Baptist News Global

Dear Willy Rice: We’re sorry to hear how you’ve been treated

Dear Willy, We’re sorry. We know we don’t know each other but we’re your brothers in Christ. As former Southern Baptists, we’re deeply sorry about how you have been treated over the past few days. We don’t understand the complexities…

Letter to the editor: Evangelicals — save an unborn baby or save a soul?

Letter to the Editor April 7, 2022 Dear Editor: Evangelicals are going to have a lot of explaining to do when we meet the Heavenly Father. We have gotten so entangled in the anti-abortion movement, and subsequently in the Republican…

SBC presidency is a three-way race again with Barber announcement

It took less than 24 hours to fill the gap left when Florida pastor Willy Rice pulled out of the race for Southern Baptist Convention president April 6. The three-way race became a two-way race and now once again is…

Against the odds, the SBC is experiencing a double-digit increase in giving

On the heels of a global pandemic and amid its own multi-faceted schism, the Southern Baptist Convention is experiencing something few could have predicted: Financial gifts to the SBC for the 2021-2022 fiscal year are up — way up. The…

Living in the highlight zone

“I’m not actually in the line, sir,” he said with a smile framed beautifully on the topside by a well-trimmed, white mustache that matched exactly in tone and texture his full, snowy head of hair above. “I’m just waiting on…

End of Title 42 is popular with immigration advocates but not so much with voters

Immigrant rights groups continue to praise a White House and Centers for Disease Control decision to end Title 42, the anti-COVID health provision used to conduct mass deportations of asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. The American public, on the…

In the war of words over guns, ‘wisdom is better than weapons of war’

We fight the “gun battle” in many ways. Some hurl statistics like darts, trying to puncture the other side’s position. Their opponents are adept at this, too, reminding us: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics”…

Willy Rice no longer a candidate for SBC presidency

Three days after preaching a sermon in which he defended a deacon recently removed from church leadership because of confessed sexual abuse 17 years ago, Willy Rice announced April 6 he no longer will stand as a candidate for the…

Has God really ‘staked everything on men’?

If you want to understand how extreme the male-dominance wing of the Southern Baptist Convention has become, consider this March 30 social media post from Owen Strachan: “God has staked everything on men. Strong men are the foundation of a…

Americans with disabilities face unemployment and poverty rates twice the national average

The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush July 26, 1990. For the first time in U.S. history, an invocation was offered at such an event. Harold Wilke, a minister in the United Church…

Exiles in Babylon conference gets so much right but can’t apply its logic about race to sexuality

While many conservative evangelicals focus on fighting culture wars in an attempt to save the United States from progressive ideologies, New York Times bestselling author Preston Sprinkle seems to have accepted that Christians should reimagine their identity as exiles rather…

Don’t become complacent to the needs of Ukrainians, BWAid leader urges

Christians mustn’t become complacent about the spiritual and physical needs of Ukrainians and those ministering to them as the war with Russia grinds on, said Marsha Scipio, the leader of global aid efforts for the Baptist World Alliance. “Even though…

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