The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, formed in 1998 by churches opposed to moderate leadership of the SBC-affiliated Baptist General Convention of Texas, celebrated the milestone at the group’s recent annual meeting in Houston.
Custodians of a lost America: The power and limitations of white evangelicalism
Donald Trump’s victory suggests that the influence of white conservative Christians extends far beyond the borders of evangelical culture. Not everybody outside the white evangelical camp is bashing that tribe. Especially in the South and Midwest, white evangelicals are valued as custodians of traditional sexual ethics by white folks who attend Mainline Protestant or Roman Catholic churches.
The curse of Ham: Black Baptists question their place in the SBC
A proposed resolution condemning the alt-right which was submitted to the Southern Baptist Convention last month included a reference to the “curse of Ham.” The statement eventually adopted by the SBC omitted the reference. And that’s a problem.
A woman for president? Women, leadership and the Bible
La versión en español está disponible aquí. Some Saturdays ago, I was having breakfast by myself in my house and I decided to watch the news. As I turned on the TV, CNN news anchor, Victor Blackwell, was introducing the…
‘The Sin of Certainty:’ Peter Enns’ journey from belief to trust
Like most seminary professors in the 1970s, Bill Treadwell wrote a lot of stuff on the blackboard, but I only remember two simple messages. The first day of class, he strode to the board, picked up a piece of chalk…
The word of God may not be what you think it is (tradition, scripture, and the word of the Lord)
Too often scripture is contrasted with tradition on the basis that scripture is the word of God while tradition is of human origin. Not so. In its biblical and theological usage tradition simply means “what is handed on.” In this…
Billy Graham’s shadow: Chuck Templeton and the crisis of American religion
It was August of 1949 and Billy Graham had never been so depressed. Twelve years after “surrendering to preach” on a Florida golf course, the evangelist was wrestling with doubts. He had been reading neo-orthodox theologians like Karl Barth and…
Christian Fundamentalism’s Grand Illusion
I often tell my conservative friends that their belief in an inerrant Bible is just as subjective as my subjective belief in an errant Bible. But they just can’t see it. They continue to shout the same refrain that their…
Southern Baptists, racism and Biblical inerrancy
While Southern Baptists believe that scripture is “truth without any mixture of error” it is obvious that Southern Baptists do not read the Bible without any mixture of error. Southern Baptists, along with everyone else, read the Bible as fallible,…