Baptist

Several Southern Baptist churches are planning to recognize the inaugural “George Liele Church Planting, Evangelism, and Missions Sunday” on Feb. 7, which honors the enslaved man who founded churches in the U.S. and then became the first Baptist missionary abroad.

After Word&Way reported yesterday that trustees at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri, had denied tenure or promotion to five faculty members, an SBU student created a petition at change.org urging the trustees to reverse their decision.

Southern Baptist Convention officials have strongly condemned a letter sent by a critic of the SBC to the Rev. Dwight McKissic, a Black pastor in Texas who recently announced he was pulling his church out of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.

Trustees for Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri, recently denied tenure or promotion applications from five faculty members in various departments. The unusual action could raise new concerns for the school already facing an inquiry by its accreditation body.

Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren has apologized for a children’s Sunday school curriculum video that used Asian culture stereotypes to teach kids about the Bible. The video has been removed.

In a long-awaited report released Monday (Feb. 1), a task force commissioned to study the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission calls the convention’s public policy arm a “significant distraction from the Great Commission work of Southern Baptists.”

As Dwight McKissic looks at the Southern Baptist Convention these days as a Black pastor in Texas, he sees a parallel with a scene in the new film One Night in Miami. He talked about issues of racism and the SBC in the latest episode of the Word&Way podcast “Baptist Without An Adjective.”

As COVID-19 vaccination efforts ramps up in countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Israel, and Denmark, the Baptist World Alliance on Friday called for equitable distribution of vaccines and the avoidance of “vaccine nationalism.”

It didn’t take long after the inauguration of the nation’s first woman vice president for some pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention to start comparing her to the Bible’s most nefarious woman. Two days, to be exact.

When Rev. Raphael Warnock joined the U.S. Senate, he assumed a seat previously held by Joseph Emerson Brown, an infamous White Southern Baptist politician who enslaved Black people. But to get to that position, Warnock had to overcome criticisms from a new generation of Southern Baptists.