Gays, Muslims, politicians and progressive Christians are organizing to protest U.S. evangelist Franklin Graham’s upcoming visit to England. The Muslim Council of Britain and three members of parliament recently asked the U.K. government to apply hate-speech criteria to block Graham’s…
Competing Baptist bodies grapple with their identity in Dallas
As national media flocked to Dallas to watch the Southern Baptist Convention reckon with a generational shift in thinking about women, race and partisan politics, one light rail stop away a smaller and lesser-known group met under the radar to…
What is the Spirit saying about female and LGBTQ clergy?
Perhaps it’s time to connect the dots and try to puzzle out what God’s Spirit is painting among us.
Paige Patterson, Mother’s Day and #MeToo
Sexual assault and harassment are unconscionable in all environments, but there is something especially vile about the culture in religion that often leads to the abuse and silencing of women.
Former Baptist minister describes struggle of being both called and gay in new collection of stories told by LGBTQ Christians
A Cooperative Baptist Fellowship-trained pastor who switched to Mennonite says she is still getting over the inner turmoil of belonging to a moderate church that supported her call as a woman in ministry but did not know she was gay….
UPDATED: N.C. church involved in immigration dispute withholds funding to protest CBF hiring practice
A North Carolina church noted for its involvement in an immigration dispute has voted to withhold funds from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship as long as the 1,800-church organization continues to discriminate in employment based on sexual orientation.
What we can learn from Chance the Rapper
When and where am I speaking boldly and prophetically about faith and justice, pushing the world around me to fully examine its complicity in maintaining systems of power and privilege that do repeated harm to bodies and psyches unable to protect themselves?
Gushee says LGBTQ hiring policy will weaken CBF
A Baptist scholar who famously changed his mind on homosexuality says a new Cooperative Baptist Fellowship policy allowing the possible hiring of LGBTQ Christians for some, but not all, staff positions “may be the worst of all possible options,” distancing the very voices on both ends of the spectrum that CBF leaders were hoping to appease.
Group says Masterpiece Cake case echoes argument made 50 years ago that religious freedom protected racial discrimination
Maurice Bessinger argued unsuccessfully in a 1968 Supreme Court case that the federal law barring discrimination based race, color, religion and national origin violated his freedom of religion under First Amendment “since his religious beliefs compel him to oppose any integration of the races whatever.”