News

On June 19, 1866, Texas freed-persons celebrated the anniversary of the announcement of their freedom — the first Juneteenth holiday. This year, the holiday helps highlight a Baptist pastor & George Floyd.

First Baptist Church of Crestmont in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, is among several Southern Baptist congregations celebrating for the first time Juneteenth, or June 19th, the day in 1865 when enslaved black people in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free.

Houses of worship across the nation are observing Juneteenth with Black Lives Matter demonstrations, anti-racist workshops, and virtual celebrations. Juneteenth honors the day in 1865 when enslaved black people in Galveston Bay, Texas, were notified by Union troops they were free by executive decree.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a Baptist minister in North Carolina, sees the removal of Confederate monuments across the country as “very biblical.” The author and activist talked about faith, racism, and advocacy on the latest episode of the Word&Way podcast “Baptist Without An Adjective.”

Faith groups are applauding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision temporarily halting the Trump administration’s efforts to rescind an Obama-era program granting legal protection to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as children. 

Like many restaurants around the world, Nikos Katsouris has seen his eatery in Lesbos, Greece, close due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So, he and his partner, Katerina Koveou, have been providing their former customers who are refugees items like toothpaste, diapers, and imperishable groceries. 

A church in rural northeastern Oregon is now the epicenter of the state's largest coronavirus outbreak, as 236 people tested positive for the disease, authorities said Tuesday (June 16).

Among the religious right, many found the 6-3 majority opinion shielding LGBT people from employment discrimination, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, alarming. But some also saw an open door to gain back some ground in the future.

Five years ago after eight black church members and their pastor were shot and killed in a racist attack, South Carolina came together and took down the Confederate flag from the Capitol lawn. Today, South Carolina leaders appear so far to be sitting out a new movement of pulling down statues and removing names of historical figures who oppressed other people.

Rolland Slade, senior pastor of Meridian Baptist Church in El Cajon, California, has been elected as the first African American chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, the group that runs the business of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination outside its annual meetings. He was elected unanimously.