Baptist

LifeWay Christian Resources has reached an agreement to sell Ridgecrest Conference Center and Summer Camps to the Ridgecrest Foundation. The two groups plan to complete the transfer of the North Carolina property and ministries by the end of 2020.

After seven months without any coronavirus cases at its four residential communities across Missouri, The Baptist Home has seen nearly three dozen cases at its Chillicothe campus. Two residents of the home for the aging have died, while another 18 tested positive along with 14 staff members.

After months of some Black Southern Baptist leaders urging Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to remove names of enslavers from campus buildings and programs, trustees at the school in Louisville, Kentucky, unanimously voted Monday (Oct. 12) not to change the names.

With the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee starting its hearing Monday (Oct. 12) to consider the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett as a justice for the U.S. Supreme Court, a Baptist group that closely watches church-state cases sent a letter to the senators on the committee.

Amid a two-year controversy over theology and power, leaders at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri, decided to terminate its philosophy program and not renew the contract of its tenured philosophy professors — a move some other faculty feel didn’t follow the school’s own rules.

When the eight justices of the U.S. Supreme Court gather Tuesday (Oct. 6), they will hear oral arguments in Tanzin v. Tanvir, a case focused on a statutory question about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. BJC, also known as the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, is closely watching the case.

The executive director of the Montana Southern Baptist Convention took to Twitter this past week to push debunked conspiracy theories about the health and debate performance of Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden.

Two trustees at Southwest Baptist University took to the internet airwaves recently to attack Word&Way for covering the decision by SBU trustees to require religion professors at the school in Bolivar, Missouri, to affirm additional creedal documents.

LifeWay Christian Resources has decided not to proceed with a breach of contract lawsuit against the SBC entity’s former president Thom Rainer, but will instead seek to resolve the dispute without litigation. 

In his first meeting as leader of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, Rolland Slade called on other committee members on Tuesday (Sept. 22) to be responsible “to shepherd and to protect” survivors of church sex abuse.