Messengers to the annual meeting of the South Carolina Baptist Convention increased their budget by $600,000 for 2007 and elected a strong Cooperative Program supporter as president Nov. 15. For nine of the past 10 years, South Carolina Baptists have…
Texas Baptists approve measures to ‘restore trust’ after Valley scandal
“Together We Are Doing More” was the stated theme, but healing from financial scandal was the subtext that dominated the annual meeting of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Messengers to the Nov. 13-14 meeting elected officers, adopted a $50.6…
Organization at center of scandal in Valley will shut down
A church-planting institute founded by Otto Arango—the central figure in a scandal involving misuse and mismanagement of Texas Baptist church-starting funds in the Rio Grande Valley—will cease to exist at the end of this year. At a special meeting in…
Alabama Baptists approve budgets,ask Wal-Mart to reconsider
Wal-Mart's support of homosexuality, ethics in state government, and the humanitarian crisis in western Sudan surfaced as some of the top issues this year with Alabama Baptists. And Roger Willmore, pastor of Deerfoot Baptist Church in Trussville, Ala., became the…
William & Mary and Jesus
When I read that Gene Nichol, president of the College of William and Mary, had ordered removed from the chapel the bronze cross that had stood there for a century or so, my first response was anger. Nichol decided that…
Pray for Sudan
The passage of the resolution on genocide in Sudan at the Baptist General Association of Virginia meeting was an extremely significant event. What has been happening in Darfur, West Sudan, the past two years has been happening in Southern Sudan…
Baptist leader’s anti-Muslim remarks appear on Arab news network
This article has been removed because it contained inaccurate information.
Rift among Missouri conservatives boils over at convention meeting
CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. (ABP) — Strong words from several Missouri Baptist Convention leaders during the convention's recent annual meeting highlighted a growing rift among conservatives in Missouri Baptist leadership. The rift is between two groups — one loyal to the…
Former secretary of state says faith integral to foreign policy
WASHINGTON (ABP) — America's first female secretary of state said Nov. 20 the United States must begin educating its current and future diplomats on faith issues in order to have success in the foreign-policy arena. Echoing the thesis of her…
ABC General Board confirms decisions to sell headquarters, elect missions head
VALLEY FORGE, Pa. (ABP) — Leaders of the American Baptist Churches USA have approved selling the “Holy Doughnut” — the organization's Pennsylvania headquarters building — and confirmed the appointment of a new head for the denomination's international missions organization. The…
Opinion: Elections signal centrist turn
In the aftermath of the epochal power shift in Washington, the pundits are already attempting to interpret the deeper meaning of what happened. Inevitably, one's reading of the election tea leaves is filtered through one's own ideological perspective. Thus conservatives,…
Opinion: ‘The truth shall make you odd’
As we await the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group about what “to do” in Iraq, I can't help but be struck by the poverty of our imaginations. Just what, if anything, can we do to shore up the new…