By Bob Allen A year after targeting the Boy Scouts for dropping their ban on openly gay youth, Southern Baptists meeting June 10-11 in Baltimore may have found a new cause célèbre in a reality TV show star suspended by…
Gushee to work with CBF on advocacy
By Bob Allen David Gushee, Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics and director of the Center for Theology and Public Life at Mercer University, begins a one-year term in January as theologian-in-residence for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. “My task will…
Busy year ahead for religious liberty, BJC
By Jeff Brumley In some ways, 2013 was a typical year for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, with legal briefs to file, politicians and Supreme Court justices to sway and religious liberty to defend. In other ways, it was a ground-breaking year…
Smithwick out at Ky. Baptist home
By Bob Allen The president of a Baptist child care agency has resigned after a no-confidence vote in November by the Kentucky Baptist Convention for recommending that Sunrise Children’s Services drop its ban on hiring gays. No formal announcement was…
Lilly grants address ministers’ finances
By Bob Allen Seminaries tied to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Southern Baptist Convention were among 51 theology schools across the United States awarded more than $12.3 million by the Lilly Endowment in the second round of its initiative to…
Papers filed in Glorieta lawsuit
By Bob Allen An Arkansas couple suing Southern Baptist Convention officials in federal court claim that secular courts have jurisdiction over the internal workings of a church when it involves property disputes or misuse of its articles of incorporation. In…
Baptist hospital exits church consulting
By Bob Allen The Center for Congregational Health, a joint venture between Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina founded in 1992 to provide assistance for struggling churches, will be renamed and restructured to…
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Church rehabs home for ministry outreach
By Jeff Brumley Gary Montgomery recalled the first time, a couple years ago or so, he laid eyes on the foreclosed, rundown house a bank had donated to his Tallahassee-based prison, ex-offender and family ministry. “The bathtub fell into the…
CBF leaders join pope’s poverty prayer
By Bob Allen Leaders of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship are endorsing Pope Francis’ “global wave of prayer” to end world hunger on Dec. 10. On Tuesday, the CBFblog will highlight ministries of CBF field personnel working to end hunger around…
Global Baptists hold lessons for Bible Belt
By Bob Allen If they have ears to hear, Baptists in places like the United States’ Bible Belt, where Christianity is the norm, can learn lessons from Baptist minorities in other parts of the world, Baptist World Alliance leaders said…
Aid, advocacy bolster Baptist witness
By Bob Allen When Raimundo Barreto, director of the Baptist World Alliance division of freedom and justice, was in Vietnam a couple of years ago, a government official initially was suspicious of him. Then the official spotted a copy of…