Baptist News Global

A thing that money could buy: How corporate evangelicalism elected a president

If religion were a thing that money could buy the rich would live, and the poor would die (Bahamian folk song) Darren Grem wrote The Business of Blessing before Donald Trump’s stunning electoral triumph, but the book helps explain the…

Scripture reading stable in U.S. despite rising skepticism

Let’s face it: New Year’s resolutions are mostly a lot of talk. Gyms that are crowded in January and February thin out to normal levels by March and April. Fad diets fade and new savings accounts are bled dry. And…

Baptists among faith leaders to watch in 2017

Baptists rank high in a dozen faith leaders to watch in 2017 identified by the Center for American Progress, a progressive public policy research and advocacy organization founded in 2003 as an alternative to conservative think tanks such as the…

Baptist minister unlikely advocate for transgender community

A Cooperative Baptist Fellowship pastor and contributing columnist to Baptist News Global described 768 words that transformed his ministry in a TEDx Talk presentation now available online. Mark Wingfield, associate pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, spoke in November at…

Transitions for the week of 01.20.17

Please submit transitions — including staff changes, ordinations, anniversaries or deaths — to Barbara Francis. This page will be updated weekly. STAFF CHANGES Caleb Bittler, to New Bethesda Baptist Church, Mechanicsville, Va., as associate pastor/minister to students and families. Leigh Clark,…

What Thomas Merton and Muhammad Ali had in common

Both men were shaken from their respective sanctuaries of literary and athletic attainment by the harsh realities of a nation deeply divided by war, race and social inequality.

Leadership changes at Baptist Joint Committee, but commitment to protect religious liberty remains

An interview with Brent Walker and Amanda Tyler.

When the Church wears the emperor’s clothes

“We must change the method but not the message.” This has been the aim of recent generations of Christian leaders. Desiring to “reach the lost for Christ,” we developed radio, television and now social media ministries. We wear skinny jeans…

Modern — and ancient — Christian identity crisis drives decline of American church

Europeans, it seems, are wondering if American Christianity has pretty much gone off the rails. A recent editorial in Great Britain’s The Guardian newspaper raised the question after describing the role faith has had in the “social and political convulsions”…

Rights groups fear Burmese pastors ‘forcibly disappeared’

Human rights organizations have expressed alarm over the disappearances of two Baptist pastors in Myanmar who may have been detained for their role in showing journalists a Catholic church allegedly damaged by government airstrikes targeting ethnic Kachin rebels in the…

Organizations, including faith groups, oppose anti-Muslim rhetoric

The Alliance of Baptists joined nearly 90 national religious, secularist, civil rights and other organizations Jan. 17 in an open letter urging members of Congress to oppose anti-Muslim policies and rhetoric during the transition to the administration of President-elect Donald…

A president with a feel for the spiritual who was hated by the pious

America is saying goodbye to a president whose spiritual life presents an extraordinary paradox.

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