Nation

A Baptist layman in Bolivar, Missouri, filed a motion last week to block Southwest Baptist University from changing its governing documents. Don Jump, an alum of SBU who served on the Board of Trustees for 10 years until 2018, filed his petition with the Circuit Court of Polk County on Feb. 22.

A state appeals court in Texas ruled last week that a sexual abuse lawsuit could go forward against Paul Pressler, a former judge and influential Southern Baptist who helped lead a rightward shift in the denomination in the 1980s and 1990s.

At least 160 public Confederate symbols were taken down or moved from public spaces in 2020, according to a new count by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group keeps a raw count of nearly 2,100 statues, symbols, placards, buildings, and public parks dedicated to the Confederacy.

The United Methodist Church has once again postponed its quadrennial meeting due to the COVID-19 pandemic, delaying further a widely anticipated vote by delegates from across the globe on a proposal to split the denomination over the inclusion of LGBTQ members.

A group of Apache peoples and other Native American and non-Native supporters has filed an emergency motion to stop the U.S. government from transferring an Apache sacred site in Arizona to a mining company in the next two weeks.

As controversy continues after some prominent Southern Baptist pastors called U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris a “Jezebel” or said she was “going to hell,” new research shows that Harris and other women of color remain top targets for online attacks.

U.S. Rep. Cori Bush introduced legislation Monday to grant permanent residency to Alex Garcia, a Honduran immigrant who has spent more than three years inside a Missouri church to avoid deportation.

Health officials in the nation’s capital are hoping that Black religious leaders will serve as community influencers to overcome what officials say is a persistent vaccine reluctance in the Black community. Several local ministers recently received their first vaccine shots.

While defending Southern Baptist pastors who called Vice President Kamala Harris a ‘Jezebel,’ Southern Baptist pastor Tom Ascol declared Harris was going to hell. He also consigned journalists Anne Branigin and Jake Tapper to that fate for reporting on pastors who compared Harris to the biblical character Jezebel.

As controversy grows about comments by Southern Baptist pastors comparing Vice President Kamala Harris to the biblical character Jezebel, a leader in Founders Ministries, a group pushing Calvinism within SBC life, claimed critics of the pastors worship a false religion.