Baptist News Global

Analysis: Southern Baptists face the future — and an identity crisis

Bill Leonard (ABP) — Institutionally and organizationally, American Protestantism is in a state of permanent transition — and the Southern Baptist Convention is no exception. These days it is clear that fewer religious Americans think of their primary identity in…

Publisher of Ergun Caner’s memoirs stands by demoted seminary head

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (ABP) — A Christian publishing company said it has no plans to pull titles written by a Baptist seminary president recently demoted for making "factual statements that are self-contradictory" in sermons and speeches. After an investigation, Liberty…

ANALYSIS: Southern Baptists face the future — and an identity crisis

(ABP) — Institutionally and organizationally, American Protestantism is in a state of permanent transition — and the Southern Baptist Convention is no exception. These days it is clear that fewer religious Americans think of their primary identity in terms of…

In Grand-Goave, U.S. Baptists offer Haitians a hand with church, clinic

GRAND-GOÂVE, Haiti (ABP) — Michael Akinboro emanates gentleness. Toddlers sit quietly while he checks their breathing. Babies obediently swallow bitter cough syrup. Not one child who comes for diagnosis fusses or cries. Michael Akinboro, a Nigerian-born registered nurse from African…

‘Good News Bible’ translator Bob Bratcher dies

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (ABP) — Robert Bratcher, the New Testament translator for the Good News Bible, died July 11 at the Carol Woods retirement community in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 90. Robert Bratcher Born in Brazil the son of…

The good ‘other’

By Jerrod Hugenot The parable itself is quite unique. In fact, among all of the parables Jesus told as recorded in the four Gospels, this particular parable is one of only four that those who study such things classify as…

Six months after massive earthquake, Haiti still has a long way to go

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (ABP) — Haiti is a country of conspicuous contrasts — a landscape both monochrome and vivid, and a people standing solidly, yet shaken to pieces. Nearly six months after an earthquake rocked Haiti, the island still bears the…

CBF joins national coalition of disaster-relief responders

Tori Wentz, one of CBF's field personnel, provides medical care during a recent mission trip to Haiti. (CBF photo) ATLANTA (ABP) — Five years after organizing a national disaster-relief ministry in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship…

CBF-funded Mercer team to attend to Haiti’s psychological wounds

ATLANTA (ABP) — Six months after the earthquake that devastated Haiti, a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship-funded team of students with Haitian ties and faculty members from Mercer University is seeking to help the country recover from its deep psychological wounds. Reid…

Book signing turns into event

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (ABP) — First it was a T-shirt. Then it was a book. At the recent Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly in Charlotte, N.C., "This is What a Preacher Looks Like" became an event. Sue Fitzgerald, retired director of…

How God sees the Gulf

By Jim Denison A few weeks ago, my wife and I were flying over the Gulf of Mexico. The pilot came over the intercom, suggesting that we look through the windows on the left side of the airplane. We could…

BJC files brief opposing sectarian prayer at government meetings

WASHINGTON (ABP) — The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty filed legal papers July 6 arguing that inviting religious leaders to invoke sectarian prayers at a North Carolina county's board of commissioners meetings is unconstitutional. The BJC filed a friend-of-the-court…

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