What remains of a defamation suit brought by a former student against Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Paige Patterson now comes down to two questions sent from the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to the Texas Supreme Court. The…
Graduation advice for seminarians and seminaries
I approached the end of my time at divinity school with relief and joy. It had been the best and worst three years of my life. I took apart everything I thought about God, myself and others and emerged with…
Reminder: This week’s BNG webinar features Christa Brown, sexual abuse reform advocate
Christa Brown will be the guest on BNG’s next “change-making conversations” webinar on Wednesday, May 1, at 11 a.m. Central time. She will dialogue with BNG Executive Director Mark Wingfield. Brown is a frequent BNG columnist and author of the…
Putting the wicked to rest: Creating teal steeples beyond Sexual Violence Awareness Month
I turned on the TV / And flipped it over to the news / And what I saw I almost couldn’t comprehend. I saw a preacher man in cuffs / He’d taken money from the church / He’d stuffed his…
Bart Barber, a unicorn among SBC presidents, reflects on the state of the SBC as his term concludes
Bart Barber is a unicorn among recent Southern Baptist Convention presidents. And now he’s a lame duck, too. To participate in our interview by Zoom, Barber had to travel away from his North Texas farm. This is unlike any of…
Twelve things the SBC should do now to address clergy sex abuse
The four of us have watched with dismay as Southern Baptist Convention officials repeatedly proclaim “progress” on sexual abuse reform while, at the same time, taking 10 steps backward. They bail with a thimble — and make a show of…
Wrestling with the reality of sexual abuse in the Easter story in Surviving God
In their new book, Surviving God: A New Vision of God Through the Eyes of Sexual Abuse Survivors, Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan Shaw offer a feminist and intersectional understanding of God that challenges traditional ways of Christian thinking. Kim…
Watch your language and your beliefs, sex abuser survivors tell the church
The insidious and chronic nature of church sexual abuse is an outgrowth of patriarchal concepts of the divine that provide theological cover for abusers and shame for their victims, said the authors of a new book on theologies of abuse….
Yet another group forms to turn the SBC in a more conservative direction
Another new group has emerged in the struggle for control of the Southern Baptist Convention — a tug-of-war between traditionalist conservatives and ultra-conservatives. The Center for Baptist Leadership was introduced on social media March 8 by William Wolfe, a conservative…
A word in praise of Baptist Press
File this under “Things I Never Thought I’d See.” Last Friday, the official news service of the Southern Baptist Convention published a 2,300-word news story about the tarnished legacy of Paul Pressler. For the first time, the BP story acknowledges…
The Department of Justice has closed its investigation of the SBC — maybe?
To add further intrigue to the Southern Baptist Convention’s reckoning with sexual abuse in its churches, the denomination announced March 6 that a federal investigation into the SBC has been closed — but abuse survivors who say they are in…
Southern Baptist theology set me up for sexual abuse
I grew up in a fundamentalist Southern Baptist church in Georgia. I was on the “cradle roll” from the time I was six weeks old, and I was at church “every time the doors were open,” as the saying goes….