News

After Ed Litton emerged victorious in the Southern Baptist Convention’s presidential election on Tuesday, reports and analysis quickly portrayed the news as a defeat for the denomination’s fundamentalist wing. But rather than fundamentalism being dismissed, anti-elitism was embraced. 

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One of the hot-button items expected to be on the agenda when Southern Baptists met for their annual meeting this week was critical race theory. But, in the end, the resolution the committee chose to bring to the floor for a vote did not mention CRT.

Delegates at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to create a task force to oversee an independent investigation into the denomination’s handling of sexual abuse.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ spring meeting begins Wednesday with as much interest for political observers as religious ones, as what is typically a mundane clerical confab takes up an escalating debate over President Joe Biden and Communion.

During the 2021 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, speakers wrestle with issues of patriotism and the Gospel. But a planned resolution to denounce the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol was pulled.

Ed Litton, the relatively unknown senior pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama, defeated two preeminent rivals to be elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention during a session of the SBC’s annual meeting Tuesday.

Traditionally, Southern Baptists open the two-day meeting with the banging of a gavel. In most years, the meetings have featured the Broadus gavel, named for John A. Broadus, a founding faculty member of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary who was also an enslaver.

Southern Baptists worried about “liberal drift” in their denomination heard warnings about “paganism” and worldly ideologies like critical race theory. About 1,000 people attended the Founders Ministries gathering Monday ahead of the Southern Baptist Convention.

As the delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting gathered on Monday for the next day’s opening gavel, the denomination’s Executive Committee rejected a request to broaden an inquiry into its handling of sexual abuse allegations to include all the entities of the SBC.