“I do believe we can hold a conservative view of marriage and still love and support LGBTQ folks,” Gay Christian activist Justin Lee said at a talk at Baylor University.
What’s a Baptist? Seminary aims to help Baptists figure that out
Congregations across the country are struggling to remain, or even achieve, relevance in their communities. The struggle is just as difficult for seminaries seeking to serve those churches.
Baptist upbringing inspires sociologist’s study of SBC controversy, American faith
Growing up as a child of a Southern Baptist minister, Nancy Ammerman developed an early interest in the role congregations play in nurturing the personal faith of individuals. Now a sociologist at Boston University, Ammerman has turned the insights she gained toward a study of American religious life, including controversies that have confronted Baptists.
Mississippi pastors support law widely-described as anti-gay
More than 50 Southern Baptist ministers in Mississippi recently issued an open letter supporting a new law which purports to protect religious liberty but is widely-described as the country’s most aggressive anti-LGBT legislation. Baptist pastors including current and past presidents of the…
Learning from students and their term papers
I began grading term papers in the fall of 1972, for undergraduates taking courses with C. Allyn Russell, Professor of Religion at Boston University. He paid me $2 an hour, or thereabouts, during our three-year run. Each semester thereof, Russell,…
Don’t forget to count the non-denoms
In all the hand-wringing about the statistical decline of Baptist congregations in America — which follows similar declines before in the mainline Protestant churches — one important shift seldom gets mentioned. That is the rise of the nondenominational church within…
TO: Denny Burk, Professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College, the undergraduate arm of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY
MEMO TO: Denny Burk, Professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College, the undergraduate arm of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. FROM: The Faith on the Fringe SUBJECT: Christian messages like yours contribute to the decline of Christianity…
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,…
When God changes His mind*
It wouldn’t be the first time, you know. If Fox News wants to see what “fair and balanced” looks like they should check out National Public Radio. You know the folks at the helm are left of center, but they…