Baptist News Global

Lawsuit names Baptist church in 30-year-old abuse case

A Cooperative Baptist Fellowship pastor in Georgia has voiced regret and sadness about his church’s handling decades ago of allegations of sexual abuse within a Boy Scout troop it sponsored. A lawsuit filed March 17 in Fulton County State Court…

Wife of BTSR president unexpectedly dies

Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond is reporting the unexpected death of Cyndi Crawford, wife of seminary president Ron Crawford. According to a press release from BTSR, she was discovered at the family home in Hanover County, Va., yesterday evening. The…

Getting political in the pulpit

The responsibility of the church in this current political climate should be clear. There’s no violation of separation of church and state to say from the pulpit that hitting people who disagree with us is wrong. Or excluding people who believe different things than we do should stop. Or accumulating wealth while many struggle to make a living wage cannot continue.

People-pleasing pastors risk health, families and callings

Besides preaching and visiting the sick, too many ministers also are skilled at denying themselves vacation days, putting in extreme time at the office and scaling back on family time. “We are well known for overworking,” said Merianna Neely Harrelson,…

British Baptists wrestle with same-sex marriage

Hoping to avoid division over an issue that is dividing religious bodies across the globe, British Baptist leaders are asking churches not to allow their buildings to be used for same-sex weddings. The leadership council of the Baptist Union of…

Former president, now professor, reportedly on way out at Louisiana College

A Baptist college in Louisiana is seeking to remove its controversial former president from a teaching position on the faculty, according to a local media report. The Town Talk in Alexandria, La., quoted unnamed sources March 16 saying that Louisiana…

Scalia death a blow to Obamacare contraception challengers

Christian groups asking the U.S. Supreme Court to exempt them from the requirement to provide insurance covering contraception under President Obama’s healthcare law face an uphill battle following Justice Antonin Scalia’s death last month.

Springsteen and Lent: Born in the USA

I always thought Palm Sunday was such a fun day as a child. Each year, the choir or children would enter into the sanctuary waving palm branches to a celebratory hymn of some sort. And each year, someone would awkwardly…

Is Palm Sunday a rainforest killer?

For years, Latin Americans were stripping the landscape bare to sell palm leaves to U.S. florists and churches, until an eco-friendly Guatemala program turned things around.

Survival mode

Survival mode generally does not bring out the best in people. When nearly all of the luxuries of life have been stripped away and all you have left is the choice to survive, those choices are brutal. I’m not a…

Packing in the pews

The latest challenge facing some congregations is deciding whether open carry gun laws should extend to church property — including the sanctuary.

Baptist World Aid director steps down

The director of Baptist World Aid, relief-and-development arm of the Baptist World Alliance, stepped down March 16 after three-and-a-half years on the job, according to a news release. Rothangliani Rema Chhangte, former liaison for Burmese refugees with American Baptist Home…

Theologizing with Larkin Poe, 10 years after Reskinned

Ministry leader with tall tales wins GOP bid for Colorado governor

What Willy Rice once knew

What I learned July 5 at church