Baptist News Global

Human Right & Wrongs: Christians should defend rights, ethicist says

ATLANTA (ABP) — Concern about human rights means biblically grounded compassion for oppressed people — not a selfish desire to protect one’s own property or prestige, Baptist ethicist Glen Stassen told a recent meeting of religious leaders concerned about torture….

God-talk and conservative politics

By David Gushee Every so often, conservative evangelical politicians, military officials, or ministers are quoted describing the outcome of an election, the actions of the United States, or the deeds of its president or its troops as if they are…

Human rights and wrongs

ATLANTA — Most evangelical American Christians remained silent about torture at Abu Ghraib and Guan-tanamo for some of the same reasons European Christians 70 years ago largely failed to resist the Holocaust, ethicist David Gushee told a na-tional summit on…

Poll: On torture, evangelicals not looking to Bible

ATLANTA (ABP) — A new survey suggests the very Americans who claim to follow the Bible most assiduously don't consult it when forming their views about torture and government policy. The poll of 600 Southern white evangelicals was released in…

Not all coercive force is torture, Baptist ethicist insists

Debate over the morality of coercive force would be served better if everyone involved quit using the word “torture” altogether, said Daniel Heimbach, professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. “The problem here is that in hotly debating…

Torture fails to ensure national security, experts insist

ATLANTA — Retired high-ranking military officers and national security experts at a national summit on torture agreed — a policy that permits torture does not make the United States or its troops safer. Speaking on the seventh anniversary of terrorist…

Declaration calls for presidential executive order on torture

Evangelicals for Human Rights, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and the Center for Victims of Torture have drafted a declaration of principles its members want to see the next president include in an executive order on prisoner treatment, torture…

Human rights rooted in Bible, not political philosophy

ATLANTA — Concern about hu-man rights means biblically grounded compassion for oppressed people — not a selfish desire to protect one's own property or prestige, Baptist ethicist Glen Stassen told the National Summit on Torture. “It has been the defenders…

Tortured suffer lasting effects in body & soul, experts say

ATLANTA (ABP) — Nearly two decades ago, Dianna Ortiz says, Guatemalan security forces abducted her and took her to a clandestine prison where she was gang-raped; burned more than 100 times with cigarettes; forced to cut another woman with a…

Metaxas calls Bonhoeffer’s relatives ‘Jew-hating lunatics’

North Carolina pastor abruptly forced out of prominent pulpit

Responding to the militarization of immigration policy

Meddling with Methodism and domesticating the Baptists