The latest controversy between Baylor University and the Baptists — rejecting grant funding to study LGBTQ exclusion in the church — has roots that stretch back more than 100 years, far preceding late 20th-century and early 21st-century struggles for control…
On not getting over fundamentalism
This past week, I received a link to an article on the Christian news satire website, The Babylon Bee. The article was titled “Baptist Conclave to Choose A New John MacArthur.” It was clever and funny. It pictured 12 older…
Getting over fundamentalism
Forty years after that long hot summer of 1925 in Dayton, Tenn., where the Scopes “Monkey Trial” was held, Southern Baptist preacher Carlyle Marney vividly recounted his memories. His parents were daily readers of the Knoxville News Sentinel, which claimed…
Dividing lines at Catholic Conclave may be different than you expect
The process of choosing a successor for the late Pope Francis will certainly include maneuvering by conservative and progressive elements in the Catholic Church, but with little if any of the zero-sum scheming common among bitterly divided U.S. denominations, Vatican…
Meddling with Methodism and domesticating the Baptists
American religious historian Nathan Hatch famously argued that when you scratch beneath the surface of piety and polity that distinguishes them, Baptists and Methodists are actually more alike than they appear because the same cultural forces of democratic populism shaped…
Christianity after Christendom
In 1850, there were about 700,000 Baptists in the United States, evenly divided between North and South. As the nation expanded and grew, Baptists advanced in membership and social standing. As they expanded, they divided into divergent denominational groups, and…
Remembering Bob Seymour: Being wise as serpents and harmless as doves
One of the best friendships I made when I moved to North Carolina was with Bob Seymour, founding pastor of Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church in Chapel Hill. We shared the same birthday and often celebrated together at one…
An important conversation about ordaining and unordaining
Our motto here at BNG is to inspire you, dear readers, with change-making conversations. We’ve hit a nerve with one of those conversations this week, which tells me it is extremely important that we talk about this. The “this” is…
Trump’s West Bank shocker: are End Times ‘kooks’ running US foreign policy?
“As Christians, we are called to be peace makers and to work for justice for those who are living under harsh conditions.”
At heart of recent talks is key challenge: Can Baptists overlook infant baptism to join Methodists in ministry?
The aim of the ecumenical process was not to merge Baptists and Methodists into one large institution but to enable the two traditions to bring their different gifts to bear in a common way that benefits society.
High (tech) priest
Baptists are well known for our belief in the priesthood of all believers. This is a deep seated conviction that individuals do not need another person to intervene between the human and divine. Every human has the capacity and responsibility…
What ‘Other Baptists’ can teach other Christians about patriotism
It’s not often that you hear Baptists talking about catholicity. We Baptists have more-often-than-not contented ourselves with a dissenting, sectarian existence and a spotty ecclesial memory that does more time-traveling than Marty McFly in Back to the Future—launching from Jesus,…