It is midnight. Not the kind of midnight measured by clocks. The kind that settles into your bones. The kind that lingers long after the sun has risen. We all know this midnight. It is the midnight of the marriage...
Summer is known as “annual conference season” for United Methodists in the United States and Europe. It’s a time when the regional units that form the basic structure of the global denomination come together to make decisions for their future….
Churches must tap into the core of their identity, as well as their calling to ministry, commitment to education and religious experience if they are to survive “permanent transition,” church historian Bill Leonard told participants at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s…
Testimony is the cure for the despair that afflicts people and churches after two years of pandemic and politics have tried American religion by fire, Courtney Stamey told participants in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship June 29. While the Southern Baptist…
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 interim bi-vocational pastor. Jonathan Balmer and Kendall Ellis,…
“Quiverfull” is a word I recently learned via the vast educational network of Netflix. “Quiverfull” is a Christian theological position concerning mass reproduction, meaning how many children a man can create. Please hear me. I mean no offense to any…
A lawsuit has been dismissed against McLean Bible Church in suburban Washington, D.C., after apparent resolution of a battle between church leaders and internal critics who believed the conservative evangelical church was becoming too “woke.” The dispute came to a…
We are all called to be mothers of God — for God is always waiting to be born. — Meister Eckart, 13 c. German mystic In the wake of the news that the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned Roe v….
Like the crippled woman in Luke 13, female clergy know what it means to be paralyzed by sexism, patriarchy and other forms of emotional and psychological abuse, Gina Stewart preached during Baptist Women in Ministry’s June 28 worship celebration in…
The red-robed memes started immediately after Friday’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and jumpstarting abortion bans across the country. When I first read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale back in 1985, I certainly could believe some people wanted…
Dear Closeted Queer One: Yes, Pride is for you. I know you look on from a distance — perhaps through the stained-glass of your church window, or from the table of your un-affirming family, or the office where you could…
The Daniel Vestal attending this week’s Cooperative Baptist Fellowship gathering in Dallas is in some ways a very different Christian than he was the first — or even most recent — time he attended a general assembly. That’s because the…
It is hard not to argue that conservative Christians led the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade — whether they be evangelicals, Roman Catholics, Mormons or Eastern Orthodox. Since the rise of the Moral Majority, Paul Weyrich, the Christian Coalition…
