Church

The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty is acquiring the Center for Faith, Justice, and Reconciliation in a move its leaders say will help them broaden efforts to support a more universal range of religious freedoms in the country.

Helping ease medical debt, especially for people of color, is an increasingly popular social justice project among liberal Christian, Jewish, and Muslim congregations. Over the past few years some 800 U.S. congregations have partnered with RIP Medical Debt to do so.

The woman pastor at the center of the SBC’s decision to oust Saddleback Church — the California megachurch founded by pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren — says she will continue to serve as a ministry leader despite her longstanding ties to the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The issue of who gets to be a Southern Baptist made international headlines last week after the denomination’s Executive Committee voted to oust one of the nation’s largest and best-known churches for having a woman preaching pastor.

This issue of A Public Witness reports on three unconventional Ash Wednesday services focused on environmentalism, death penalty abolition, and slavery reparations. Each one serves as a glimpse into how this season of spiritual reflection can inspire public action.

The president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has called for the excommunication of unrepentant white supremacists in the church’s ranks, rebuking an extremist effort to exert influence within the conservative Lutheran denomination.

The SBC Executive Committee has deemed Saddleback Church as “not in friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention.” The move comes less than a year after founding pastor Rick Warren left and was replaced by pastors Andy and Stacie Wood.

After an estimated 50,000 Christian worshippers, celebrity pastors, and onlookers flocked to a rolling revival meeting at Asbury University, the school’s administration announced a limited schedule for services in hopes of restoring order to this tiny Central Kentucky town.

An Indiana Baptist pastor, Benkert played a key role in setting up an investigation into how SBC leaders have responded to the issue of abuse. He also reported a church that had platformed former SBC President Johnny Hunt, who has been credibly accused of sexual assault.

Among sermon writers, there is fascination — and unease — over the fast-expanding abilities of artificial-intelligence chatbots. For now, the evolving consensus among clergy is this: Yes, they can write a passably competent sermon. But no, they can’t replicate the passion of actual preaching.