29 network announced Jan. 11 that it will provide up to $50,000 apiece for new churches started through its sponsorship. Leaders of Acts 29 insist it…
Faith with a conscience: Martin Luther King as a model dissenter for Baptists, present and future
As we remember this month the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., we would do well to understand that King and his philosophy of direct, nonviolent action — initially shaped throughout the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956 — arose from…
The year of being threatened by smart women
Editor’s note: This story has been updated at the end with additional comments from Beth Allison Barr and Anthony Bradley. Maybe 2021 was the year of feeling threatened by smart women. That is, if you’re a white male conservative evangelical…
Beth Moore is not the first Baptist to journey to the Anglican Church
When Beth Moore left the Southern Baptist Convention in 2021 and soon after was seen in a photo serving Communion at an Anglican church, the social media outrage became a reminder that few people seem to rile up Southern Baptist…
The ‘MAGA faction’ could be a hindrance for multiracial congregations
One of the prized goals of evangelical and mainline churches in America today is to create multiethnic congregations. But the same political trends that are making life difficult for pastors also bode ill for multicultural churches. New research published Jan….
As ACA enrollment deadline approaches, American access to health care has improved but still lags behind
With a new year dawning, most of us have our minds attuned to new chapters and fresh starts. However, January brings endings as well as beginnings, and one such ending is especially important if you or someone you know needs…
Today’s evangelicals are medieval crusaders at heart
At the dawn of 2022, forget the culture wars; this is a postmodern crusade, and the Christian soldiers are on the march. Evangelical Christians are medieval crusaders at heart. In the 11th and 12th centuries, Christian Crusaders went to war…