By Bob Allen The Southern Baptist Convention’s top public-policy expert says any therapeutic benefits of medical marijuana are outweighed by costs to society that disproportionately burden the poor. Russell Moore, head of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said…
Lawyer: Abuse verdict possible game-changer
By Bob Allen The attorney for a man awarded $12.5 million by a Florida jury for childhood sexual abuse suffered at the hands of a Baptist minister says the verdict could be a game-changer for how Southern Baptists handle credible…
Mohler: America more pro-life than in 1973
By Bob Allen Forty-one years after Roe v. Wade, America is arguably more divided over abortion than in 1973, a Southern Baptist seminary president and theologian observed on the Jan. 22 anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling that reproductive…
Finding our way home
Two seemingly unrelated stories recently captured my attention. One came my way while on an afternoon date with my wife. The other arrived the same night, as I sat down and read a book written by a long-term friend. By…
Florida Baptists to appeal abuse award
By Bob Allen The Florida Baptist Convention plans to appeal a jury’s decision to award $12.5 million in damages in a lawsuit claiming Baptist officials didn’t check far enough into the background of a church planter convicted in 2007 of…
Okla. Baptist leader blasts gay marriage ruling
By Bob Allen The top official for Southern Baptist churches in Oklahoma quickly denounced a federal judge’s Jan. 14 ruling that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Terence Kern of the Northern District of Oklahoma…
SBC leader says abortion affects local church
By Bob Allen The head of Southern Baptists’ agency for moral and religious liberty concerns says an upcoming Sunday observing the sanctity of life is not just about politics or bemoaning a culture in decline, but an issue of private…
Baptists, culture agree about smoking: Stop it
By Bob Allen Under a prevailing Premillennialist theology that holds things on Earth will keep getting worse and worse for believers until Christ returns, coupled with a Calvinism that teaches mankind is totally depraved, it is not unusual to hear…
Texas minister helps bring abuser in Kenya to justice
By Ken Camp When Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, commissioned Chris Pillsbury to serve in Kenya a year and a half ago, he expected to help women market fair-trade handcrafts, work with a humanitarian medical program and maybe start a…
Mohler: Evolution poll results blow to secularists
By Bob Allen A Southern Baptist seminary president says recent poll numbers showing that one third of Americans reject evolution is bad news for secularists. “Over the course of the 20th century, the worldview of evolution was supposed to replace…
Discerning what is – and isn’t – persecution
By Jeff Brumley In America, a reality TV star gets suspended for controversial remarks on race and homosexuality and conservative Christians claim victim and martyr status in the media. In Egypt, churches are torched by Islamic mobs and those Christians…
Choose ye this day diversity
A strong, natural, cultural tendency among humankind—even those committed to loving all people—is to be in community with those considered to be “our kind of people”. The tendency is to swarm with people with whom there is the least diversity…