LOS ANGELES (RNS) — On Oct. 7, some 1,400 American pastors planned to break the law. And they’re likely to get away with it. As part of “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” religious leaders across the country endorsed political candidates — an…
EDITORIAL: Proposals and partners
In a departure from the collegial spirit of years past when, “We’re all in this together” was the prevailing attitude during this current economic hard times, Virginia Baptist Mission Board leaders have decided they can no longer live with the…
Baptist ministers see online community as mission field
Teaser: Baptist ministers see both functional and missional value to streaming services and offering online fellowship. (ABP) — Jim Somerville pastors a Baptist congregation in Virginia that, thanks to the Internet, includes people living in Austria, India and Slovakia. And…
OUT LOUD
“A lot of the younger people are very spotty in their attendance at worship, but if we have a mission project, they’re here.” Eileen Lindner The former editor of the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, on a new study…
HERITAGE: Troubles and triumphs
“I resigned my pastorate yesterday. There is a little ring of influential men in the church here who insist on living lives of sin, and because I opposed the things they were doing, they set to work to block my…
OPINION: Removing the ‘cloak of invisibility’
October is my favorite month! There is just something about this season that makes me feel alive and my wife and I have many traditions this time of year. We’re huge Harry Potter fans, and one of our traditions as the misty…
WINN RECOMMENDS
JPS Torah Commentary (available via Logos) This multi-volume set provides an invaluable opportunity for Christians reading the Old Testament. The JPS commentary offers Jewish exegesis from the Tanakh (the Jewish name for the Hebrew Bible). This resource gives insight we…
OPINION: Rejoice
On the way to work one morning this week I was praying to God to let me hear his voice. I frequently get so distracted by all the other things in my life that I get fuzzy headed and feel…
OPINION: Signs we’re taking ‘no religious test’ seriously
The upcoming election will be an important one and certainly historic in at least one sense. In the 223 years of our republic, this will be the first time that no white Anglo-Saxon Protestant will appear on either ticket of…
HeraldBeat: Tracking Baptists across the Mid-Atlantic
Transitions ON THE MOVE John Carroll, to First Baptist Church, Danville, Va., as pastor. Joe Edwards, to Gourdvine Baptist Church, Rixeyville, Va., as pastor. John Huelskoetter, to Beth Car Baptist Church, Madison, Va., as pastor. Aaron Brittain, to Talbot Park…
Allies or rivals? New book examines struggles in congregations between pastors and musicians
(RNS) — Eileen Guenther, the national president of the American Guild of Organists, reveals behind-the-scenes church struggles in her new book, Rivals or a Team?: Clergy-Musician Relationships in the Twenty-First Century. Guenther, an associate professor of church music at Washington’s…
Racial equality pioneer Henry Langford dies
RICHMOND (ABP) — Henry V. Langford, a white Baptist preacher whose support for racial equality caused him to be blackballed by churches in the 1950s, died Oct. 7 at age 93. A memorial service is planned at 4 p.m., Sunday,…