Nation

Southwest Baptist University is urging a circuit court judge to approve its new governing documents and reject an effort by a former trustee to intervene. A Baptist layman filed a petition on Feb. 22 with the Circuit Court of Polk County in an effort to stop the approval of the school’s new governing documents.

As Missouri lawmakers consider creating a day to honor Rush Limbaugh after his death last month, a group of three dozen faith leaders mostly in St. Louis submitted testimony opposing the bill. Rep. Hardy Billington, a Republican and a Baptist deacon, authored a bill two days after Limbaugh’s death.

Faith leaders are ramping up their support for an Oklahoma death row inmate as his clemency hearing nears. Julius Jones, 40, was sentenced to death in 2002, but his advocates say a different person committed the crime in which a prominent Edmond, Oklahoma, businessman was killed during a carjacking.

Conservative leaders within the United Methodist Church unveiled plans Monday to form a new denomination, the Global Methodist Church, with a doctrine that does not recognize same-sex marriage.

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.