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,…
Virtual General Assembly evokes memories of CBF’s foundation, formative role
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s pandemic-induced move to online spaces cannot replace the family reunion function that so many love about the annual event.
New database tracks Baptist predators ‘of all flavors’
“While this database was inspired by SBC abuse, we have opened it to include Baptists of all flavors, not just SBC.”
SBC continues downward slide in membership, attendance and Baptisms
A steadily declining Southern Baptist Convention has reported yet another decrease in membership, this one of nearly 2% to 14,525,579 from 2018 to 2019.
McLaren: progressive Baptists essential to countering politics, racism in the white church
“I think evangelicals and Baptists were closer to the truth 30 years ago when they used to say that character counts. I think the abandonment of character as a political standard is tragic and regrettable and we will reap what we have sown.”