By Bob Allen A Baptist child care agency at the center of a 13-year legal dispute over the use of taxpayer funds by religious organizations is challenging a settlement between civil-rights and religious liberty advocates and Kentucky’s state government announced…
AA wrestles with its spiritual roots
BEVERLY, Mass. (RNS) — For Alcoholics Anonymous to continue helping addicts find freedom in sobriety, the 75-year-old organization has to reclaim its spiritual roots. That’s the message coming from reformers who say the group has drifted from core principles and…
OUT LOUD
“Around the world, there are millions of people who don’t grasp the differences between Protestants and Catholics. To them, Christians are Christians and the pope speaks for Christians.” Leith Anderson The president of the National Association of Evangelicals was telling…
LEADERSHIP LINK: Church members who never belong to the church
Have you noticed that some people join your church and eventually become leaders while others join and eventually drop out? It is easy to assume that people in the latter group just weren’t that interested in spiritual things. Perhaps this…
OPINION: A both/and solution to the contraceptive coverage question
Jonathan Waits unfairly criticizes me and the Baptist Joint Committee for not vigorously opposing what he considers to be religious liberty violations in connection with the implementation of the new health care law. Let me set the record straight. The…
Thinking of Jesus as fully human and fully God poses challenges to many Christians, say theologians
Whenever Brandon Hudson speaks publically about the doctrine of the incarnation, he does so cautiously. Growing up Baptist, leading youth and preaching have taught him to tread lightly around the topic of Jesus’ human nature. Why this — or any…
Alcoholics Anonymous wrestles with its spiritual roots, as reformers say group has lost core values
BEVERLY, Mass. (RNS) — For Alcoholics Anonymous to continue helping addicts find freedom in sobriety, the 75-year-old organization has to reclaim its spiritual roots. That’s the message coming from reformers who say the group has drifted from core principles and…
Is full humanity of Jesus being shortchanged?
Whenever Brandon Hudson speaks publically about the doctrine of the incarnation, he does so cautiously. Growing up Baptist, leading youth and preaching have taught him to tread lightly around the topic of Jesus’ human nature. Why this — or any…
CBF joins hands to help Newtown clergy
By Bob Allen Multiple Cooperative Baptist Fellowship organizations are joining forces to offer support for clergy in Newtown, Conn., struggling to minister to congregations still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. A daylong…
Singer skirts Boy Scout controversy
By Bob Allen Entertainer Charlie Daniels stepped gingerly into controversy over the Boy Scouts of America reconsidering its ban on gays at a local Boy Scouts fundraiser March 20 in Tennessee. “I definitely have feelings about it, but I’m not…
Activist pastor Gordon Cosby dies
By Robert Dilday Gordon Cosby, the founder of the Church of the Saviour in Washington and a pioneering Christian activist whose ministry foreshadowed both the missional and emergent church movements, died March 20 at 95. Cosby died at Christ House,…
HERITAGE: Return to sender
For the last two years my associate and I have been sifting through an estimated 25,000 letters to and from George White McDaniel, a prominent 20th-century minister and denominational leader, as I have been writing his biography. McDaniel died of…