By Bob Allen Two Baptist thinkers describe President Obama’s requirement that religious organizations include contraception in their employees’ health-care coverage as what some term a “Niemoeller moment” reminiscent of the slippery-slope devaluation of human rights that occurred in Nazi Germany….
Pastor’s killer still unfit to stand trial
By Bob Allen An Illinois judge ruled Feb. 10 that a man accused of murdering a Southern Baptist preacher in his pulpit nearly three years ago is mentally unfit to stand trial. Madison County Circuit Judge Richard Tognarelli said there…
TRENDING: The elderly become elders
Between the end of World War II in 1945 (returning scores of men to America) and the advent of the birth control pill in 1964 came the largest population boost in history, the famed Baby Boom. Sociologists call this the…
OUT LOUD
“When you are so prohibitively in debt to one particular lobbying group, that is a great concern. And it will be a great concern to many Southern Baptists because we believe gambling is a scourge. … And we certainly don’t…
VITAL SIGNS: Worship at Gate A3
Every congregation needs to be engaged in a healthy conversation about worship. Hopefully, it is at the heart of your identity, calendar and thought-life. As you face the future, one powerful question you must wrestle with is: “Of what value…
WINN RECOMENDS
Falling Upward, Richard Rohr (Jossey-Bass) Rohr speaks of life as something that comes in halves. These halves are not chronological but rather postures toward living. In the first half, we’re busy making something of our life, pulling together our identity,…
OPINION: Finding our future in our past
Although it is often messier than our present and at times even more uncertain than our future, the past must never be forgotten. Where would we be today without such champions of Baptist life as Roger Williams, Walter Rauschenbusch and…
LETTER: Women proclaiming the good news
I noted with interest, in the Feb. 6 issue of the Herald, the listing of churches participating in the Martha Stearns Marshall Month of Preaching by having a woman preach during the month of February. I salute all 19 Mid-Atlantic…
OPINION: Looking into Glass
When is having a repetitive song playing over and over again in your head for days not completely annoying? When it is the music of Phillip Glass’s opera Orphee. It is haunting and tragic with a spark of hope, beckoning…
LETTER: Obeying prohibitions against killing
One of the Ten Commandments says, “Do not kill.” I believe this has been revised in some later editions to, “Do not murder.” During the 14th and 15th centuries, those who disagreed with the Christian church were burned at the…
HeraldBeat
Transitions ON THE MOVE Morgan J. Browning, to Hillcrest Baptist Church, Ridgeway, Va., as pastor. Charity Roberson, to Sharon Baptist Church, Smithfield, N.C., as pastor, effective April 1. Skip Irby, to Big Island (Va.) Baptist Church, as intentional interim pastor….
HeraldBeat
Transitions ON THE MOVE Morgan J. Browning, to Hillcrest Baptist Church, Ridgeway, Va., as pastor. Charity Roberson, to Sharon Baptist Church, Smithfield, N.C., as pastor, effective April 1. Skip Irby, to Big Island (Va.) Baptist Church, as intentional interim pastor….