Baptist News Global

Transitions for the week of 9-9-22

Please submit transitions — including staff changes, ordinations, anniversaries or deaths — to Barbara Francis. This page will be updated bi-weekly. STAFF CHANGES Neal Abbott, to Dellview Baptist Church, San Antonio, Texas, as pastor. Jonathon Acosta, to Eagle Eyrie Baptist Conference…

Queer Christian artist Semler wants to attend the Dove Awards as somebody’s plus-one

With their album The Preacher’s Kid, Semler was the first openly queer Christian artist to climb to No. 1 album on the Christian music charts just last year. Within the same year, Semler released a second No. 1 album titled…

The troubled waters of sexual diversity: Moving from reflection to action

This is the seventh and final article in a series on sexual diversity. If we were profiling you, a reader of Baptist News Global, our profile would look something like this: You are English-language literate; college-educated, probably with some graduate…

A friend defends Matt Chandler, the elders issue a statement, and nothing else is any clearer

If you thought the Matt Chandler situation couldn’t get more peculiar, guess again. Chandler’s Aug. 28 announcement that he would take an indefinite leave of absence from preaching and teaching at The Village Church north of Dallas has generated endless…

Faith communities are undergoing upheaval, awakening and maybe transformation

Something is happening in the religious and spiritual universe. Many people, if they care about religion at all, have noticed the changing face of religion and spirituality in the United States and throughout the world. Most Americans consider themselves spiritual,…

Vaccine hesitancy is not a matter of doctrine, but for some it remains a matter of faith

One-fifth of the United States population remains unvaccinated against COVID-19, and one-third are not fully vaccinated. The gap between the vaccinated and unvaccinated remains for much the same reason that has been true from the beginning: Those least likely to…

‘Radical new arrangements’: On conservative Christian radicalization in the U.S.

After a year of researching the matter rather deeply — including listening to conservative scholars, activists and politicians — it has become completely clear to me that a significant chunk of conservative Christians in the United States has moved from…

An entire city with no water doesn’t fit the playbook for disaster relief organizations

When the capital city of Mississippi had no running water for an entire week, government agencies came to the rescue with water distribution outlets, but some of the major faith-based disaster relief organizations were nowhere to be found. Why? The…

Baldwin, Bobby and the necessity of hard conversations

I’ve been engaging in hard conversations about race for the past seven years. Sometimes I’m asked if they matter, if anything can change hearts and minds. Not long ago, a friend who is a devout Christian and a person of…

He served on the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, and now he’s rallying conservatives to oppose the death penalty

A former member of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board has helped launch a new anti-death penalty group to educate fellow conservatives and lobby state lawmakers about the flaws of capital punishment. The new branch of Conservatives Concerned About the…

What transactional sexuality could teach us about Matt Chandler’s odd leave of absence and confession

Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church north of Dallas, has recently taken an indefinite leave of absence after exchanging direct messages on Instagram with a woman who is not his wife. Although he states that the messages were not…

Pandemic exposed injustices, but those lessons are fading away, research shows

The realities of racial, economic and gender injustice exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic began to fade from consciousness only a year later, according to researcher Eileen Campbell-Reed. During the first two years of the coronavirus outbreak, the Baptist theologian and…

An American experiment: 250 years of trying

10 reasons America is not a ‘Christian nation’

American Dominion traces deep roots of Seven Mountain Mandate

Lindsey Graham and the history of ‘widow’s succession’