The power of preaching lies not in how well one speaks but in how well one listens, Kirby Godsey told students, faculty and staff at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology Aug. 23. Godsey, former Mercer president, delivered the annual…
Rural churches: Pay attention to the mental health needs of farm workers
Mercer University researchers have identified a critical pastoral care need for leaders of rural churches: America’s farmers are in a mental health crisis. Across all farmers surveyed in a Georgia sample, 82% reported a moderate level of stress according to…
Remembering the struggle to integrate even ‘progressive’ Baptist churches in the 1960s
Writing from a Birmingham jail cell in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. expressed his profound disappointment with “white moderates” who “constantly advise the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’” We easily assume that, had we belonged to a…
Mercer University dedicates new $50 million Medical School campus
Trustees and administrators of Mercer University dedicated a new $50 million Medical School campus on the banks of the Chattahoochee River in Columbus, Ga., April 22. Mercer is the only university with historic ties to the Southern Baptist Convention that…
America will be better as gumbo than a melting pot, scholar says
Americans can undermine white supremacy and Christian nationalism by emulating the values and actions of the Good Samaritan, Jonathan C. “Jay” Augustine said March 29 to open the Walter B. and Kay W. Shurden Lectures on Religious Liberty and Separation…
Mercer scholars explain the immense danger of Putin’s power play in Ukraine
Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine has surprised some Western observers who previously considered the Russian president to be a pragmatic realist, even if an authoritarian one, said a Mercer University professor of Russian and Soviet history. “I never considered…
McAfee names prominent pastor to preaching faculty
Otis Moss III has been appointed professor of homiletics at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology, where he has been a visiting professor. Moss also serves as senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and recently was…
Hayes named BNG Clemons Fellow
Amy Hayes of Atlanta has been named Baptist New Global’s third Clemons Fellow, continuing the launch of a graduate-level fellowship begun in June. Hayes is a master of divinity student at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology, where she also…
What to do if you unearth a history of slavery in your church, college or institution?
With increasing attention to the roots of American slavery in religious life, more churches and faith-based ministries that existed prior to the Civil War are unearthing truths they wish weren’t true. Then the hard questions arise: How should a church,…