By Bob Allen A Southern Baptist business owner’s religious objection to the use of emergency contraceptives does not trump his employees’ right to obtain health insurance under Obamacare, civil liberties and religious groups said in papers filed Oct. 28 in…
Baptists in Uzbekistan lose camp
By Bob Allen A court in Uzbekistan has ordered confiscation of property purchased 13 years ago by Uzbekistan’s Baptist Union for use as a summer camp, according to a report by Forum 18, a global news service that monitors abuse…
Right rejects Baptist leader’s ‘pullback’ call
By Bob Allen Southern Baptists’ new leader for public policy concerns is drawing criticism from the Religious Right for public comments calling for a truce in the American culture wars. Russell Moore, the 42-year-old president of the Southern Baptist Ethics…
SBC leader defends ‘sectarian’ prayer
By Bob Allen The Southern Baptist Convention’s top expert on religious-liberty concerns says the U.S. Supreme Court should uphold a New York town’s practice of opening its city council meetings with sectarian prayer. “A prayer, by definition, isn’t a speech…
Baptist editors visit Syrian refugee family
By Bill Webb Sitting on cushions in an almost bare apartment in a crowded Palestinian neighborhood in Amman, Jordan, a family of Syrian refugees began to tell their story through an interpreter to a pair of visiting Baptist journalists from…
Stuck in the messy middle
By Alan Bean In the 1950s and 1960s, the unofficial public theology of America was dominated by theologians associated with what we now call “the Protestant Mainline.” A public theology makes biblical teaching relevant to the pressing political, economic and…
Government shutdown comes to church
By Amy Butler Little did I know last year when I planned this month’s sermon series on the cost of prophecy — the story of Jeremiah — that we’d be living at such an intersection of despair and hope. But…
SBC touts safeguard for gay-marriage foes
By Bob Allen The Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission is backing a bill filed in Congress to protect religious institutions and other nonprofit groups that don’t recognize same-sex marriage from possible discrimination. The Marriage and Religious Freedom Act,…
BJC opposes local government prayer
By Bob Allen Opening local government meetings with prayer violates the conscience of not just religious minorities, but also of Christians who believe that worship must be voluntary, a Baptist church-state group argues in a legal brief filed Sept. 23…