Baptist News Global

Here’s the truth: Project Veritas had a rough 2023

This article was significantly updated Jan. 9 based on new information from Project Veritas. Project Veritas, a right-wing group that promised to expose the truth about liberal groups through undercover operations, secret videos, misinformation and conspiracy theories, saw its…

What Bob Menendez, Donald Trump, Joe Biden and immigration have to do with Cuba’s troubling times

“Bob, I gotta to talk to you about Cuba,” President Biden said to Sen. Bob Menéndez (D-N.J.), then chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, following the chief executive’s State of the Union address last February. “I’m serious.” The remarks, caught…

How to find your way home: Confessions of a workaholic

My wife clocked out of her state job for the last time recently. She is now officially retired. It’s good timing, as she’s needed to help her mother care for her father, who is in hospice care. Recently, my wife…

Can Christianity be deinstitutionalized?

My all-time favorite movie is The Shawshank Redemption starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. This classic prison film tells the story of Andy Dufresne, a banker falsely convicted of the double murder of his wife and her lover. A profound…

AI ‘deep fakes’ are creating a new way of violating women’s privacy on the internet

Most people know of AI as a tool that will write papers, complete assignments or generate streams of content at the click of a button, like ChatGPT. Debates about the pros and cons of AI have been in conversation for…

This San Antonio bookshop owner hopes to bring faith conversations off the pages to real life

Jillian Mason Shannon has had such great experiences in church that she wanted to pass her love of community and theology along to those who have been estranged from Christianity but remain intellectually and spiritually curious. “I have only had…

We face a cultural crisis, not just a political one

As Jeanie and I danced the night away in Atlanta on New Year’s Eve — yes, we actually did that, although I admit I ended up with a twisted knee, a sadly predictable outcome for a man of my rapidly…

Mercer University sets records for enrollment growth and ethnic diversity

As universities nationwide seek to diversify their student bodies — sometimes against the backdrop of political mandates not to talk about diversity and equity — one Baptist school in the Deep South continues to succeed year after year. Fall enrollment…

Things I would tell my younger self

Sometimes when I’m watching the news, there’ll be a story about an older woman being mugged or a grandma being held hostage. “A 63-old grandmother was severely injured today,” the newscaster will intone with all the gravity due the harming…

Look for battles over transgender care for minors to accelerate in 2024

“At least 510 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced in state legislatures across the United States last year — a new record, according to American Civil Liberties Union data as of Dec. 21. That’s nearly three times the number of such bills introduced in…

The roots of white evangelical desperation

The base of the Republican Party is controlled by white evangelical voters, people who punch above their weight because they have been reduced to utter despair. Animals are particularly dangerous when cornered or wounded, and American white evangelicals are both….

Baptist scholar speaking and writing about her experience in psychedelics trials

When Baptist scholar Jaime Clark-Soles agreed to participate in a 2017 Johns Hopkins University study on the effects of psychedelics on spirituality, her friends and colleagues didn’t have the same vision she did. “I got, ‘Don’t do it,’ ‘It’s terrible,’…

Y’all means all

Religious liberty ‘is not a sword to harm others,’ Laser says

The stories we tell define us

Whatever happened to heaven?