Baptist News Global

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,’…

Things fall apart. Is democracy one of them?

It feels like 1971. That was a bad year for libraries. Bad year for America. Hippies burning library cards. Abbie Hoffman telling everybody to steal books. And smirking funny boy Jerry Seinfeld checking out a book from the New York…

Unholy vows, endangered women and Texas abortion politics

Old Testament scholar Phyllis Trible names it one of the “texts of terror” in the Hebrew Scriptures: Jephthah, a Gileadite general, is facing a decisive battle with the Ammonites. He makes a vow to God: If you give me the…

Three educators push back against Florida law targeting trans and nonbinary teachers

Three educators have filed suit against Florida over a 2023 law permitting the decertification and termination of nonbinary and transgender teachers who use preferred pronouns and titles in the performance of their jobs. The Southern Poverty Law Center and its…

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