News

After Southwest Baptist University President Eric Turner resigned amid a two-year controversy over theology and institutional control, Missouri Baptist Convention Executive Director John Yeats wrote a letter to SBU faculty and staff.

In December 2018, news broke of a controversy at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri, involving the Missouri Baptist Convention, theological debates, and efforts to gain institutional control. As the SBU-MBC controversy continues to evolve, Word&Way created this timeline of key moments.

As the number of laid-off workers and hungry Americans continues to rise, even as farmers are having trouble marketing their crops, the ancient practice of gleaning is having a moment — fueled in part by faith communities.

Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden’s 500 initial signatories included retired congregational pastors, professors, authors, and parachurch leaders but few with current pulpit ministries. The founding announcement ignited a firestorm among evangelical Trump supporters.

As religious services went online due to coronavirus, a paradox emerged: Worshipers were connected via the internet to a potentially wide community, but it felt like a more private affair. This is not the first time tensions between private worship and public expressions of religion have been felt.

The Kansas-Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists elected a new executive director Oct. 16. David Manner, associate state executive director since 2012 and on staff with the convention since 2000, will assume the role March 1.

Just weeks after seeing an outbreak of coronavirus cases at its campus in Chillicothe, The Baptist Home now faces a second outbreak at another of its four residential communities in Missouri. According to an update Wednesday (Oct. 21), a cluster of cases emerged at TBH’s campus in Ozark.

Barely two years after being unanimously chosen by trustees, Eric Turner resigned Tuesday (Oct. 20) as president of Southwest Baptist University. His resignation, made during an executive session of a contentious Board meeting, comes amid a two-year conflict over theology and control at the school.

About a dozen Rohingya refugees voted for the first time Tuesday (Oct. 20) at an early voting site in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood. It wasn’t just the first time they voted as United States citizens. It was the first time they’d ever voted, period.

Early on Tuesday (Oct. 20), workers in the capital of Missouri removed the city’s lone Confederate monument after months of advocacy by community leaders that included Word&Way Editor Brian Kaylor.