A federal lawsuit that combines questions of religious liberty, defamation and the meaning of Baptist autonomy has been appealed to the United States Supreme Court. The Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board, the defendant in the original 2017 case,…
State conventions beyond the South question SBC North American Mission Board’s spending and accountability for church planting
A decade-long disagreement over how Southern Baptists fund church planting and missions in North America is coming to a head and threatens the sanctity of the denomination’s spirit of cooperative giving. The result: State conventions outside the South are reducing…
Two years after the Chronicle’s expose, has anything changed to prevent clergy sexual abuse in Baptist churches?
Editor’s note: While the issue addressed in this column speaks primarily about the Southern Baptist Convention, the ordination processes referenced are typical of many Baptist bodies in America, which operate with complete autonomy on clergy ordinations. Two years ago, the…
When you call the vice president ‘Jezebel,’ you are acknowledging her power
Elephantine is an island opposite the city of Aswan in Egypt. In the late 1800s, 175 Jewish manuscripts found there began illegally appearing for purchase into Western collections. They are the oldest Jewish papyri found to date, going back to…
Pastors Buck and Swofford, get the biblical story of Jezebel straight!
On Jan. 22, Tom Buck, pastor of First Baptist Church of Lindale, Texas, equated Vice President Kamala Harris with the biblical Jezebel. It was a strategic insult designed to terrorize and imbrute Harris. He joined Steve Swofford, pastor of First…
What’s old is new again: Conservatives threaten funding over SBC’s ethics agency
From the Department of What’s Old is New Again: The Southern Baptist Convention’s ethics agency is being accused of liberalism and creating a distraction from the work of evangelism and missions. During the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC that began…
A second SBC pastor in Texas called Vice President Kamala Harris ‘Jezebel’
It turns out that East Texas pastor Tom Buck wasn’t the first Southern Baptist pastor in Texas to call Vice President Kamala Harris a “Jezebel.” Steve Swofford, pastor of First Baptist Church of Rockwall, Texas, located in the eastern suburbs…
Lifeway will sell its new headquarters and downsize again
Lifeway Christian Resources has entered into contract to sell the $100 million corporate headquarters it built and occupied in 2017. The Nashville, Tenn.-based publisher of curriculum, books, Bibles and other Christian educational resources began to study the viability of the…
SBC pastor calls Vice President Kamala Harris a ‘Jezebel’ two days after inauguration
The Southern Baptist Convention already had a problem with Black pastors because its six seminary presidents have launched a battle against Critical Race Theory. Then an East Texas SBC pastor added to the consternation Jan. 22 by calling Vice President…