Browse Archives
Check out news and opinion posts across the years
Baylor Flap Heating Up Again
Baylor University's faculty senate, which twice has voted no-confidence in the leadership of President Robert Sloan, now wants to poll all 770 faculty members to see if a majority agrees that he ought to be replaced....
Worthy of the Name Christian
It was disclosed recently that the Christian Coalition of Alabama has been taking money from Indian gambling interests to oppose gambling initiatives in Alabama. In a scheme worthy of Colombian drug lords, money was...
Baptist Aid Caribbean Hurricane Victims
Baptist World Aid has sent an initial grant of $5,000 to help with hurricane relief in Jamaica, hard hit by Hurricane Ivan. About 10 Baptist churches suffered extensive damage and hundreds of Baptists had lost or...
‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’
"Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" uses new-fangled filmmaking to deliver old-fashioned storytelling. "Sky Captain," which opens nationwide today, hearkens back to what we used to think the future would be. It...
Baptists Explore Ministry to Women in Prostitution
Freeset Ministries co-founders Kerry and Annie Hilton felt God's call to missions without knowing that call would take them to the red light district of Calcutta. Freeset is a business set up in Ram Bagan, a district...
Finding Who We Really Are
For my 12th birthday, my parents gave me a 10-karat gold signet ring, with my initial "J" engraved with a flourish on top. It was the first real piece of jewelry I had ever owned. A week later, I entered the new and...
Tour Marks Two-year Anniversary of ‘Purpose Driven Life’
Southern Baptist pastor Rick Warren is gearing up for an East Coast tour marking the two-year anniversary of his best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Life, which is approaching 20 million copies in sales. The tour,...
Pushing the Church-State Envelope
I bought myself a black-powder rifle. It was mostly authentic, except that it needed a wooden stock to make it acceptable for historical reenactments I attend. The intent of the hunting laws is that black-powder guns...
Praying About the Weather
As of this writing (Wednesday morning), Ivan the Terrible is about to land on the Gulf Coast and pummel its way northward. Along with everyone else, I am trying to anticipate the inevitable complications and possible...
Rogers Says He Won’t Hand-Pick His Successor
Former Southern Baptist Convention president Adrian Rogers says he won't name his own successor as pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in suburban Memphis but will monitor a national search "to make sure there aren't any...
What Goes Around Comes Around
For a week in August a mission team from Venezuela worked in our area. The team visited with Hispanics in several communities and in multiple settings. A sawmill owner allowed the team to present the gospel at break...
Language Group Releases TV’s Top Buzzwords
"You're Fired!" was the top phrase from the 2003-04 TV season, according to a language tracking group. The phrase, uttered by Donald Trump on each episode of NBC's "The Apprentice," earned the top slot from the Global...
Born-Again Christians as Likely to Divorce as Non-Christians, Poll Says
"Born-again" Christians are just as likely to divorce as are non-Christians, according to a Sept. 8 report by pollster George Barna. Barna said 35 percent of married born-again Christians have gone through a divorce....
Forgive and Forget
Many marriages run into trouble because of a lack of communication between the spouses. For example, let us say that the husband does something that either irritated his wife or causes her some type of emotional pain....
Adrian Rogers Retiring as Pastor
The Memphis mega-church pastor whose 1979 election as president of the Southern Baptist Convention launched the "conservative resurgence" that transformed the nation's largest Protestant denomination is stepping down...
‘7th Heaven’ First Season Arrives on DVD
The first season of the WB network's long-running family drama "7th Heaven" is available on DVD today. The six-disc set features all 22 episodes from the show's first season in 1996-97. It includes guest appearances by...
PBS Series Pits Worldviews of C.S. Lewis, Freud
Two of the 20th century's most influential thinkers go head-to-head in an upcoming program about humanity's most profound questions. "The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud With Dr. Armand Nicholi" is a...
Kerry Quotes Bible Against Bush
In a Bible-thumping indictment peppered with Scripture references, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry called President Bush a "false prophet" and compared him to the men who passed by the robbed and beaten...
A Nation of ‘Furners’
Dialect jokes are a thing of the past. I miss them because I never took them as being rude or disrespectful, but just a part the great variety of life that is all around us. Americans, except for the native aborigine,...
Baptists Grieve for Russian School Violence Victims
Condolences and support from Baptists poured into Beslan, Russia, following last week's school hostage crisis that took at least 340 lives. "There are no words to express the sorrow and the pain in the hearts of the...
In Search Of Healing, and Hope
This Saturday marks the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. We continue to mourn not only the tragic loss of life, but also the loss of innocence. We had lived for years in a kind of social bubble. We felt safe...