Browse Archives
Check out news and opinion posts across the years
Limited Seating for DVD Screenings at CBF, So Y’all Come Early
The Baptist Center for Ethics is screening two DVDs Friday, June 29, at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship meeting in Washington, D.C. The room seats only 120 folk. So, if you are attending CBF or the American Baptist...
A Political Shift for Southern Baptists?
For the past three decades Southern Baptists have been, for the most part, faithful political conservatives. Like other believers on the religious right, culture-war issues have made them reliable supporters of the...
Aussie Baptists Push for Increased Foreign Aid, Offer Model for Global Baptists
Australian Baptists account for only an estimated 1.6 percent of the Australian population, but they played an important role in getting their government to reverse its declining foreign aid budget and to pledge an...
Online Tool Maps Faith Groups Working for Social Justice
America's faith community has a broader values agenda than the small number of hot-button issues promoted by the Religious Right, and the nation is less divided between blue and red states than the media suggest,...
Extra! Extra! Breed All About It
A Southern Baptist theologian said future growth of the Southern Baptist Convention must come not only from the baptistery, but also the bedroom. Citing a study that for the first time compares birth rates of religious...
Lebanese Baptists Minister Amid Conflict
Despite a year of political instability and strife, Baptists in Lebanon are proceeding this week with an annual conference aimed at bringing Christians from North America, Europe and the Arab world together to better...
Rick Scarborough, Alan Keyes Launch ’70 Weeks to Save America’ Crusade
Vision America founder Rick Scarborough and two-time presidential candidate Alan Keyes are kicking off a 70-week series of one-day crusades to "save America" beginning the week of the Fourth of July and ending the week...
Ten Commandments for Driving in Houston
The pope has given a list of "Ten Commandments" for driving, warning against sins of road rage, drinking and driving and even being rude. Taking them in the spirit in which they were given, this Baptist preacher can't...
Blog Accuses Bellevue of Idolatry
A Christian Web site criticized a Southern Baptist mega-church's enshrining of cheerleading and beauty-pageant memorabilia to honor the senior pastor's wife as an example of modern-day idolatry. "How do you build a...
Doggone Metaphors
"There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor," writer and cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson has observed. "You can't think without metaphors." One example of a toxic metaphor came during a recent...
Do Southern Baptists Really Support ‘Biblical’ Marriage?
God bless you Paige Patterson! It is men of courage like you who will save the Southern Baptist Convention and the nation. For far too long, our faith and our nation have taken an unbiblical turn when it comes to...
Church-State Group Labels PBS Documentary Propaganda for Christian Right
PBS officials defended the decision to air a documentary on Thomas Jefferson's metaphor of a "wall" of separation between church and state against accusations the film is a propaganda tool for the Christian Right. In a...
The Pitfalls of Literal Interpretation
Funny, isn't it, how people pick and choose what to take literally about the Bible's account of creation and the early days of humankind? Take Al Mohler's recent comments in opposition to theistic evolution. "If we're...
Baptist Seminary Homemaking Classes for Wives to Rescue Culture, Church
Christian homemaking will save the Southern Baptist Convention and the nation, according to the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, one of the nation's largest training schools...
An Inconvenient War
If we can allow our military to sacrifice their very lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, why are the rest of us not more involved? If the soldiers' families continue to be devastated in such an endless carnage, why are our...
The Church Must Confront the Sin of Greed
I heard Jim Wallis of Sojourners Magazine say years ago that one out of every seven verses in the Bible spoke to the proper use of money. If one-seventh of the Bible tells us how to dispose of our wealth, why then does...
Baptist Seminary Offers Degree in Homemaking for Pastors’ Wives
Starting this fall Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary will offer a program in Christian homemaking, the seminary's president said Tuesday. "We are moving against the tide in order to establish family and gender...
Old Guard and New Wave Fundamentalists Battle Over SBC Perimeters
Old guard and new wave fundamentalists battled this week over the perimeters of exclusivity in the Southern Baptist Convention. Contrary to headlines, the battle was not between moderates and fundamentalists. That...
Has America Become an Empire?
Has America become an Empire? With the demise of the old Soviet Union, America certainly exists as the only remaining super power in the world. And that is a unique place to be, uncharted waters in many ways. For...
President Bush Thanks Southern Baptists for Support
President Bush thanked Southern Baptists for their support of two justices he appointed to the United States Supreme Court, swing votes in a recent decision upholding a federal ban on partial-birth abortion. "I...
What’s Your Biggest Sin?
The recent Presidential Forum on Faith, Values, and Poverty was sponsored by Sojourners/Call to Renewal. The name given to the forum would lead one to think that the forum was going to focus on the way that the faith...