By Bob Allen Southern Baptists’ top public policy official says he sees God working in unexpected ways in the lives of people he encounters while representing the nation’s second-largest faith group after Roman Catholics in the nation’s capital. Russell Moore,…
What I have said about torture since 2006
By David Gushee Follow David: @dpgushee In Fall 2005, while I was teaching at Union University, and two years before I moved here to Mercer University, the editors of Christianity Today magazine asked me to write an analysis of the…
U.S. Baptists welcome thaw in relations with Cuba
By Bob Allen Most Baptists in the United States with personal connections to Baptist communities in Cuba applauded President Obama’s surprise announcement Dec. 17 of plans to normalize relations between two nations separated by only 90 miles of water but…
SBC president calls for racial healing
By Bob Allen Southern Baptist Convention President Ronnie Floyd urged members of America’s second-largest faith group behind Roman Catholics to reaffirm their opposition to racism and injustice in a Dec. 15 statement endorsed by ethnic leaders. “Southern Baptists have always…
For SBC, 1984 was the year of the pivot
By Bob Allen In 1949 George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four, a dystopian novel imagining a future totalitarian state where people are constantly reminded of mass surveillance by the slogan “Big Brother is watching you.” Thirty years ago, Russell Dilday, then…
Black pastor says racial profiling exists in the SBC
By Bob Allen A black Southern Baptist pastor says he believes the kind of racial profiling which some believe played a role in the shooting of Ferguson, Mo., teenager Michael Brown is alive and well in the Southern Baptist Convention….
Speakers say holiness, not heterosexuality, goal of outreach to gays
By Bob Allen The goal of ministry to gays and lesbians isn’t to make them heterosexual, three speakers said Oct. 28 at a Southern Baptist Convention-sponsored conference on the gospel and homosexuality. It’s to make them holy. Rosaria Champagne Butterfield,…
Broad Baptist coalition asks Houston mayor to withdraw subpoenas for sermons
By Bob Allen Moderate and conservative Baptists set aside differences in an Oct. 15 letter opposing subpoenas ordering five Houston pastors to turn over sermons as evidence in a lawsuit seeking repeal of the city’s non-discrimination ordinance. Top leaders of…
Southern Baptists oust ‘Third Way’ church
By Bob Allen The Southern Baptist Convention has kicked out a California church that voted in May to agree to disagree about whether the Bible teaches that homosexual behavior is always a sin. Acting on behalf of the convention between…
Culture writer Jonathan Merritt says SBC warning against ‘third way’
By Bob Allen A Religion News Service columnist and son of a former Southern Baptist Convention president says a Baptist state convention’s expulsion of a California church is a warning to other congregations considering the affirmation of lesbians and gays….
Al Mohler decries “Gungor” controversy
By Alan Bean Al Mohler has adapted nicely to our twenty-first century media revolution. He even doespodcasts. Al isn’t hip. Not even a little bit. But he talks about hip people, albeit with disapproval. I can’t imagine the venerable Roy…
Weighing in on border crisis, SBC president says Jesus was an immigrant
By Bob Allen The president of the Southern Baptist Convention says Jesus would be sympathetic to the plight of undocumented children flocking to the southern U.S. border, because as a child he also lived as an immigrant. Ronnie Floyd, senior…