Baptist News Global

Political parties and denominations share key trends in post-Christian age

As a congregational coach and clergy consultant, Mark Tidsworth is always looking for ways to illustrate to his clients how society and the world are constantly shifting around them. But he hadn’t expected to find such lessons embedded in new…

Conversions gradually transforming Orthodox Christianity

Almost half the nearly 1 million Orthodox Christians in the United States today are converts, the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America reported in 2015. The majority of these married into the church. But a…

Analysis: Congregations can’t make up for proposed federal budget cuts

A nonprofit has calculated that every religious congregation in the U.S. — Christian or otherwise — would have to raise an additional $714,000 every year for the next 10 years to make up for the 2018 budget cuts President Trump…

Diana Butler Bass: SBC decline dispels idea that only liberal denominations die

A scholar who specializes in American religion and culture says the Southern Baptist Convention’s loss of a million members in the last decade exposes as a false narrative the conventional wisdom that only liberal denominations decline. “If you stretch back…

After ‘The Conversation,’ will my church stay together?

My congregation is having “The Conversation.” For the past 18 months we have been in a discernment process to determine if we would become a “welcoming and affirming” church. In particular, we have focused on what the church’s policy will…

Religious liberty advocates divided over Supreme Court’s Trinity Lutheran decision

Reaction varied to Monday’s Supreme Court ruling siding with a Missouri church which had been denied public money to improve a school playground. Groups including the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty called it a blow to the separation of…

A response to the CBF Global Missions budget cuts

Recently, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship announced that they would be “right-sizing” their organizational structure. Necessary questions about budgetary management, fiscal responsibility and institutional culture aside, the elephant in the room is that moderate to progressive Baptist churches are not financially supporting the work of CBF ministry partners globally.

I preached about a gun rights advocate. He wasn’t who I thought.

I’m a liberal. He’s a conservative. But we found common ground in the Bible and the idea that nobody is the stereotype we believe they are.

The transformative potential of renewing our common life

Fifteen strangers are gathered for supper. We share from a common table where everyone has offered a little dish. Around the country, thousands of others are doing the same thing. These multi-hued, boundary-crossing gatherings are happening thanks to a call…

Tracing grace in the contours of my face

I can hold this paradox without question: I never would choose cancer, but I wouldn’t trade this experience. The richness of God’s infusion into our lives more than compensated for the agony.

A Cuban pastor’s response to President Trump’s Cuba policies

Religious partnerships have made meaningful contributions to the defeat of prejudices and hostility in Cuba. The recent actions of the Trump administration won’t deter these relationships, nor will they reduce their cooperative work.

Supreme Court slides into partisanship

Before the fireworks, be careful what you drink

The contemptible case of Clarence Thomas

The permanent paradoxes of Christian thinking about war