WASHINGTON (RNS) — Prompted by civil liberties groups, a taxpayer-supported homeless shelter in the nation’s capital will no longer require its clients to attend religious services. “We’re pleased that the D.C. government will no longer be supporting such religious coercion,”…
Missouri Baptists elect leader
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (ABP) — The Missouri Baptist Convention's Executive Board has chosen John Yeats to assume the MBC's top post. Meeting in a special called session Oct. 13, board members elected Yeats, recording secretary for the Southern Baptist Convention and…
Group says IRS should investigate church for endorsing Rick Perry
WASHINGTON (ABP) – Americans United for Separation of Church and State asked the Internal Revenue Service Oct.11 to investigate whether a Southern Baptist pastor in the news for calling Mormonism a “cult” broke the law by posting on his church's…
Church cancels services, packs meals for hungry children
RICHMOND, Va. (ABP) — On an overcast Sunday morning in Richmond, Va., 500 volunteers gathered at Gayton Baptist Church to make a difference a half a world away by preparing healthy meals to feed 277 malnourished children a meal one…
Baptist students develop awareness of poverty while on mission
FARMVILLE, Va. — Virginia Baptists’ ministry to college age young adults, now called Kairos Initiative, sponsored a statewide mission trip to Haiti this year. The majority of the cost was provided by Baptist collegiate ministries across the state, with individual…
FIRST HAND: College students bring glimmers of hope to resilient Haitians
God blesses us in so many ways that most of the time we do not see it. I was blessed by God in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, last May. I did not know anybody going on this trip. I prayed that everything…
HERITAGE: Heap o’ living at Halfway
One of the most attractive and appealing areas of Virginia is the Hunt Country of Northern Virginia. The gentle hills, the rolling dark green meadows, the horse farms, the stacked stone walls that stretch forever are mental images which remain…
EDITORIAL: An associational touch
On Sunday, Oct. 16, an historic vote will be taken. In one form or another, the Albemarle Baptist Association has been around since 1791, when the Orange Baptist Association divided to form Culpeper, Goshen and Albemarle itself. In 2003, it…
OUT LOUD
“Sounds good to me.” Archbishop Philip Hannan The former archbishop of New Orleans, who died last month, was responding from his hospital bed to the part of the Sacrament of the Sick that offers absolution from sin in the name…
VITAL SIGNS: Are you ill?
My grandmother often used a word to describe herself or other people. It was the word “ill.” She did not use it to describe someone who was sick with a cold or the flu. She used it to describe an…
WINN RECOMMENDS
Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, Glen H. Stassen and David P. Gushee (IVP) Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount has long fueled Christian imagination and social rebellion. The Sermon offers Jesus’ tangible expression of what the Good Life in…
Washington’s National Cathedral needs millions in quake repairs
WASHINGTON (RNS) — The Washington National Cathedral will need “tens of millions of dollars” over “numerous years” to repair extensive damage to the nation’s second-largest church following an Aug. 23 earthquake, church officials said Oct. 4. The landmark church requires…