“They stole $77,000. And that was all of my savings.” Her voice was so soft I (Doug) had to lean in to hear her. “I’ve talked with the local police, the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission. The money is...
One of the most outspoken critics of the Southern Baptist Convention’s handling of alleged clergy sexual abuse has been named a special adviser to the seven-member task force mandated by messengers to this summer’s SBC annual meeting. In 2019, Rachael…
Participants in the Southern Baptist Convention’s in-person annual meeting in Nashville in mid-June are asked to notify Tennessee health officials if they came down with COVID-19 after attending the enormous gathering. A small but notable cluster of coronavirus infections has…
Doing nothing is one of the main ways Karen Wilson, an Australian pastor and president of Baptist World Alliance Women, stays sharp for ministry, she told a virtual gathering of the Baptist World Alliance World Congress. “For me, doing nothing…
Baptist churches must work together and with other religious and civic organizations to have a positive impact on the mental illness pandemic that is destroying lives and communities around the world, a Jamaican psychologist said on the opening day of…
It has been a wonderful relief to many of us to encounter the sheer normality of the Biden presidency, which is now six months old. This is a president who proposes actual policies to address obvious public needs, negotiates with…
From 1957 until he retired, my Pop owned and operated a service station in Meridian, Miss. That occupation, life work and calling were scripted for him by the economic reality that he and most of his seven brothers left school…
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Southern Baptist Convention are among a coalition of faith groups applauding the recent repeal of a government rule that they believe would have expanded predatory lending. Opposition to payday lending and other forms of…
The 122nd global gathering of the Baptist World Alliance begins July 8 — a year later than originally planned and online due to the continuing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. BWA announced the virtual version of its three-day World Congress…
I still remember the hot, sticky spit sliding down my frozen face. School had just let out at the elementary school in Yellowknife in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The year was 1963, give or take. I was standing beside a big…
I just finished a call with an old friend of mine — “old” not in the sense of his age but in the sense that our active friendship grew dormant more than a quarter of a century ago. Space fails…
“Borrowing” someone else’s sermon is one of the top four ways pastors get fired from churches, according to Thom Rainer, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s publishing arm and a noted interpreter of modern Christianity. Rainer made that statement…
Author Susan K. Williams Smith was sickened to learn that a passage from the New Testament inspired Samuel Bowers’ to launch the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s. Smith’s new book, With Liberty and Justice…
