New staff changes, retirements, deaths and anniversaries from around the nation, updated weekly.
Students’ art project generates big bucks for Zambian orphans
Artwork created by several U.S. university students has fired up the imaginations and spirits of Zambian orphans and generated tens of thousands of dollars to help those struggling with disease and poverty in the African nation.
New Baptist Covenant links white, black churches in ministry
A Baptist inner-city minister says he sees parallels today to the disappointment with white moderate attitudes expressed 53 years ago in Martin Luther King’s famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” “I honestly think silence of the church in this era…
Baptist editor eyeing case of Muslim suspended for refusing to serve booze
A Baptist state newspaper editor says a Muslim flight attendant who sued ExpressJet airlines for suspending her because she refused to serve alcohol to passengers could be a test case on whether courts use a double standard in adjudicating religious…
Clarify those expectations, experts tell pastor search committees
It seems obvious that a church searching for its next leader would be clear on how it understands the role of the pastor in its own context. But the hard truth is congregations are often fuzzy on that detail. “If…
Court halts execution criticized in clergy letter
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has halted an execution scheduled Aug. 24 which had been labeled immoral by a group of evangelical leaders including several well-known moderate Baptists.
Canadian Baptist group protests racial profiling
An association of Baptist churches in Canada is calling for a boycott of the nation’s second-largest supermarket chain to protest the grocer’s appeal of a human rights panel’s finding that the store engaged in racial profiling.
Sue for religious freedom? It’s not just for conservatives, anymore
The number of religious freedom bills across the United States may give the impression that using the law to protect faith is a purely conservative pursuit. Well, it isn’t, says Brent Walker of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.
Trump donates $100,000 for flood relief to Baptist church whose interim is conservative activist
Presidential candidate Donald Trump has donated $100,000 for flood relief to a Louisiana Baptist church where Family Research Council President Tony Perkins is serving as interim pastor. The Republican nominee and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, stopped at Greenwell…
Conflict is part of the church’s DNA. Learn to live with it.
When the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina needed someone to lead a conflict resolution workshop recently, they thought of Rubin Ortiz. “I have kind of a Ph.D. in conflict resolution,” said Ortiz, pastor of La Primera Iglesia Bautista in Deltona,…
Survey suggests continuing resistance among Baptists to LGBT inclusion
A little over a year after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, Baptists remain among the most resistant to LGBT inclusion among U.S. Protestant groups, according to new data from LifeWay Research.
In Baton Rouge, devastating flood temporarily supplants racial tensions
In a strange irony, the floodwaters spreading misery without regard to race have at least temporarily calmed the racial tensions in Baton Rouge, La. The city has been wracked by tensions caused by multiple shootings in July.