Browse Archives
Check out news and opinion posts across the years
Baptist Minister/Judge Says Incarceration a Moral Issue
Baptists should condemn the idea that incarceration cures crime, advocate just alternatives to prison and work to reclaim and restore persons leaving the penal system, says an appellate judge and ordained Baptist...
Baptist Leaders Urge Senate to Pass ‘Strongest Possible’ Bill on Climate Change
More than 140 Baptist leaders from 25 states and the District of Columbia endorsed a Baptist Center for Ethics letter sent today calling on the U.S. Senate to pass climate-change legislation. Being delivered this...
Environmental Racism: Another Inconvenient Truth
Most Americans are coming to terms with the environmental peril facing our planet. Documentaries, books, media attention and scientific research are raising consciousness to this very important issue. For this we...
Who’s afraid of the big, bad ‘them’?
It is interesting to see how differently Baptists can react to the growing religious and political pluralism in our midst. Some do so with such fear.In his April 24 editorial (“Dare to be the ‘bad guys’ of the future”)...
Stetzer calls it straight
Statistics recently released from LifeWay Christian Resources reveal that the Southern Baptist Convention has clearly peaked, and is in decline. Not only are baptisms down for the seventh year out of the last eight,...
The Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of Love
In reading the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, I cannot help but draw one fundamental conclusion about the essence of God: God is love. From Genesis to Revelation, the pages of the Bible sing forth that God is love....
Should Christians Be Concerned About Our Carbon Footprint?
Scientists are in wide agreement that global warming is real. Carbon dioxide and methane gases have increased in our atmosphere over the years and scientists believe these are mostly to blame for the warming phenomena...
Southern Baptist Leaders’ Comments Echo ‘Biblical Patriarchy’ Theology
Thoughts about subordination of women that brought censure to a female presenter who critiqued them in a recent apologetics conference at Midwestern Baptist Theological seminary find some parallel in recent history of...
Struggling in Silence
Do you know which professional group in the United States experiences the highest rate of suicide? According to the most recent edition of Newsweek magazine, the highest rate of suicide in our country, higher than...
It Ain’t Easy Being Green
Just ask Kermit the Frog, who sang about it. Or the Jolly Green Giant, about whom the following was sung: You've heard about the Jolly Green Giant, He's so big and mean; He stands there laughing with his hands on his...
SBC Reports Membership Decline
Total membership in the Southern Baptist Convention dropped nearly 40,000 last year, prompting one official to declare America's second-largest faith group officially a "denomination in decline. New statistics released...
Conflicts, but no conspiracy
North Carolina is loaded with Baptist folk who love missions and enjoy attending mission-related meetings. Three of the most popular are traditionally held in the spring of each year: the North Carolina Missions...
The greening of the church
Earth Day has come and gone, and while some conservative stalwarts continue to deny human impact on global warming -- or see no need to care for the earth since they anticipate Armaggedon -- more and more Christians...
“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”
Quick! What is intelligent design? Anyone? Anyone? Unfortunately, the new documentary "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," which purports to be about how intelligent design (ID) proponents are being blacklisted, does...
Speaker Chastised Over Criticism of ‘Biblical Patriarchy’ at SBC Seminary
A speaker at an apologetics conference at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has been rebuked for comments critical of prominent Southern Baptists who believe God ordains for wives to be subordinate to their...
10 Ways You Can Be More Green
I had the pleasure of hearing former Vice President and Nobel Prize recipient Al Gore speak in January at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration in Atlanta. The presentation he delivered to his fellow Baptists was one of...
British Baptists Issue Warning on Extremist Politics
British Baptists, Methodists and the United Reformed Church have joined forces to denounce racist and extreme political parties in upcoming local elections in Wales and parts of England. The Baptist Union of Great...
BCE Launches ‘The Green Bible’ Web Page
TheGreenBible.org is now online The site, from Baptist Center for Ethics and EthicsDaily.com, is a warehouse of information on the biblical mandate to care for the environment--and what people of faith can and should...
Recycling Our Witness
I recently preached a sermon on environmental stewardship based on the familiar John 3:16 passage. If we replace the English word "world" with the original Greek, we learn that: "For God so loved the cosmos that he...
Rescue the perishing
The most hostile letters I have ever received as an editor had nothing to do with hot-button ethical, religious or political issues. They were in response to a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek column a decade ago about...
Missouri Southern Baptist Leader Apologizes for Criticizing Confederate Flag
The interim executive director of the Missouri Baptist Convention has apologized for calling the Confederate flag a symbol of hate. Earlier this year David Tolliver wrote a column in the Missouri Baptist newspaper The...