New Meredith president takes helm. Jo Allen starts her tenure as president of Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C. on July 1. Allen, elected April 18, is the first Meredith alumna to serve as president of the 120-year-old college, with historic…
Southern Baptist Convention leader criticizes Obama on Israel
WASHINGTON (ABP) — The Southern Baptist Convention’s top public policy official called Barack Obama “the worst president of the United States that Israel has ever had” at a rally for social conservatives held June 3-4 in Washington. “The reason I…
Opinion opens doors to guns in Va. churches, but some pastors are wary
RICHMOND, Va. — Virginians can carry firearms into churches and other places of worship, according to a legal opinion issued this spring, but some Baptist pastors in the state say they’re unsettled by the prospect of congregants with handguns. Virginia…
Mars Hill College hires female chaplain with ties to CBF
MARS HILL, N.C. (ABP) — Mars Hill College, located in the conservative mountains of an increasingly conservative North Carolina Baptist environment, has hired an ordained woman with Cooperative Baptist Fellowship ties as campus chaplain. Stephanie McLeskey comes to Mars…
150 years after the Civil War, reminders of that conflict are fresh
One hundred and fifty years after Confederate artillery fired on Fort Sumter, S.C., and the Civil War began, reminders of the conflict that divided a nation remain fresh. Some see them any given Sunday morning when black Christians and white…
OPINION: Being Baptist — An interracial journey
One Sunday in January 1994, our family — Candyce, Stephanie and I — walked across the parking lot of the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., after the morning service. An elderly African-American woman approached us and asked: “Reverend,…
As presidential candidate, Gingrich woos skeptical evangelical voters
WASHINGTON (RNS) — As evangelicals and other social conservatives gather here June 3-4 to take the measure of a number of Republican presidential candidates, Newt Gingrich will be conspicuously absent. Gingrich’s campaign cited scheduling conflicts in not speaking to Ralph…
REVIEW: God at the root of Terrence Malick’s newest film, ‘Tree of Life’
LOS ANGELES (RNS) — Terrence Malick’s new film, Tree of Life, is nearly indescribable. Not because its beauty or virtuosity are beyond words, although it has its moments. Tree of Life, which opened May 27, is iconoclastic, its plot nonlinear,…
After two centuries, a Virginia Baptist district association may disband
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — A 220-year-old Baptist district association in Virginia, whose churches nurtured some of Baptists’ most revered early leaders, will disband this fall, if a proposal from its 12-member steering committee is adopted. At its May 15 annual spring…