Why coercive religious politics undermine Christianity and democracy

PLAINVIEW, Texas (ABP) — A charge that Wayland Baptist University educates and ordains homosexual ministers is false, damaging and almost slanderous, the school's president said. A listener to “Today's Issues,” a program broadcast on the American Family Radio Network, accused…

WASHINGTON (ABP) — Barely a week after their Senate counterparts voted down a proposal to ban same-sex marriages, House members passed legislation using different methods to achieve a similar goal. On July 22, the House voted 233-194 to pass the…

SPRINGDALE, Ark. (ABP) — Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a religious-liberty watchdog organization, filed a complaint July 20 with the IRS against the 14,000-member First Baptist Church of Springdale, Ark., the largest church affiliated with the Arkansas…

TYLER, Texas (ABP) — All groups working with missionaries of the International Mission Board must work within the parameters of the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, IMB trustees decided, and only members of Southern Baptist churches can lead overseas mission…

MACON, Ga. (ABP) — Two Baptist ministers — Republican Cecil Staton and Democrat Ben Taylor — will be campaigning for an open Georgia state Senate seat in the Nov. 2 general election. The newly created district covers parts of five…

WASHINGTON (ABP) — As Congress considered a resolution declaring the ethnic cleansing crisis taking place in western Sudan as genocide, a diverse coalition of religious leaders and congregants protested governmental inaction on the crisis. Around 300 people staged a “die-in”…

(ABP) — Gay marriage and abortion are overshadowing other moral issues in the presidential election, even among Christian voters, who make up the overwhelming majority of the electorate. “It has to do with the nature of our political structure,” said…

VALLEY FORGE, Pa. (ABP) — The American Baptists Churches USA may lose up to a fifth of its missionary force unless its mission agency can raise enough money to overcome its current financial crisis. The head of International Ministries, the…

WASHINGTON (ABP) — The same day a gay-marriage ban failed to move forward in the Senate, a different approach to opposing same-sex nuptials passed a House committee. The House Judiciary Committee voted July 14 to send the Marriage Protection Act…

WASHINGTON (ABP) — As supporters vow to continue the fight for a constitutional amendment banning homosexual marriage, many leading constitutional scholars say an amendment is too drastic a measure. Louis Michael Seidman, professor at Harvard Law School, said the proposed…

WASHINGTON (ABP) — A broad coalition of concerned parties — including Nobel laureates, scientific leaders, foreign countries and American religious denominations — is urging the Supreme Court to ban the death penalty for offenders who were under 18 at the…

HOUSTON (ABP) — Chip Conyers, one of Truett Theological Seminary's first faculty members, died July 18 at the age of 60 in Houston following a long struggle with cancer. Conyers — whose full named was Abdah Johnson Conyers — “possessed…