News & Commentary About All Things Baptist

On Monday, December 15, the United States Supreme Court turned down another challenge to President-elect Obama’s eligibility to serve as president because of his citizenship. The most recent challenger, Cort Wrotnowski of Greenwich, Connecticut, argued that Obama was a British subject at birth and thus was not a “natural born citizen.” Just two days later, [...]

From Vicki Brown of the Associated Baptist Press (September 2008): ATLANTA (ABP) — The Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board will reorganize over the next year to focus more on local churches’ involvement in missions and provide flexibility to reach people groups across geographical lines. At their Sept. 8-10 meeting in Atlanta, IMB trustees approved [...]

As previously mentioned, Richard Land has found him a new crush in Sarah Palin. Meanwhile, countless other Christian Right leaders have been gushing over John McCain’s VP selection. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council declared that McCain had made an “outstanding pick.” Wendy Wright of Disturbed Women for America announced that Palin’s “admirable record [...]

A week or so ago, Baptist ethicist David Gushee penned an op-ed for Associated Baptist Press titled Reflections from BWA: Missing and forgiving, Southern Baptists. In his column, Gushee called on “the Southern Baptist Convention to rejoin the world Baptist family, on humbler terms.” Gushee also “called on” us former Southern Baptists to “renounce SBC [...]

Baptist Press – the PR arm of the Southern Baptist Convention – in a not so surprising move decided to run Cal Thomas’s much talked about op-ed titled Obama is no Joshua. Baptist Press reprinted this Thomas op-ed with permission from Tribune Media Services. The gist of Thomas’s article is this: Obama ain’t a real [...]

If you don’t know Bobby Jindal, he’s the young, Indian-American, Republican Governor of Louisiana who has been touted as being on John McCain’s VP short list. For several months now there has been much speculation that Jindal will be John McCain’s choice for the Republican vice presidential nomination. This speculation was given a bit of [...]

During the report of the Richard Land’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Southern Baptist Bob Stith, the national strategist for gender issues for the Southern Baptist Convention called on Southern Baptist pastors to “reach out to homosexuals.” Follow the Jesus pattern and show ‘em some love, says Stith Here’s what Bob Stith actually said: “We [...]

The Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention held in Indianapolis kicked off this morning. Thus far, two interesting motions have been presented. On the one hand, a messenger moved to change the SBC Constitution “to state that churches which have female senior pastors are not in friendly cooperation with the convention.” And on the [...]

Curtis Freeman, director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke Divinity School, has an interesting article in the Journal of Southern Religion that analyzes W.A. Criswell’s “change of heart” on the issue of race. Read the article here. In the article, Freeman challenges Russell Moore’s contention that liberals don’t deserve the credit that they [...]

Rev. Dwight McKissic is a prominent African-American pastor in the Southern Baptist Convention. Over the past year, McKissic has become a controversial figure in the SBC. You can read about that here. Recently, McKissic posted a guest column at the blog SBC Today. Included in his column (which is mostly about tongues, charismatic theology, etc.) [...]