Two parallels and an outlier: Graham Platner, Roy Moore and Donald Trump

The stories of Graham Platner and Roy Moore, although unfolding in different parties and different eras, trace the same institutional pattern: Modern political parties elevate outsiders when they are useful and abandon them when they become inconvenient. Platner and Moore...

Analysis Joe Marlow

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Can conservatives welcome the stranger?

By Zachary Bailes As GOP presidential candidates make their final plea in South Carolina, and as one Texas governor resigns from the race, Christian evangelicals are making their rounds for endorsement. James Dobson and the Family Research Council endorse Rick…

Somebody’s daughter

By Derik Hamby I was at my daughter’s school when her teacher asked, “Did you see what your daughter wrote? All the teachers are coming down to read it.” My daughter is 7 years old and in the first grade…

CBF search committee seeks input

By Lance Wallace A 10-member committee seeking a successor to Daniel Vestal as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship executive coordinator met for the first time in Dallas in early January. The initial meeting focused on members of the group getting acquainted,…

Civil War changed Southern Baptists, historian says

By Bob Allen The American Civil War affected Baptists in the South in profound ways that still reverberate more than 150 years after the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter, says a new book by a Baptist historian. Bruce…

Are Mormons Christian? It’s complicated

Pope gives final approval to controversial lay group

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — After a 15-year process, the Holy See on Jan. 20 gave its final approval to the Neocatechumenal Way, a lay movement that has been criticized for its unorthodox liturgical practices but that has been successful in…

Big-city mayors come out for same-sex marriage

NEW YORK (RNS) — A bipartisan coalition of 80 U.S. mayors on Jan. 20 launched a “Freedom to Marry” campaign to build public support for giving same-sex couples the right to marry under U.S. and state laws. “It is not…

Amish man says home electricity OK if it gets him out of jail

CLEVELAND (RNS) — The leader of an Amish splinter sect who is being held in jail on federal hate crime charges related to a series of beard-cutting attacks says he is not opposed to allowing electricity installed in his home….

Obama holds firm on contraception coverage

NEW YORK (RNS) — The Obama administration said Jan. 20 that it will not broaden the religious exemption in new rules that require employers to provide contraception coverage to employees, a move that angered religious groups and opened a high…