By Bob Allen Healing America’s racial rift will require changing not only hearts and minds but also systems that oppress racial minorities and the poor, said a speaker at a recent gathering of Baptists in Missouri focused on building peace…
Destroying our own neighborhoods
The recent uprising in Baltimore has occupied our screens and dominated our conversations for more than a week now. Protestors there pricked the consciences of the nation in their cries for justice for Freddie Gray. At some point, a small…
Is It Too Late for Evangelical Christians to Honestly Discuss Same-Sex Marriage?
As speakers take the stage at Q Ideas, an annual conference for Christian “culture-makers,” a large digital timer facing the audience starts to tick down the time remaining in their nine- or 18-minute talks. That clock lends a certain urgency…
How corporate America changed our religion: A review of “One Nation Under God” by Kevin Kruse
One Nation Under God could change the way we think about civil religion in America. Forget about the 1970s, or even the 1950s, Kevin Kruse says, this story begins in the heart of the Depression. Exiles from the Southern Baptist Convention who…
Southern Baptists, racism and Biblical inerrancy
While Southern Baptists believe that scripture is “truth without any mixture of error” it is obvious that Southern Baptists do not read the Bible without any mixture of error. Southern Baptists, along with everyone else, read the Bible as fallible,…
Indonesia executes Australian members of Bali 9
By Bob Allen Two Australian drug traffickers shot by a firing squad in Indonesia refused blindfolds and sang “Amazing Grace” as they were taken to a jungle clearing to be executed, according to their spiritual adviser. Australians Andrew Chan and…
Be informed, not ignorant on Baltimore
Baltimore is a great city. It is home to the sports teams I follow, universities, churches, an inner harbor, and more importantly where people live. My mother was born and raised in Baltimore. I was born outside Baltimore in Maryland…
Supreme Court hears challenges to state gay-marriage bans
By Bob Allen The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments April 28 about whether the 14th Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and, if not, whether states that forbid gay marriage…
PNBC head says anger OK, violence not
By Bob Allen An African-American Baptist leader says young people rioting in Baltimore are sacrificing the moral high ground of nonviolent protest advocated by Martin Luther King. “Anger over the yet unexplained death of Freddie Gray is one thing, but…
Taxation: Theft or support of the public welfare?
It has been ten days now since Tax Day 2015, but I am still thinking about taxation because of what I saw/heard in the media in the days following April 15. While driving around town on the 17 th, I…
Baptists lead movements to ease ex-offender return to society
By Jeff Brumley and Ken Camp There’s a growing push, here and there around the country, to stop treating ex-cons like criminals after they have served their time. The restorative justice movement is nothing new but is taking on fresh…
Uzbek Baptist jailed for handing out Christian leaflet
By Bob Allen A Baptist in Uzbekistan was jailed 15 days in March and fined three years’ worth of the national minimum wage for giving a Christian leaflet to a passer-by he met while traveling by bicycle, according to a…