Baptist News Global

Why Christians should support the Equal Rights Amendment

Editor’s note: On Jan. 21, U.S. Representative Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) introduced a resolution in Congress to certify the Equal Rights Amendment. As of last January, the required 38 states have ratified the ERA, but the Trump administration blocked certification of…

A prescription for healing the American church

I’ve been to my share of doctors. Many of those visits happened when I was so young that they have no conscience in my adult brain. My earliest memories were of Dr. Matchett, an orthopedic surgeon who was assigned the…

Lifeway will sell its new headquarters and downsize again

Lifeway Christian Resources has entered into contract to sell the $100 million corporate headquarters it built and occupied in 2017. The Nashville, Tenn.-based publisher of curriculum, books, Bibles and other Christian educational resources began to study the viability of the…

The death penalty is dying a slow death; it’s time we pull the plug

The death penalty is dying in America. I cheer its death. Capital punishment has been abolished in 22 states. Ten of the remaining 28 states have not had an execution in a decade. According to the Death Penalty Information Center,…

‘This Land Is Your Land’ sounds different as an adult today

The music of elementary school never left me. I remember the tinkering incoherence of band instruments, high whistles of the recorder, the school piano at assemblies. But most vividly, I remember the hum of children stirring when my grade six…

United Methodists learning more about Christmas Covenant through videos

A tumultuous January is nearing an end, but for many United Methodists the focus is still on Christmas – a proposal for the church’s future named the “Christmas Covenant” that its organizers call “a gift of hope” for the beleaguered…

What does Pelagius have to do with Josh Hawley and white nationalism?

An old idiom, usually attributed to Oscar Wilde, says that irony is wasted on stupid people. But not everyone who fails to appreciate irony is a mindless dolt. Some of them are quite clever, aiming their malformed wit in the…

Amid the hypocrisy of critiquing ‘unity,’ maybe we need a different goal: Cooperation

We need to debunk the argument that achieving “unity” means everyone will get their way. That’s not logically possible. This fallacious thinking is emerging as a primary conservative critique of the new administration in Washington, D.C. And once again, it…

Half of pastors say their congregants are spreading conspiracy theories

The bigger, whiter and more conservative the church, the more likely its members are to believe and share conspiracy theories, according to a new survey by LifeWay. “Christian churches resolve to be places focused on the truth,” said Scott McConnell,…

The ongoing epidemic of pornography in the church

My first experience with porn was vacuuming cars in my dad’s service station. I was about 10 at the time, and I found magazines under some of the customer’s company cars which had naked women on almost every page. My…

United States still excels at religious freedom, but the rest of the world suffers, international expert says in BNG webinar

Government restrictions on in-person church gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic have been inconvenient, disruptive and possibly even illegal in some instances, but they are not examples of religious persecution as some American faith leaders have claimed, an expert on global…

Think you understand what it’s like to live on minimum wage? Here’s my story

Two weeks before I got married, I lost my job delivering pizzas because I had gotten three tickets for minor traffic violations over the previous two years. So when we got back from our honeymoon, I landed a job working…

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