RICHMOND (ABP) — A Baptist woman has been tapped to head an organization of church leaders and artists dedicated to preserving the congregational singing of hymns. Deborah Carlton Loftis, visiting professor of church music at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond,…
ABCUSA delegates reject bylaw changes
PASADENA, Calif. (ABP) — While celebrating the denomination’s broad ethnic, regional and language diversity at their biennial meeting June 26-28, members of the American Baptist Churches USA also exhibited their ideological diversity. Delegates, meeting in Pasadena, Calif., torpedoed a major…
Struggle continues for teenager injured in church-bus accident
SHREVEPORT, La. (ABP) — A teenager from Shreveport, La., continued to fight for her life in a Mississippi hospital four days after a July 12 bus crash that killed one and injured 22 passengers on their way to a church…
Barmen Declaration offers relevant lessons 75 years after its publication
ATLANTA (ABP) — A document written three-quarters of a century ago to protest rising nationalism in Nazi Germany’s Protestant churches provides instruction for American Christians navigating through today’s culture wars, say a Baptist ethicist and Methodist filmmaker working together against…
Missouri Baptist layman takes on emergent movement
WINFIELD, Mo. (ABP) — Thirty years after the Southern Baptist Convention began ridding itself of theological moderates and liberals, a prominent Missouri Baptist layman is warning that the nation’s largest non-Catholic faith group now faces a different kind of liberalism…
Former SBC officer says he’s praying for President Obama’s death
BUENA PARK, Calif. (ABP) — A former Southern Baptist Convention officer called the murder of a controversial abortion provider in Kansas an answer to prayer, and he told a talk show host he also is praying for President Obama to…
Baptists’ grass-roots identity helped spread key ideas
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (ABP) — While Baptists may not be able to claim sole credit as the originators of ideas such as religious liberty and the modern missionary movement, the denomination’s identification with common folk helped them become “popularizers” of these…
Book says SBC lacks system of preventing sexual abuse
AUSTIN, Texas (ABP) — A book released in advance of the June 23-24 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention claims the nation's largest Protestant faith group has more than 100,000 clergy, but no effective system of denominational oversight to…
Baptists urged to consider risks of ‘majoritarian faith’
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (ABP) — Baptists in the United States — who find themselves members of a religious majority or plurality in many areas — would do well to remember their humble beginnings as a persecuted minority and to reconsider the…
Coalition of faith-based groups push for health-care reform as moral issue
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (ABP) — Ads airing on Christian and mainstream radio stations in several states are attempting to frame health care as a moral issue. Sponsored by a broad coalition of faith-based groups, the ads urge members of Congress…
Young evangelicals tend to shun ‘conservative’ label, embrace ‘justice’
DULUTH, Ga. (ABP) — Younger evangelical pastors are less likely to self-identify as conservatives than older generations and more apt to view social justice as a gospel imperative, LifeWay Research director Ed Stetzer told a group of evangelical environmental activists….
Virginia Baptist chairs disaster relief network for North American Baptists
FALLS CHURCH (ABP) — Several Baptist denominations in the United States and Canada have established a formal disaster-relief network to coordinate efforts among the various groups, according to a May 13 press release from the Baptist World Alliance. Terry Raines…