Healing the divisiveness of immigration in American politics and society requires a view of immigrants as vital cultural and economic contributors and as fellow human beings made in God’s image, former President George W. Bush said during a May 6…
If you’re not concerned about the Southern Baptists, you ought to be!
“I just ran into some weirdos in the airport,” Uncle Eugene reported. “You know, the kind with their heads shaved except for a little ponytail at the back.” “I think they’re Hare Krishna,” I said. “Well, whatever,” Uncle Eugene continued…
Ryan Burge sifts the data to paint an evolving portrait of the ‘nones’
There was a time, not all that long ago, when no minister, denominational leader or seminary administrator ever heard of — or worried about — a “none.” That’s partly because there wasn’t yet a name for religiously unaffiliated Americans, partly…
As a woman called to ministry, my heart is broken, and the wound is very old
Two days after I learned that the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee formally voted to remove St. Matthews Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., from denominational membership, my chest began to hurt. Right in my sternum, there was pain I can…
Is the Beth Moore Effect a feminist awakening?
Beth Moore’s recent defection from the Southern Baptist Convention has been a long time coming. Moore built her career modeling Southern Baptist, submissive womanhood, but her public witness has challenged the gender roles that she, until very recently, defended. Moore’s…
Why Beth Moore’s departure from the SBC really matters
In its own year of racial reckoning, the Southern Baptist Convention just awoke to a high-profile gender reckoning as well. Beth Moore, the popular Bible study teacher and author who for years has maintained the line of being a “teacher”…
Coronavirus challenging denominational summer conventions yet again
For the second year, denominational annual meetings are being derailed and reworked due to the coronavirus pandemic. This will have an urgent effect on the United Methodist Church, which already had delayed from last year a critical vote on the…
The strange saga of the Riley Foundation lawsuit now forces SBC to figure out who has the right to remove a seminary trustee
A months-long battle for ultimate control of the Southern Baptist Convention’s agencies and institutions came to light Feb. 21 when a trove of attorney communications exposed a rift between officers of the SBC Executive Committee and leaders of Southwestern Baptist…
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…
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…
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…
Baptist layman Charlie Daniel: six decades of courage, compassion and wit as an editorial cartoonist
Charlie Daniel was called a lot of things during more than six decades as a newspaper cartoonist in Knoxville, Tennessee. Some of the names are unprintable. Others are just amusing. “I got some letters and emails over the years saying,…