News

As COVID-19 surges in southwestern Missouri, a Baptist pastor, his family, and his church members are among those impacted. Joshua Manning, pastor of Community Baptist Church in Noel, is seeing coronavirus now moving into his rural area.

Vice President Mike Pence launched a faith-centered tour in a conservative Milwaukee, Wisconsin, suburb on Tuesday, touting what he called the “great American comeback” as a couple of hundred attendees, most not wearing masks, cheered and chanted “USA!” and “four more years!”

The leaders of the Mississippi Baptist Convention urged state legislators Tuesday (June 23) to change the state’s flag, the last in the nation to include the Confederate battle emblem in the design. As Confederate monuments across the country have been defaced, toppled by protesters, and removed by officials this month amid “Black Lives Matter,” the design of the state flag of Mississippi has again come to the forefront.

As states across the country lift some or even all restrictions intended to slow the spread of coronavirus, new hotspots of the virus erupt in churches from Oregon to Kentucky to West Virginia. Baptist churches are among those hit with infections after resuming in-person services.

Rayshard Brooks, who was fatally shot by a police officer, is to be remembered today at the church in Atlanta, Georgia, where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at the church and a Democratic candidate for Senate, will deliver the eulogy.

A Tennessee newspaper said Sunday it is investigating what its editor called a “horrific” full-page advertisement from a religious group that predicts a terrorist attack in Nashville next month.

With COVID-19 restrictions preventing an intended in-person rally in Washington D.C., at least a million supporters of the Poor People's Campaign reportedly tuned in Saturday (June 20) to watch a mix of live speeches and pre-recorded clips of liberal religious leaders calling for a "moral revolution."

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.