Reading Time: 14 minutes As the Southern Baptist Convention approaches its 2023 Annual Meeting, its two major factions are already at each other’s throats. Each faction seems to sense that this meeting will be an especially important skirmish in their war for control of this struggling denomination. Let’s examine the trenches they’re digging ahead of the meeting—and the strategies […]
Religious News
Posted inReligious News
The Southern Baptist Convention had its worst-ever membership drop in 2022
Reading Time: 14 minutes The 2023 Book of Reports contains several key takeaways: a devastating membership drop, huge losses of member churches, and nowhere near enough bounceback in their baptism metrics.
Posted inReligious News
Why no evangelicals stopped Joshua Butler’s toxic marriage suggestions
Reading Time: 14 minutes You’d think someone might have told the guy much earlier that his ideas perpetuated some really sickening and toxic dynamics between spouses. But nobody did. Really, nobody could have.
Posted inReligious News
The drama continues over this Southern Baptist plum role
Reading Time: 9 minutes Recently, I showed you the drama around the selection of a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leadership role: the President and CEO of their top-ranked Executive Committee (EC). Previous Chairman Jared Wellman had thrown his hat into the ring. But in a stunning upset, he failed to get enough votes from their larger voting committee to […]
Posted inReligious News
Are Southern Baptist traditionalists losing their main stronghold?
Reading Time: 9 minutes A years-long Southern Baptist feud between two powerful factions approaches the end of its middle. Can the beginning of the end be far off?
Posted inReligious News
Once again, the Satanic Temple reminds Christians about the wall of separation
Reading Time: 10 minutes This past week, an Oklahoma school board rejected a Catholic church’s application for a taxpayer-funded charter school, all because another Catholic warned them that the leaders of the Satanic Temple exist—and that they delight in taking advantage of the exact same funding and laws that Christians do. Therefore, if Oklahoma gave funding to Catholics for […]
Posted inLaw
Supreme Court picks religious case, passes on solitary confinement
Reading Time: 5 minutes There’s almost too much to choose from when attempting to sum up recent US strife: On Thursday, Missouri’s Attorney General bypassed sitting representatives to launch the most prohibitive ban on gender-affirming care yet, which would effectively deny treatment to adults and children alike. Judge Samuel Alito issued a short-term stay on a Texas judge’s revocation […]
Posted inReligious News
What Orlando Bloom felt was so important to tell President Zelensky
Reading Time: 10 minutes Actor Orlando Bloom recently visited Ukraine as UNICEF’s Goodwill Ambassador. During a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky, he decided to read Zelensky something written by Ikeda Daisaku, leader of a Japanese religious movement called Soka Gakkai International (SGI). That’s certainly one way to spend a very limited amount of time with a world leader. Let’s […]
Posted inNews
The Dalai Lama tells young boy ‘suck my tongue’
Reading Time: 2 minutes Writer, public speaker, and all-around gadfly the late great Christopher Hitchens noted, religion poisons everything. That assertion is certainly debatable. However, what is certain is that religion ruins babysitting. In other words, parents hide your children from so-called holy men. No, we’re not discussing the Catholic Church’s pedophile priest sex scandals. This time it’s the […]
Posted inReligious News
Israel and the West: The global fight to outgrow national strife
Reading Time: 10 minutes On March 29, 2022, a gunman from near Jenin in the West Bank killed five people in a district of Tel Aviv. Two were Ukrainian nationals. One was a rabbi who died shielding his two-year-old. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah celebrated the killings, while the Palestinian National Authority joined other world […]