Baptist News Global

About those 545 kids still separated from parents: Expect long-lasting psychological distress

The fact that 545 sets of parents whose children were removed from them at the U.S.-Mexico border cannot be found has reactivated the alarms sounded for several years now by child development and immigration experts. They warn of severe, even…

Cain and Abel: A metaphor for the sin of casteism

In his 2016 landmark book, America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America, Jim Wallis reveals: “The most controversial sentence I ever wrote was not about abortion, gay marriage, the wars in Vietnam or Iraq, elections, or…

This year’s electorate is different — and fewer are white Christians

The United States electorate — defined as those who are eligible to vote and registered to vote — changes some from year to year but changed significantly over the span of a few years. A compilation of data from Pew…

Why I’m quitting church: I’ve got better things to do than watch my pastor be run off over race

World Series. Halloween. Time Change. Full Moon. Election. COVID. And for me: Goodbye Church. I love my church here in Georgia and my ministers, my Sunday school class, and the friends I have made. But today, I resolved to put…

Elections have consequences, and now my marriage may be at stake

Raise your hand if the U.S. Supreme Court decided whether or not you could marry. I see you, folks in interracial marriages and you queer folks. Now raise your hand if justices on the current Supreme Court want to invalidate…

The Beatitudes for 2020

Listen now, for this is the way of the world: Blessed are the rich, for they can buy the earth. Blessed are the powerful, for they will control the people. Blessed are the war makers, for they will conquer the…

Happy Halloween, but this year I don’t need anything else to fear

I’ve always hated Halloween. I didn’t like it as a kid. The creepy faces, the scary clowns. It was all too unnerving. That didn’t change when I became an adult. The Halloween after my college graduation, sitting at the desk…

Why herd immunity is worse than other potential ethical concerns about a COVID-19 vaccine

The ethical issues surrounding development of a COVID-19 vaccine are complex but pale in comparison to the deaths that would be necessary to reach so-called “herd immunity” in the United States. Questions get raised about the feared use of fetal tissue from…

Is there a message from God in the pandemic?

Author, speaker and Baptist minister Alan Rudnick said he’s considered writing a column asking if God sent the coronavirus to plague humankind. “And, of course I would end by saying ‘no,’” said Rudnick, senior minister-elect at DeWitt Community Church in…

Protestants helped create the death of expertise but also can help reclaim it

“Go to seminary, but don’t let them teach you anything.” That’s what I remember from my conversation with my beloved Southern Baptist pastor when, about to graduate from college, I told him I was heading to seminary. I don’t remember…

Prescription for a divided nation: Love and forgiveness

It didn’t surprise me in recent weeks to read articles like the essay Gene Weingarten wrote for the Washington Post in which he lamented the fact that “I find myself profoundly disliking and disrespecting almost half of my countrymen and…

Your gospel is too small

September 11, 2001. Although post-graduate theological diplomas decorated my book-stuffed office and 40 years of pastoral ministry were under my belt, I was speechless that Tuesday morning when hijacked airplanes demolished more than national icons. What was I to say…

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?