Baptist News Global

Intolerable cruelty is killing us

In 2003, the Coen brothers released their romantic comedy Intolerable Cruelty. The movie wasn’t great. In fact, it’s entirely forgettable, which is why I was surprised I remembered it at all. After reading the news lately, though, I’m now convinced…

Louisville police training quoted Bible verse to say officers are God’s agents of wrath

The police department that wrongly shot Breonna Taylor dead in her own apartment in 2020 had trained its officers just three years earlier that they are avengers who carry out “God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” New reporting by the Louisville,…

Another racist mass shooting and our failure to tend Jesus’ sheep

In worship on May 1, Village Baptist Church read together the words of Jesus when he asks his disciple, “Peter, do you love me?” When Peter responds to Jesus, “Of course, Lord, you know that I love you,” Jesus gives…

Transitions for the week of 5-20-22

Please submit transitions — including staff changes, ordinations, anniversaries or deaths — to Barbara Francis. This page will be updated bi-weekly. STAFF CHANGES Jennifer Campbell, to First Baptist Church, Washington, D.C., as minister to youth and families. Casey Carlton, to Blackwood…

Learning about change from Henry Ford

Henry Ford’s influence on the automobile industry and, through it, much of modern history is well known. Most people probably could tell you that Ford and his employees perfected the assembly-line method of producing automobiles. It is demonstrably true that…

‘It’s still the economy, stupid’

Think what you will about the raging culture wars, but that’s not the major driver of public opinion today any more than it was when Bill Clinton first ran for president in 1992. That’s when Clinton campaign analyst James Carville…

Hymn stories: ‘Christ is alive! Let Christians sing’

Listen! Can you still hear the echo of our Easter Sunday “alleluias” and “Christ is risen. He is risen indeed”? As we journey through Eastertide, these ecstatic outbursts and responses may be growing fainter. “Christ is Alive! Let Christians Sing”…

Pennsylvania Baptist church licenses transgender man for ministry

A recent lay ministry licensing ceremony capped a multi-year ordeal for Joel Dugan, a 63-year-old transgender man who overcame the rejection of a Baptist association to live into his calling to serve his church and the LGBTQ community. The feeling…

Gifts of hospitality in the midst of grief

I’ve known two fundamental truths about myself since I was little: I am adopted, and I am Latina. A birth heritage of Mexican descent always has felt like an important piece of who I am. I was adopted at birth…

Bubba-Doo’s gets a new sign

In the early morning air, the trip to the hospital took on an urgency all its own. Somehow, the crispness of a breath outside at 6:30 a.m. merely punctuated the departure from normal. I was headed to the city for…

Buffalo massacre is more evidence of white Christian nationalism, sociologists say

The May 14 grocery store massacre in Buffalo, N.Y., was a demonstration of how white Christian nationalist ideology energizes all kinds of violence, two sociologists said during a webinar hosted by the group Christians Against Christian Nationalism. Samuel Perry and…

Why American democracy is threatened in Ukraine

American democracy is endangered in the most unlikely of places: Ukraine. Events swirling around the Russian invasion of Ukraine have implications for our own freedom. I have no interest in conjuring the apocalyptic visions of rapture believers, but I do…

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