By Bill Leonard “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last.” We recall the words of that spiritual a half-century after Martin Luther King, Jr. sounded them across the Lincoln Memorial, a hallmark of the…
Baptist pastor open to same-sex unions
Correction: This story was edited after posting to correct an error in the 13th paragraph. By Bob Allen An Alabama Baptist pastor says she is reconsidering her previous policy of not performing marriage-like commitment services for same-sex couples. Sarah Shelton,…
Gay minister’s trespassing trial begins
By Bob Allen The trial for an openly gay ordained Baptist minister and his partner arrested in January for refusing to leave a government building where they were denied a marriage license begins today in Louisville, Ky. Pretrial hearings were scheduled…
Moral Monday thoughts on Isaac Backus
By Andrew Barnhill Hundreds of clergy and laity from throughout North Carolina have made their way to Raleigh this summer for a series of protests called Moral Mondays. Organized by the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, the crowd of…
New strides toward freedom
By Bill Leonard With the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case and the storm of Internet racism it unleashed, I can’t get Sojourner Truth out of my head. Freed in 1827, the ex-slave woman spent her life demanding an end…
‘New Jim Crow’ turns back civil rights
By Bob Allen Four decades of America’s “war on drugs” has brought on a “New Jim Crow,” creating “a growing under-caste” primarily of people of color, and turned back many of the hard-won advances of the Civil Rights Movement, an…
The freedom of Will
By Bill Leonard Will Campbell — preacher, writer, lecturer, farmer, raconteur, soulful iconoclast and equal-opportunity prophet — died in Nashville on Monday, June 3. He was a month this side of 89 and had spent more than two years in…
‘Bootleg preacher’ Will Campbell dies
By Bob Allen Will Campbell, an author, activist and iconoclastic Baptist minister who described himself as a “bootleg preacher,” died June 3 from complications following a stroke suffered in 2011. He was 88. The Mississippi native was one of the…
Minister: gay marriage not Baptist fight
By Bob Allen An American Baptist leader in Illinois says clergy opponents of same-sex marriage violate Baptist principles by asking the government to impose their religious beliefs on everyone else. Larry Greenfield, executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of…