When we — Baptists and Methodists — were all evangelical

It may now seem surprising to many United Methodists, and even more Baptists, that for most of our histories in the United States, all Methodists and Baptists were regularly designated as evangelical denominations. The most important reason is that both...

Analysis Lovett H. Weems Jr.

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American Baptists seeking buyer for Mission Center

By Bob Allen The American Baptist Churches USA has issued a briefing document to assess interest of potential buyers of the denomination’s national offices in metropolitan Philadelphia. 588 Associates, a corporation tasked with potential sale or redevelopment of the American…

Three Southern Baptists running for president

By Bob Allen A third Southern Baptist entered the 2016 presidential race when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) threw his hat into the ring June 1. Graham, who announced his candidacy at a rally in his hometown of Central, S.C., joins…

Faith leaders oppose drone attacks

By Bob Allen American Baptist and Alliance of Baptist officials joined 27 other religious leaders in a recent open letter to President Obama opposing lethal drone strikes by the U.S. military. Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh leaders said estimates…

Pope heads to Bosnia as ‘brother messenger of peace’

Denominational leader, pastor Phil Lineberger dead at 69

By Ken Camp Phil Lineberger, pastor of Sugar Land Baptist Church near Houston and former president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, died May 31. He was 69. Lineberger “lost a battle with depression and took his own life,”…

The limits of religious-freedom protections

Is Mark Driscoll planning a comeback?

Church of England group wants to call God a ‘she’

Scalia does a u-turn on religious liberty

Congregational shifts are unsettling but essential

By Amy Butler It’s the first anniversary of my work as pastor at my church. To mark the occasion, I think it’s only appropriate to write a bit about — change. I think it would be a fairly objective statement…

Let’s bring back blue laws to increase church attendance?

Should we bring back Blue Laws to increase our Sunday worship attendance? No, but the thought of it does raise some interesting questions. What were Blue Laws? Actually there are still some around so “was” is not in every place…

10 reasons even committed church attenders are attending church less often

It comes up in a surprising number of conversations these days. And no one’s quite sure how to respond to it. The issue? Even committed church attenders are attending church less often. Sure, the trend has been happening for years…