By Bob Allen The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty joined more than 120 national, state and local organizations in an open letter Oct. 24 urging the Department of Justice to investigate post 9/11 surveillance practices in New York City…
Baylor social work school fetes trailblazers
By Daniel Wallace Baylor University’s School of Social Work recently recognized two daughters of the segregated South who served as forerunners for change and equality when they broke the color barrier at the Carver School of Missions and Social Work…
Oakhurst Baptist celebrates 100 years
By Bob Allen A progressive and radically inclusive Baptist congregation celebrates its 100th anniversary this weekend in Atlanta. Constituted in 1913, Oakhurst Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga., sparked controversy in the 1960s as one of the first Southern Baptist churches…
Things that make for freedom
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…
Things that make for freedom
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…