Baptist News Global

Central Seminary offers free Advent resource for congregations

A free Advent resource for congregations in this season of pandemic discernment is available thanks to a Lilly Endowment grant administered by Central Baptist Theological Seminary and Pinnacle Associates. “Preparing to Hear God’s Call” is a new downloadable Advent resource…

Cynical hostility linked to greater risk of cardiovascular disease

Heart health has something to do with attitude, according to a new Baylor University study on stress and cardiovascular disease. The most deadly attitude is “cynical hostility,” according to the study, which was published in the journal Psychophysiology. That carrying a hostile…

Six ideas for decolonizing Thanksgiving

Baptists in the United States have had a complicated relationship with Indigenous people since Roger Williams fled Salem, Mass., and found shelter with the Wampanoags. In his pre-Baptist days in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Williams had gotten himself in trouble,…

Searching for gratitude amid the chaos, calamity and confusion of 2020

Thinking about Thanksgiving from the sinkhole otherwise known as 2020 seems at once harder and easier than it has in years past. Unless you got married or had a baby or backed into a positive life-transforming event, you’ll probably agree…

Let’s be honest about spiritual discernment in churches

For many years, I have been a fierce proponent of churches using spiritual discernment as they navigate their futures. In hundreds of settings, across multiple denominations (and no denominations), in city/urban/suburban/rural locations, across all aspects of the theological spectrum, I…

Why so many Hispanics voted for Trump and other misunderstandings of America’s diversity

Why would Hispanic voters embrace a president who has been called the most racist and anti-immigrant in modern history? The most likely answer: religion. But even that isn’t a complete answer. “There are not significant gender or age divides among Hispanic…

Relaunch of Global Service Corps begins with placement at refugee ministry

Hannah Turner is one of those young adults religion surveys and church consultants consistently describe as demanding social action and community engagement opportunities from the congregations they attend. At 23, the recent college graduate is bringing her experience as an…

Seven ways to embrace a reality-based religion

In these days of “alternative facts,” pronouncements that “truth is relative,” where science is disregarded as just another opinion, and where we are taught to distrust any news except the news on “my” channel, let’s consider what a reality-based religion…

No more airtime, Mr. President!

I watch the news on television every day, more than once a day. In the past several months of election rancor, I often watched or listened all day. In that period of all-day news, I sometimes neglected the more weighty…

Nine chapters that summarize how I got from there to here

When we became the co-pastors of Park Road Baptist Church in 2000, we were introduced to the Park Road Clergy, an informal fellowship of six churches within about a mile of our office. For 20 years, six pastors have met…

Ortiz guided by equal parts courage and faith in border ministry

It takes about equal parts courage and faith to minister to immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border. At least it does for Lorenzo Ortiz, a Texan from Laredo who operates feeding ministries and shelters for migrants across the Rio Grande River…

Jones: White evangelical church stands in the way of racial justice

The white evangelical church remains “the most powerful force” in hindering work for racial justice and reconciliation in America, according to religion researcher Robert P. Jones. In a Nov. 16 opinion piece written for NBC News, Jones made an explicit…

Trump’s war on ‘woke’ targets federal grants and foreign relations

Reflections on In the Twilight of the Christian West

Why rural families need support now

Why do we keep sounding the alarm?