Baptist News Global

Why I have empathy for Karen Swallow Prior

“I’ve been struggling with regret lately, specifically in feeling like I wasted my whole academic career (given how things have turned out),” tweeted Karen Swallow Prior three months after resigning from the faculty of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. When she announced her…

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is wrong about Martin Luther King and affirmative action

After the Supreme Court of the United States struck down affirmative action admission programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued the following post on Twitter. As Martin Luther King Jr said,…

Maybe there’s a hidden message in Fall Out Boy’s cover of ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’

Fans are offering mixed reviews of pop-punk band Fall Out Boy’s new cover of Billy Joel’s song “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” which dropped last Wednesday. Originally released in September 1989, Joel’s song offers a chronological crash course of notable…

CBF adopts expanded budget, fills governance vacancies, receives challenges

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship approved a mission and ministry budget increase of almost 5%, elected slates of nominees for vacant governance positions, bestowed awards, and heard challenges and affirmations from key leaders during the CBF General Assembly June 30. Participants…

Embracing a queer spirituality would have freed me from years of anguish, self-doubt and self-loathing

I was a junior in college, studying religion and serving as a youth minister when I first encountered the Southern Baptist Convention’s vitriol against women. Although a Southern Baptist church employed me, a not-yet-out queer woman, as a youth minister…

Alleged mastermind of Rwandan massacre inside church arrested 30 years later

Fulgence Kayishema — Africa’s most wanted man — was arrested in Cape Town, South Africa, five weeks ago after spending 30 years on the run. That one of the world’s biggest war-crimes suspects lived freely shines a spotlight on why…

MAGA followers are not stupid

The stupid epidemic has arrived. Entire Christian denominations insist there is only one way to read the Bible, and they expel anyone daring to dissent. Politicians and the media reach for the accusation of “stupid” out of the intractable arguments….

Lessons from Cicero on America’s 247th birthday

I am reading the Roman statesman-philosopher Cicero these days. You might ask why in the world that dusty old personage should be occupying my thoughts. The answer is that, as part of the preparation of my new book on democracy,…

American Baptists reaffirm and celebrate women in ministry

Editor’s note: This article has been expanded and updated from its original version. The board of directors of American Baptist Home Mission Societies issued a statement June 24 saying it “wholeheartedly affirms women pastors.” And last week’s biennial meeting…

Supreme Court says evangelical web designer doesn’t have to serve same-sex couples

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Lorie Smith, an evangelical graphic artist who says she wants to create wedding websites and is “willing to work with all people” but not same-sex couples. Her free-speech case was based…

Another megachurch leaves the SBC

Another megachurch where a woman has preached has left the Southern Baptist Convention. Elevation Church in Charlotte, N.C., led by Pastor Steven Furtick and his wife, Holly, voluntarily withdrew from the SBC just two weeks after the denomination voted to…

Baptist Women in Ministry marks 40th anniversary by blessing women cast out by the SBC

Meredith Stone opened Baptist Women in Ministry’s 40th anniversary celebration dinner with spontaneous and scathing remarks about the Southern Baptist Convention’s continuing assault on female clergy. “Forty years later and we are still talking about the SBC,” quipped Stone, BWIM’s…

‘Be careful of Scripture heavy in law but light on grace,’ Wesley warns

‘Show up and do something,’ ACLU leader urges

From the South Side to the South Lawn and back again

Democracy as a moral practice, not just a system