By Bob Allen The widow of a Southern Baptist pastor fatally shot during a botched 2009 drug sting has asked that prospective jurors be polled about pretrial publicity of an incident that divided a small north Georgia community as the…
Longtime pastor to Jimmy Carter dies
By John Pierce Dan Ariail, pastor emeritus of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., where thousands of visitors attend Sunday worship and Bible studies by President Jimmy Carter each year, died Nov. 25 in hospice care in Albany. He was…
Longtime pastor to Jimmy Carter dies
By John Pierce Dan Ariail, pastor emeritus of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, where thousands of visitors attend Sunday worship and Bible studies by President Jimmy Carter each year, died Nov. 25 in hospice care in Albany, Ga. He was…
‘Redneck opera singer’ got start in church
By Jeff Brumley Paris sounds like the natural home town for any world-class opera singer. But for Jay Hunter Morris, one of the top operatic tenors on the planet, it all started in Paris, Texas. And a career that’s made…
C.S. Lewis ‘claimed by everyone’
By Jeff Brumley C.S. Lewis did it during his lifetime and he’s continued to do it in the 50 years since his death on Nov. 22, 1963: inspire Christians from theologically diverse traditions through his theological and fictional work. Box…
SBC leader: Women’s equality ‘false gospel’
By Bob Allen Egalitarian couples “preach a false gospel” by viewing men and women as equal partners in marriage, the Southern Baptist Convention’s top expert on family concerns says in an interview posted on his agency’s website. “God designed us…
Mahaney, Mohler share speaker platform
By Bob Allen An embattled preacher at the center of what has been called the biggest evangelical sexual-abuse scandal to date heaped praise on a Southern Baptist leader criticized for sticking by him at a weekend conference attended by both…
Calvinist preacher dropped from program
By Bob Allen A controversial evangelical preacher, named in a highly publicized lawsuit alleging participation in what has been described as the biggest evangelical sexual-abuse scandal to date, is no longer listed as a speaker for an upcoming collegiate conference…
Baptist seminary head wins labor appeal
By Bob Allen A judge has ruled that a Baptist seminary in Zimbabwe acted improperly in the 2011 firing of its top administrator who resisted orders to lead the school in accordance with the Baptist Faith and Message statement adopted…
Alabama CBF names new leader
By Bob Allen Terri Byrd has been elected as full-time coordinator of the Alabama Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, effective Dec. 1. Byrd, an ordained minister, is the fourth person to lead the statewide network of about 30 churches, and the first…
Nadia Bolz-Weber speaks at Baptist church
By Bob Allen Trends like the waning influence of denominations and rise of the religious “nones” don’t mean that churches should abandon their denominational identity, author and Lutheran church planter Nadia Bolz-Weber said Tuesday evening at Calvary Baptist Church in…
Sermons stretch as biblical literacy wanes
By Jeff Brumley Religious literacy has declined to the point where modern audiences would be baffled at films like Monty Python’s 1979 The Life of Brian, A British Broadcasting Corp. official said recently. Comedians are also affected, Aaquil Ahmed told The…