Baptist News Global

Even a majority of white evangelical Protestants now favors discrimination protections for LGBTQ persons

Significant majorities of U.S. religious groups favor nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans, including well more than half of white evangelicals, according to a new report from Public Religion Research Institute. The study was released March 23 as the U.S. Senate…

In Atlanta, more denial of persistent racism

It has become increasingly evident that too many conservative evangelical Christians are actively engaged in a calamitous campaign of denial about the persistent nature of racism in our society. The recent mass murder of Asian women in the Atlanta area…

VA chaplains have learned that mental health providers and clergy need to talk more and trust each other

As Steve Sullivan and psychologists convened small groups of mental health providers and clergy over the past two years, they learned that lack of trust creates barriers to integrated care. Armed with a grant from Bristol Myers Squibb, VA Mental…

From COVID to post-COVID: A ritual to mark the transition

Serving as pastor of a church in the Tampa Bay area, it seemed appropriate to have a life-sized cardboard cutout of Tom Brady at church the morning before Brady would lead the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to win the Super Bowl….

Ministry Jobs and more

Baptist News Global provides a free listing of ministry-related jobs for Baptist churches, theological institutions and organizations across the United States. Each free posting is for 30 days and is limited to 150 words. Postings may be extended another 30…

Arkansas church creates innovative program to declare jubilee for those in need

When plans to return to their church building for Advent were canceled by the ongoing pandemic, the congregation of Pulaski Heights Baptist Church turned their attention from inward to outward and ultimately declared Jubilee. Beginning in mid-March, the Little Rock,…

It was a bad week for women, but it wasn’t unusual

In case you didn’t notice, women had a very bad week. In Georgia, a Southern Baptist man shot and killed eight people, six of whom were women of Asian descent, because he wanted to eliminate temptation because of his sex…

The stars are lining up for Middle Church’s fire rebuilding fundraiser this week

A constellation of stars has been assembled to help guide Middle Collegiate Church in New York City from the ashes of its historic building destroyed by fire Dec. 5. Located in the city’s iconic East Village, the congregation claims numerous…

My journey toward LGBTQ inclusion: God still speaks

As a cisgendered heterosexual male, my own sexuality was not a problem in the Southern Baptist faith of my youth and young adulthood. Having come of age with the Moral Majority, though, I cannot remember a time when the question…

A vote is ‘a kind of prayer,’ Warnock says in first Senate speech

A vote is “a kind of prayer,” Baptist pastor Raphael Warnock said in his first speech on the Senate floor as a newly elected legislator. The March 17 speech was a blistering call to protect voting rights and a critique…

Finding our way out of the rubble

Lent isn’t over just yet, and we could do with a bit more reflection and repentance as a church and a nation. But spring is arriving. I can see it dawning over the horizon, pinkish yellow as it seeps into…

The righteous and the wicked: The progressive Baptist quest for a new gospel

For decades, progressive white Baptists have opened leadership roles at the highest level to women and people of color. But Black Baptists have shown a greater willingness to affiliate with the conservative Southern Baptist Convention than with more moderate groups…

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