Delegates at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to create a task force to oversee an independent investigation into the denomination’s handling of sexual abuse.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ spring meeting begins Wednesday with as much interest for political observers as religious ones, as what is typically a mundane clerical confab takes up an escalating debate over President Joe Biden and Communion.
During the 2021 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, speakers wrestle with issues of patriotism and the Gospel. But a planned resolution to denounce the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol was pulled.
Ed Litton, the relatively unknown senior pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama, defeated two preeminent rivals to be elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention during a session of the SBC’s annual meeting Tuesday.
Traditionally, Southern Baptists open the two-day meeting with the banging of a gavel. In most years, the meetings have featured the Broadus gavel, named for John A. Broadus, a founding faculty member of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary who was also an enslaver.
Southern Baptists worried about “liberal drift” in their denomination heard warnings about “paganism” and worldly ideologies like critical race theory. About 1,000 people attended the Founders Ministries gathering Monday ahead of the Southern Baptist Convention.
As the delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting gathered on Monday for the next day’s opening gavel, the denomination’s Executive Committee rejected a request to broaden an inquiry into its handling of sexual abuse allegations to include all the entities of the SBC.
Todd Littleton knows he faces nearly impossible odds at this week’s annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. Amid a flurry of resolutions decrying critical race theory, he decided to submit his own proposal to recognize structural racism and oppression as societal evils.
Ryan Burge wrote a computer script to collect and organize the text of all the resolutions passed at the annual meeting dating back to 1845 to see if there were any patterns.
As bishops in the United States prepare to discuss the drafting of a document that could ban pro-choice Catholic politicians like President Joe Biden from receiving Communion, experts say while this is not a new debate, the stakes are higher than ever.