News

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.

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.