Faced with millions of dollars in unbudgeted legal expenses related to sexual abuse investigations, defenses and settlements, the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee will sell its downtown Nashville office building, which is valued at more than $30 million. While that…
Former editor explains how the Boston Globe broke the Catholic abuse story
The Houston Chronicle’s “Abuse of Faith” newspaper series about sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention likely would not have been possible without an earlier expose of the Roman Catholic Church published by the Boston Globe, that paper’s former editor…
ERLC trustees affirm Leatherwood’s ‘good work’ and parameters for agency’s work
Just weeks after his former board chairman tried to fire him, Brent Leatherwood kept his job as president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission yesterday. ERLC trustees, who are elected by messengers to SBC annual meetings,…
New podcast episode explores right-left shift of SBC and CBF
A new episode of BNG’s podcast series “Stuck in the Middle with You” published Aug. 29 focuses on the widening rift between the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. BNG Executive Director Mark Wingfield, speaking with cohost Benjamin…
My long farewell to the evangelical church
Many years ago, I served as an adjunct professor of worship and preaching at a Baptist seminary. One day, as I prepared for an upcoming class, I went to a photocopy shop and begin copying large numbers of worship bulletins and…
White Calvinist theology has gone to hell
“They’re going to hell,” declared Founders Ministry president and Southern Baptist pastor Tom Ascol. In a scene reminiscent of Oprah Winfrey’s “You Get a Car” giveaway, Ascol proclaimed, “Kamala Harris is going to hell, … (Anne) Branigin is going to…
Here’s what’s wrong with the SBC’s trustee system
Every problem facing the Southern Baptist Convention, every new crisis and scandal and reported financial irregularity, can be reduced to a single and seemingly insoluble root cause: a bloated trustee system that is outdated, inefficient, unmanageable and hopelessly beset by…
The SBC still educates 1 in 5 seminary students
All six of the Southern Baptist Convention’s seminaries remain in the top 10 largest schools in the United States, according to new data from the Association of Theological Schools. Even Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, despite its recent financial…
New BNG podcast puts Wingfield and Cole in conversation about the SBC
Baptist News Global Executive Director Mark Wingfield and blogger Benjamin Cole don’t see eye-to-eye on everything in Baptist life, but they do agree their respective denominations have drifted further apart than ever before. In the inaugural episode of the “Stuck…