News

Female clergy describe having a sense of anticipation for years before this summer’s elevation of Rev. Gina Stewart to president of the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Missionary Society. But questions remain about where Black denominations stand on women’s leadership.

Senior Editor Beau Underwood interviews Russ Dean, co-pastor (with his wife Amy) of Park Road Baptist Church in Charlotte, NC, for the latest installment of our “Behind the Pulpit” series intended to pull back the curtain on the minister’s life.

Members of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee remain divided on whether to waive attorney-client privilege as part of the investigation — despite the fact that SBC messengers voted for such waving of privilege. 

In this issue of A Public Witness, we take a look at two new survey reports on White evangelicals and Donald Trump to consider what they tell us together about the label ‘evangelical.’ We also join the chorus of voices searching for new religious identifiers.

Faith-based refugee resettlement groups are celebrating the Biden administration’s proposal to admit as many as 125,000 refugees to the United States in the coming year, calling the decision a “return to moral leadership.” 

The Southern Baptist Convention task force on clergy sexual abuse has completed two key tasks: picking Guidepost Solutions to be the third-party firm conducting the probe, and asking the Executive Committee to waive attorney-client privilege for the purposes of the investigation.

A former Liberian military commander who supervised the slaughter of hundreds of unarmed civilians at a church during that country’s civil war in 1990 is liable under U.S. law for participating in extrajudicial killings and torture, a federal judge in Philadelphia has ruled.

As significant numbers of Americans seek religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccine mandates, many faith leaders are saying: Not with our endorsement. Various denominations are speaking out against such exemptions.

Appeals to Christian identity were common during the Trump administration, but with Trump out of office and hundreds of Jan. 6 insurrectionists now facing federal charges, hard-line Christian Nationalists are increasingly fueling their movement with opposition to COVID-19 vaccines and mask mandates.

Pope Francis said Wednesday he didn’t understand why people refuse to take COVID-19 vaccines, saying “humanity has a history of friendship with vaccines,” and that serene discussion about the shots was necessary to help them.