Baptist News Global

Transitions for the week of 1-7-22

Please submit transitions — including staff changes, ordinations, anniversaries or deaths — to Barbara Francis. This page will be updated bi-weekly. STAFF CHANGES David Berg, concluding his tenure as minister to preschool and children at First Baptist Church, Murfreesboro, Tenn. Nathan…

One year after Jan. 6, some things are worth dividing over

In his classic work Why I Am a Christian, the late Anglican theologian John Stott prophetically penned gloomy words that, at the time, mostly fell on deaf ears. “The technocratic society, which diminishes and even destroys transcendence and significance,” Stott…

Next BNG webinar will feature conversation with David Gushee on his new primer on Christian ethics

BNG columnist David Gushee will join BNG Executive Director Mark Wingfield for a Jan. 14 webinar discussing Gushee’s new book, Introducing Christian Ethics. The webinar — beginning at 9 a.m. Central/10 a.m. Eastern — is free but advance registration is…

How Hagar shows us the meaning of divine motherhood

When thinking about the importance of motherhood in the Bible, many readers can name a few women who mothered prominent sons throughout Israelite and Jewish history. Women like Mary or Sarah, whose stories are well-known in Sunday school classes and…

Dis-membered denominations: Forgetting who we are

In 1990, in God’s Last and Only Hope: The Fragmentation of the Southern Baptist Convention, I wrote: Growing up Southern Baptist once seemed relatively easy. Elaborate denominational programs created a surprising uniformity among an otherwise diverse and highly individualistic constituency….

The limits of my right to be unlimited

Some time ago a number of people — I among them — were troubled by a cell phone TV ad that projected the idea that, “I need, no, I have the right to be unlimited.” The disturbing aspect for me…

Bumgardner named spring Clemons Fellow for BNG

David Bumgardner of Fort Worth, Texas, has been named a Clemons Fellow with Baptist News Global for the spring semester 2022. He already is well-known to regular BNG readers as an opinion writer, having authored one of the most-read opinion…

Baylor preparing to launch master’s degree in theology, ecology and food justice

It should come as no surprise that Jennifer Howell, director of a program blending environmental and theological studies at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary, perceives deep spiritual dimensions in the tilling of soil. “You recognize you are vulnerable to something bigger…

Beth Moore is not the first Baptist to journey to the Anglican Church

When Beth Moore left the Southern Baptist Convention in 2021 and soon after was seen in a photo serving Communion at an Anglican church, the social media outrage became a reminder that few people seem to rile up Southern Baptist…

Vocal critic of SBC leadership leaves denomination over social justice agenda and Litton

One of the most conservative public voices within the Southern Baptist Convention announced Jan. 4 that his Georgia church has left the SBC. Josh Buice is pastor of Pray’s Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Ga., and founder of an online…

Thoughts on crossing the threshold to a new year

When I was a boy, it happened every New Year’s morning. My father would wake me up early and we would get in his truck and set out to meet most of his seven brothers for coffee and conversation at…

The ‘MAGA faction’ could be a hindrance for multiracial congregations

One of the prized goals of evangelical and mainline churches in America today is to create multiethnic congregations. But the same political trends that are making life difficult for pastors also bode ill for multicultural churches. New research published Jan….

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