Baptist News Global

Church Conflict 101

It’s becoming a weekly conversation. I call it Church Conflict 101. A minister calls and immediately I hear the despair in his voice. “I can’t say anything from the pulpit without someone accusing me of being ‘too political’. What am…

Veterans join religious and human rights groups to call for permanent status for Afghan refugees

Religious, human rights and veterans’ groups are stepping up pressure on Congress to provide a pathway to legal, permanent status for tens of thousands of Afghan refugees evacuated to the U.S. last year. Most of those who escaped the fall…

Addressing war with those who don’t remember 9-11

I work with a variety of young people in a variety of settings. Today in a class in one of those settings, and on impulse, I told the class I wanted to take the temperature of the group. I said,…

Meditation on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

I can almost smell the acrid, thick smoke of diesel engines powering Russian tanks, personnel carriers and trucks hauling heavy artillery into two eastern provinces of Ukraine’s border with Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the two provinces as “independent…

American churches turn to prayer and song in solidarity with Ukraine

On the first Sunday of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, churches across America took to their knees and their feet, and turned to song and silence to utter their prayers for Ukrainians under siege. “When people were sharing their prayer…

White House event celebrates the diversity of Black America

The assumption that enslaved Africans encountered authentic faith only upon their arrival in America is a stereotype that needs to end, Yolanda Pierce, dean of the Howard University School of Divinity, said during a Feb. 23 Black History Month webinar….

The seeds of evangelical angst over gender and sex were sown decades ago

If you want to understand the gender and sexual anxieties of evangelical Christians today, look at the seeds sown in their midst in the 1970s and ’80s, according to a couple of researchers recently posting on the topic. Marlena Graves…

The dangers of being too resistant to change or too eager to change

We typically think of proverbs as sources of guidance about how to live. However, the kind of guidance you can get from a proverb is tricky, since different proverbs appear to give conflicting advice. There’s the admonition to “Look before…

CBF names two search teams for key staff openings

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has named two eight-members teams to search for key staff members. One team will identify needed leadership gifts and structures for the future of CBF Global Missions and serve as a search committee for a coordinator…

Learning to expand the table by becoming an ally

Recently, I was sitting at the local ice cream parlor with my wife and some friends when in walked another family we all knew. My friend Joe immediately got up, went over to an unused table and began to move…

For the first time, CPAC will feature a debate on the death penalty

Death penalty opponents are welcoming news that capital punishment will be debated today during the Feb. 24-27 gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla. “A death penalty discussion at CPAC is further evidence that conservatives are increasingly…

‘The situation here is terrible,’ Ukrainian Baptist leader tells European allies

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is unfolding as the worst possible scenario faith leaders could have envisioned, a Baptist leader said in a Zoom call Thursday, Feb. 24. More than 75 people joined the online conversation organized on short notice…

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