Baptist News Global

As SBC moves toward second vote on Law Amendment, debate continues on just what it means

Just how restrictive will the Southern Baptist Convention become if messengers to next summer’s SBC annual meeting approve a second reading of a proposed constitutional amendment against women in ministry? It depends on who’s doing the explaining. One of the…

What I learned teaching incarcerated white students about structural racism

Note: This is the final in a three-part series by Chris Caldwell about his work in Kentucky prisons. The course I taught this summer in two Kentucky prisons was one I created a couple years ago at our HBCU:…

Jack Tales: Remembering Jack Causey

Growing up in Southern Appalachia, I was reared on what the mountain and foothill people called Jack Tales. Stories involving a young protagonist who finds himself in a world that sounds familiar but is filled with the unfamiliar. Jack’s adventures…

Hawks and Felton to lead CBF advocacy efforts

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is expanding its advocacy work with the addition of two new staff members announced Nov. 30. Jennifer Hawks, associate general counsel for Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C., has been named CBF’s director…

The horror of Let Us Prey may not be as far from home as you think

“Every IFB church is a powder keg ready to explode,” says Eric Skwarczynski on Let Us Prey: A Ministry of Scandals, which released last weekend on HBO Max and Investigation Discovery. The four-part docuseries follows the stories of sexual abuse survivors…

How churches can participate in the Indigenous Land Back movement and why they should

In 1777, Cherokee statesman Kaiyahtehee, also known as “Old Tassel,” arrived at Fort Henry near the Long Island in the Holston River to negotiate a treaty with commissioners from the state of North Carolina. The treaty would give America land…

30 years ago, RFRA passed with support from a broad coalition unimaginable today

It’s difficult to imagine in today’s bitterly divided America the political, religious and civic alliance that helped pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993, said Amanda Tyler, executive director of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. “This coalition was…

Are our churches prepared for Christian autocracy?

A 1638 treatise titled A Discourse about Civil Government in a new Plantation whose design is Religion, written in response to the founding of New Haven, Conn., contained this definition of a properly Christianized government: Theocracy, or to make the…

Even on January 6, family was important to Mike Pence

Family is so important to Mike Pence that his wife and daughter were by his side the entire day of January 6, as insurrectionists sought to take his life at the U.S. Capitol. “Not very many people know my wife,…

On the SBC, Alliance and CBF and lost causes

The histories we tell ourselves about our churches and denominations are important. They shape organizational identities and give greater meaning to the work churches and denominations conduct in the wider world. When those histories become deeply engrained, they can morph…

Transitions for the week of 12-1-23

Please submit transitions — including staff changes, ordinations, anniversaries or deaths — to Barbara Francis. This page will be updated bi-weekly. The next posting of Transitions will be 12-29-23. STAFF CHANGES Amantha L. Barbee, to PneuMatrix and the Center for…

‘Pastor Johnny’ wins a bid to unseal Guidepost documents

Of the more than two dozen legal cases currently pending in courts against the Southern Baptist Convention or its entities, one takes particular aim at the work of Guidepost Solutions, the independent researcher that produced the scathing report of mishandled…

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