Free Republic

The president of the Kentucky Baptist Convention's children's services agency has recommended that the organization amend its hiring practices to ban discrimination against homosexuals, according to a PowerPoint presentation posted on the agency's website. "I would rather homosexuals see the love of God through us than be denied employment by us," Bill Smithwick, president of Sunrise Children's Services, said in an Aug. 16 PowerPoint presentation to the agency's trustees. "I would rather see the ministry continue to help kids and share the Gospel than close." Trustees were scheduled to vote on the proposal during their Nov. 8 meeting. One trustee,...

Last month, after being sure to get his caffeine fix at Starbucks, Southern Baptist leader Richard Land went where few evangelicals had dared to go before: the Provo campus of Brigham Young University, the intellectual heart of Mormonism. After lecturing on "family, faith, freedom and America," Land attended a BYU football game with LDS leaders and joined them to hear James Taylor sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Days later, George O. Wood, the general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, also visited BYU, followed by the Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptists’ flagship seminary. Is there...

Lighthouse Trails has watched in dismay over the past few years as Charles Stanley’s In Touch magazine has made the decision to promote contemplative/emergent names. When our editors picked up a copy of the August 2013 issue and saw a feature article written by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, we decided to call In Touch Ministries to find out who was responsible for the content in the magazine. Sadly, the response we received from the editorial department at In Touch left us with a sinking feeling that the evangelical church has been seduced and there was no turning back. We’ll talk about the...

Abortion clinic closings on rise in U.S., 44 tallied year to datePREV The sign outside Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas, comes down in late August, marking another of 44 abortion clinic closings so far this year.  Photo courtesy of 40 Days for Life and Coalition for Life. NEXT Posted on Sep 6, 2013 | by Tom Strode  WASHINGTON (BP) -- For Abby Johnson, the closing of a single Planned Parenthood center demonstrated her dramatic reversal from abortion clinic director to leading pro-life advocate. But for pro-lifers throughout the United States, it marked another exhibit in a hopeful trend --...

Charles Spurgeon aka Charles Haddon (C.H.) Spurgeon (19 June 1834 – 31 January 1892) was a British Particular Baptist preacher. Charles Spurgeon remains highly influential among Christians of different denominations, among whom he is known as the “Prince of Preachers”. He was a strong figure in the Reformed Baptist tradition, defending the Church in agreement with the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith understanding, and opposing the liberal and pragmatic theological tendencies in the Church of his day. In his lifetime, Charles Spurgeon preached to around 10,000,000 people, often up to 10 times each week at different places. Spurgeon was...

Can chaplains committed to historic biblical Christianity serve in the United States military? That question, though inconceivable to our nation’s founders, is now front and center. And the answer to that question will answer another, even more important question: Can religious liberty survive under America’s new moral order? The repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, coupled with the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, set the stage for this crisis. The full normalization of same-sex relationships within the U.S. military is part of the unprecedented moral revolution that is now reshaping American...

The prayer shawl that Myron Slobin received when he was bar mitzvahed in 1955 will have a new home Sept. 8 when Slobin, spiritual leader of the Siouxland International Messianic Fellowship, presents it for dedication to the Rev. Jim Wilson, pastor of the Glendale Baptist Church. The shawl, or tzitzit will replace the runner on the church’s communion table which was accidentally damaged by the Messianic Fellowship which has been meeting on Fridays at the church for about 3 years. “It’s very significant to the Old Testament ties and to the Bible,” Wilson said of the tallit. “It’s something that’s...

BEAUMONT, Texas – As Hispanic populations across the United States, many of which are traditionally Catholic, continue to increase, so do opportunities for Southern Baptist churches to address the spiritual questions of current and former Catholics. Hispanics made up 38.1 percent of the population of Texas in 2011, the U.S. Census reports. This reflects a nearly 10 percent increase since 2006, when Hispanics accounted for 35.7 percent of all Texans, according to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts’ office. The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC) has 193 cooperating churches listing Spanish as their primary or secondary language. Many of...

The state Supreme Court has unanimously upheld the rape and sexual assault convictions against Ernest Willis who is serving a 15-to-30 year prison sentence for forcibly raping his teenage babysitter twice, whom he knew through Trinity Baptist Church in Concord, in 1997. The court issued its ruling this morning. The girl, who became pregnant, was later made to stand before their congregation to apologize by then-pastor Chuck Phelps. A Merrimack County jury convicted Ellis of three counts of rape and one count of felonious sexual assault in 2011. Willis’s attorneys appealed the conviction on several grounds, including the admission of...

