By Bob Allen Southern Baptists’ top public policy spokesman compared current threats to religious liberty to those faced by America’s founders Sunday morning on Fox & Friends. “This is just one fiery rafter in a burning house,” Russell Moore of…
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 leader blasts ‘civil religion’
By Bob Allen The Southern Baptist Convention’s chief spokesman on public policy said Oct. 10 that issues facing military chaplains are part of a larger trend in society to endorse “a bland, generic, nothing blob of civil religion over genuine…
American Baptist staffer elected BJC chair
By Bob Allen Curtis Ramsey-Lucas, managing director of resource development for American Baptist Home Mission Societies, has been elected chair of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty’s board of directors. Ramsey-Lucas’ agency is part of American Baptist Churches USA,…
Ministry says lawsuit settlement unfair
By Bob Allen A Kentucky Baptist Convention agency claims settlement of a 13-year lawsuit between a former children’s home employee fired because she is a lesbian and the Commonwealth of Kentucky convicts it without a trial of violating the religious…
ERLC defends sectarian public prayers
By Bob Allen The Southern Baptist Convention Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court Aug. 2 defending prayers offered in Jesus’ name at government meetings. The first legal brief filed since Russell Moore…
Moral Monday thoughts on Isaac Backus
By Andrew Barnhill Hundreds of clergy and laity from throughout North Carolina have made their way to Raleigh this summer for a series of protests called Moral Mondays. Organized by the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, the crowd of…
Mission trip provides religious liberty lesson
By Bob Allen OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (ABP)—Less than a month after police in the former Soviet state of Georgia intervened to rescue peaceful gay-rights protestors from a religious mob, Baptist young adults from the United States stood alongside Georgian Baptists…
Mission trip provides religious liberty lesson
By Bob Allen Less than a month after police in the former Soviet state of Georgia intervened to rescue peaceful gay-rights protestors from a religious mob, Baptist young adults from the United States stood alongside Georgian Baptists to speak up…
Catholics, Baptists join in HHS protest
By Bob Allen The Obama administration unwittingly created an unlikely coalition opposed to a rule requiring employers to provide free insurance coverage of contraceptives for women, the Southern Baptist Convention’s top spokesman for moral concerns said at a July 2…
Why the DOMA decision is a win for religious liberty
No doubt you’ve heard by now that the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) on Wednesday on the basis that it is “a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth…
An enduring promise
By Holly Hollman and Hoda Elshishtawy Americans face many challenges that threaten to undermine their obligation to protect religious pluralism and the rights of fellow citizens. Earlier this month in Tennessee, for example, a program on public discourse designed to…