Baptist News Global

What makes a genuine apology?

When my daughters were playing a ton of soccer, we noticed something interesting: They and their teammates apologized a lot. They apologized to their own teammates after making an errant pass, they apologized to the opposing player after a physical play,…

As a woman called to ministry, my heart is broken, and the wound is very old

Two days after I learned that the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee formally voted to remove St. Matthews Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., from denominational membership, my chest began to hurt. Right in my sternum, there was pain I can…

Next BNG webinar unpacks successful faith-based drive to end death penalty in Virginia

A look behind the scenes at how the faith community helped navigate passage of Virginia’s historic repeal of the death penalty will be the topic of Baptist News Global’s next free webinar. The March 29 webinar will feature a discussion…

What I learned working in a Texas prison: Retribution, not reformation

I served as a pastor for 33 years and then worked nearly six years as a counselor at the most high-profile maximum-security prison in Texas. There, I ran the mental health department, nestled in the prison infirmary, which serves all…

My phone and I need to talk

I have begun to suspect that some of what I read is not even true. I tell myself that I am checking the news, but it is not always new or important. I read news that is not quite news…

When COVID shut down this church’s 26-year theatrical run, they made a movie instead

For 25 years, a Baptist congregation in Brooklyn, N.Y., staged a theatrical production exposing the trans-Atlantic slave trade in all-too tragic and graphic detail. When the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the annual production of “The MAAFA: A Healing Journey,” St. Paul…

Is the Beth Moore Effect a feminist awakening?

Beth Moore’s recent defection from the Southern Baptist Convention has been a long time coming. Moore built her career modeling Southern Baptist, submissive womanhood, but her public witness has challenged the gender roles that she, until very recently, defended. Moore’s…

How to shrink your church

There are few things in life one can guarantee. Nevertheless, here’s one for which I’m very close to issuing written guarantees. When your aspiration is to shrink your church, there’s one strategy that stands head and shoulders above all others….

Why Beth Moore’s departure from the SBC really matters

In its own year of racial reckoning, the Southern Baptist Convention just awoke to a high-profile gender reckoning as well. Beth Moore, the popular Bible study teacher and author who for years has maintained the line of being a “teacher”…

Are you sure that all lives matter?

I have struggled for the past several years with understanding how so many Christians can support politicians and preachers with glaring, public moral failings. I’ve been discipled in Christian values my entire life, and what I observe with many Christians…

Experts call for African and American synergy in tackling climate change

American’s aren’t the only ones watching the Biden administration with hope for realistic confrontation of climate change. Africans are among the global community now hoping the United States will step up to help save the planet. “The science of climate…

Francesco will restore your faith in a broken church

Pope Francis made a historic trip to Iraq over the weekend and created waves by sitting down with Iraq’s leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in Najaf, Iraq. Popes in my lifetime have done some remarkable things in attempts…

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