WASHINGTON (ABP) — More than 2,500 Baptists gathered June 28-29 for the annual Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in Washington. For the first time, it featured a joint gathering with the American Baptist Churches USA. The service in Washington's convention center marked…
Baptist sex-traffic mission worker urges others to ‘show up’ for ministry
WASHINGTON (ABP) — The key to ministry in Jesus' name — even in difficult and dangerous places — is to “show up,” Lauran Bethell told participants in the William H. Whitsitt Baptist Heritage Society annual meeting. Bethell, an American Baptist…
CBF panelists urge Baptists to see ‘humanity’ of AIDS crisis
WASHINGTON (ABP) — AIDS asks one question: Are you human? That's what Genie Hargrove told participants in a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship panel discussion on HIV/AIDS. Churches must see the humanity behind the crisis, she said. Hargrove, pastor of Beulah Baptist…
Correction
In the June 26th ABP story, “Southern Baptists in California create competing state convention,” please replace the first sentence of the 8th paragraph with the following: Wilson said 25 percent of the money contributed by his congregation to denominational missions…
Truett’s famed religious liberty sermon recreated at D.C. event
WASHINGTON (ABP) — Eighty-seven years after George Truett thundered a call for separation of church and state to more than 10,000 Southern Baptists gathered in the nation's capital, a smaller but more diverse group of Baptists paid tribute to the…
CBF moderator McCall says God’s covenant gives Christians responsibility
WASHINGTON (ABP) — God's covenant with Christians “places the responsibility for being the presence of Christ squarely on our shoulders,” Emmanuel McCall told participants at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship general assembly June 28. God is a covenant-keeping God, insisted McCall,…
Weary pastors stave off stress by scheduling ‘personal Sabbaths’
DALLAS (ABP)—Consummate counselor, powerful preacher, lasting leader—these are descriptions often used to characterize a respected pastor. Avid fisherman and beach bum are not. But Bruce Prindle, pastor of First Baptist Church in Midlothian, Texas, values fishing and lying in a…
Atheists view ‘radical Christianity’ as threat
WASHINGTON (RNS)—More than half of atheists and agnostics think “radical Christianity” is just as threatening in the United States as “radical Islam,” a new study reveals. The Barna Group, a Ventura, Calif.-based research firm, found 56 percent of atheists and…
FAITH DIGEST
Most Republicans doubt Darwin. Republicans are far more likely to doubt the theory of evolution than Democrats, a new Gallup Poll revealed. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans say they doubt humans evolved from lower life forms over millions of years; only…
Render to Caesar
It may look dead, but it's really just evolving—even though its members might not like that word. And it may be developing into something its founders wouldn't recognize. That's what some experts say about the future of the Religious Right…
BAPTIST BRIEFS
Three S.C. firemen had ties to SBC churches. At least three of the nine Charleston, S.C., firefighters killed June 18 in a furniture store blaze were connected with Southern Baptist churches in the area. Capt. William “Billy” Hutchinson, 48, was…
Following Scripture not easy recipe for political choices, ethicists insist
RICHMOND (ABP)—Abortion is the most pressing moral issue of the day, said Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican candidate for president, at a recent GOP debate. So much so, the Catholic senator continued, that he doesn't think his party can…