Note: This article was updated Tuesday afternoon, July 23, to include new information about Kevin Smith. The chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission acted alone in firing President Brent Leatherwood yesterday, and Leatherwood remains…
ERLC removes president one day after kind word about Biden
Editor’s note: This article replaces and updates a previous article posted just two hours earlier. One day after Brent Leatherwood offered a gracious comment about President Joe Biden bowing out of the presidential race, he was fired as head…
Must our quests for liberty be mutually exclusive?
There’s a strange tension in the minds of many people between the desires for independence and community. It comes up often in conversations about churches and denominations. A church may want to be independent yet participate in the community of…
Johnny Hunt tells his side of the story, including his definition of ‘adultery’
Johnny Hunt finally got to tell his side the story about what happened at a beachside condo in 2010, when he is accused of sexually abusing a pastor’s wife the age of his own daughters. In a court deposition taken…
SBC’s church planting agency now promoting private church-based schools
The Southern Baptist Convention’s church planting agency now has a program devoted to encouraging churches to start Christian schools in their buildings. In a promotional video posted on the website of the SBC North American Mission Board, a spokesman declares:…
Gone fishin’: The SBC and me
Recently I came across an excellent article in Baptist News Global about cooperation (or lack thereof), among Southern Baptists in how we present Jesus Christ as the only hope for the spiritually lost and dying residents of our planet. Derek…
The day they tried to trap my father
It’s not even occurred to me to tell this story for maybe 30 years, but Father’s Day just happened and the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting just took place, and somebody just died a few days before that happened, and…
When being a pastor is ‘the most important calling,’ family values take a back seat
Most of the noise at this month’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting was from men attempting to cement their pastoral power over women, Christian nationalists attacking religious liberty, messengers seeking to censure SBC leaders publicly, and the convention voting to…
On women’s issue, the SBC reminded us who they are
As an ordained Baptist minister, I always knew I was unwelcome at the Southern Baptist Convention. But after my experience at their annual meeting this month, my body will always carry with it the sting of knowing I am not…
Texas youth minister accused of child sex abuse being probed by FBI, leaders say SBC database would have prevented this
Editor’s note: This article contains descriptions of sexual assault. Baptist News Global has independently confirmed that Luke Cunningham, a former youth pastor at four Texas churches who was arrested on June 19 by United States marshals, is now the…
Why pastoral qualifications in the Bible aren’t really about gender
The Southern Baptist Convention somewhat surprisingly failed to pass the proposed Law Amendment that, if affirmed, would have changed the SBC Constitution to place restrictions on Southern Baptist churches hiring or appointing women to any staff position with the title…
‘Bad Guys’ vs. ‘Good Guys’ narrows the framing on SBC and sexual abuse
The Southern Baptist Convention’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force disbanded without having implemented much of anything. The database they purported to “launch” last year — even hyping it as “historic” — remains empty. It holds not a single name of…