A misdemeanor trespassing trial for a gay Baptist minister and his partner who refused to leave a city clerk’s office after being denied a marriage license was postponed Monday when attorneys were unable to come up with an impartial jury. Attorneys for Maurice “Bojangles” Blanchard and Dominique James and prosecutors questioned prospective jurors Aug. 6 in Jefferson County District Court in Louisville, Ky. After people were eliminated for various reasons, not enough remained in the jury pool for the trial to proceed. The trial was rescheduled for Nov. 25. Blanchard and James tried to apply for a marriage license in...

WASHINGTON (BP) -- People brought into the United States illegally as children should not be treated in the same way as undocumented immigrants who entered as adults, a Southern Baptist public policy specialist told members of Congress. Barrett Duke of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission also testified that the immigration reform bill approved by the Senate needs some improvement. Duke, the ERLC's vice president for public policy, was one of the witnesses at a July 23 hearing before a House of Representatives subcommittee. The panel considered the status of those whose parents brought them to this country as illegal...

I once got a harsh letter from a Baptist lady protesting that she could not find the word “Catholic” anywhere in the Bible.True, the earliest occurrence of the term is in a letter of St. Ignatius of Antioch, written 20 years after the last book of the New Testament. But the idea that the Church is “catholic” pops up everywhere in the gospels and epistles. The Greek word “catholic” comes from the word for “wholeness” or “fullness.” The “catholic” church is not just a regional sect for an exclusive little group. Rather it must include the whole family of God...

CHICAGO (CBS) – A sign posted outside a south suburban church is generating a powerful debate over race in the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict. The marquee outside the First Baptist Church of University Park earlier this week read: “It Is Safe To Kill Black People In Amerikkka.”

Churches are beginning to add a stipulation in their bylaws that their ministers perform only traditional marriages on their premises, in response to the Supreme Court's same-sex marriage decisions in late June. Greg Erwin, a Baton Rouge attorney who represents the Louisiana Baptist Convention, the Baptist Message state paper and several Louisiana Baptist entities, said it is hard to speculate on what the decisions may mean for churches. "The ruling means the same for Louisiana churches as for churches in all states except that in states where they have banned discrimination based upon sexual orientation, churches are more at risk...

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, received a standing ovation during his speech at First Baptist Dallas church on Sunday for calling to abolish the Internal Revenue Service.

President Carter seems very concerned about the Catholic doctrine of the male priesthood. Speaking at the Carter Center's "Mobilizing Faith for Women" the former President answered some questions about women and religion. Let's look at his words against the Catholic Church and then I'll provide three systematic responses: "And I think the great religions have set the example for that, by ordaining, in effect, that women are not equal to men in the eyes of God. This has been done and still is done by the Catholic Church ever since the third century, when the Catholic Church ordained that a...

America’s Catholic bishops and the Southern Baptist Convention joined forces on Friday, calling on Congress to pass bills that would exempt companies and nonprofits from the contraception insurance coverage mandate in President Obama’s health care law. The Rev. William E. Lori, archbishop of Baltimore, and SBC President Russell D. Moore say companion bills in the House and Senate would “address threats to religious freedom and rights of conscience that have become particularly grave in the field of health care.” [Snip] The bill exempts faith-based nonprofits and religiously devout business owners from a provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires...

Ergun Caner, now provost and vice president of academic affairs at Arlington Baptist College, in Arlington, Texas, filed a lawsuit June 18 in U.S. District Court North Texas District in Fort Worth claiming copyright infringement for reproducing, uploading and maintaining his videos without permission. The complaint filed by Bartonville, Texas, attorney David Gibbs cites Jonathan Autry of Lynchburg, Va., who posted 34 videos of Caner on his YouTube account. YouTube removed the videos after Caner filed a takedown notice pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.Signed into law by President Clinton in 1998, the act made certain technical amendments to...

Even if you tried to bury your head in the sand, you can still hear the tremor in the ground of the Western carnival that is coming. The music and dancing are getting louder and louder. It is one of human-rights-with-no-holds-barred. It is coming with all the revelry that you would expect. It cannot be ignored. However, one problem with this procession is that it long left its original route. There are no principles to guide it, except the whims of those who are hiding behind its masks and leading it in whichever direction they please. Even those of us...

The Rev. Will D. Campbell, a self-described “bootleg preacher” who became the most prominent white clergyman in the South to fight for racial equality during the civil rights movement, died June 3 in Nashville. He was 88. Rev. Campbell was ordained a minister while still in his teens but came to distrust organized religion and to prefer preaching anywhere, as he liked to say, but under a steeple. He documented his life and philosophy in more than a dozen books, including “Brother to a Dragonfly,” a finalist for a 1978 National Book Award. Growing up during the Great Depression,...