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Southern Baptists will be heading for Baltimore in just a few days, and the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention is to be held in a city that has not hosted the convention since 1940. This time, Baptists attending the meeting will face an issue that would not have been imaginable just a few years ago, much less in 1940 — a congregation that affirms same-sex relationships.Just days before the convention, news broke that a congregation in suburban Los Angeles has decided to affirm same-sex sexuality and relationships. In an hour-long video posted on the Internet, Pastor Danny Cortez...

A Baptist church in California has voted to welcome the gay community despite going against the Southern Baptist Convention's views on homosexuality. The New Heart Community Church in La Mirada, CA faced a difficult decision in early 2014 when lead pastor Danny Cortez told the congregation that his son, Drew, had come out -- and that he himself no longer agreed with the church's teachings on homosexuality.

Another victim has come forward in the case against a Tulsa pastor accused of molestation. Police say a second victim reported Damien Keith Bonner, 32, touched her inappropriately. The 15-year-old girl came forward May 15, a day after Bonner was arrested on six counts of lewd molestation.

Micah Brown HUNTSVILLE, Alabama - Monday was the day that changed David and Ryann Brown's lives forever. Micah Andrew Brown, a 5-year-old boy who loved riding in fire trucks, the color blue and wearing his rain boots no matter the occasion, succumbed to injuries he sustained when his mother's SUV collided with an 18-wheeler and flipped on Old Highway 431 in front of Hampton Cove Elementary. Ryann and her youngest daughter, Noelle, 3, suffered minor wounds during the wreck, but 9-year-old daughter Sarah and 8-year-old Rebekah remain hospitalized with serious injuries at facilities in Huntsville and Birmingham. Hundreds of mourners...

The Alliance of Baptists has expressed support for a legal challenge launched by religious leaders in North Carolina to overturn the state’s ban on gay marriage. At its annual meeting May 3 in Portland, Maine, the Alliance voted to “stand in solidarity” with a suit filed in a federal district court in Charlotte April 28 by the United Church of Christ. The UCC claims that North Carolina is unconstitutionally restricting religious freedom by barring clergy members from marrying gay couples. In a resolution, the Alliance, which has affirmed same-sex marriage since 2004, said “we rise today to stand in solidarity...

A former youth pastor has been charged with sex crimes involving young men at an Arkansas church. ... Berkley, 34, was arrested at a cemetery in Covington, Tennessee, Monday afternoon after finishing a funeral service. Police in Harrison say the investigation into the former pastor began March 28, while he was a pastor at Shiloh Baptist. They interviewed more than a dozen male victims—all between the ages of 14 and 18—through mid-April. One victim said he went to Berkley’s house believing it was a Bible study. While there, he was allowed to drink and smoke marijuana and a hookah. Several...

NASHVILLE (BP) -- Pastors and other evangelical Christians should speak biblically and live purely to minister faithfully in a sex-saturated culture, speakers said at a Southern Baptist-sponsored summit on the Gospel and sexuality. In addresses during the three-day conference, speakers challenged participants with messages designed to equip church leaders and other Christians to live with purity while aiding people inside and outside the church who are captive to a sexualized society. The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission sponsored its inaugural ERLC Leadership Summit in sessions April 21-23 at the Southern Baptist Convention building in Nashville. As sexualized as American culture...

A baptist church that made headlines two years ago for allowing a registered sex offender to preach is now free to allow children in worship services.

A federal judge has dismissed a Georgia Baptist college president’s lawsuit against a blogger who posted video to support allegations that a famous “Jihad to Jesus” testimony is bogus. A U.S. district judge in Fort Worth, Texas, ruled April 17 that Jason Smathers, a Southern Baptist pastor in Arizona who blogs at Witnesses Unto Me, was entitled to post government videos he obtained through the Freedom of Information Act under the “fair use” doctrine of copyright law. Ergun Caner, president of Brewton-Parker College in Mount Vernon, Ga., filed a lawsuit last summer claiming ownership of two videos that Smathers posted...

This Easter Sunday in Ukraine was unlike any other in the history of this nation in crisis. As Ukrainian Christians gathered together at Kiev’s Central Baptist Church to worship and celebrate the resurrection, they heard a special message delivered in person by Alexander Turchynov, the country’s acting president. SGA’s Sergei Omelchenko wrote to tell us about the extraordinary day . . . Turchinov 4-21-14 Acting Ukrainian president Alexander Turchynov proclaims the Gospel at the pulpit of Central Baptist Church in Kiev—a truly historic moment! Pastor Vyacheslav Nesteruk, president of the Ukrainian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (UECB), preached the main message...

Sunday mornings at All Souls Charlottesville are fairly common for an Anglican congregation. The Book of Common Prayer and the Revised Common Lectionary are standard, creeds are spoken together, the Eucharist is the central focus of the liturgy and the minister blesses the congregation before it scatters back into the world. But the Charlottesville, Va., congregation isn’t an Episcopal church. It’s Baptist — in fact it’s a plant of the Baptist General Association of Virginia and is celebrating its fifth anniversary in 2014. This isn’t a Baptist church in the Charleston tradition, a structured expression of worship often distinguished from...

Reports that Fred Phelps, 84, founder of the Topeka, Kan., church known for its anti-gay message and protests of military funerals, is on his deathbed have some looking forward to the Westboro Baptist Church pastor’s passing. The Facebook page Fred Phelps Death Watch was created March 16 and has nearly 1,900 likes. The page states, “While we wait for God to take him, because he hates homosexuals, let’s relive some of his more memorable moments while we wait.”

Fred Phelps Sr., the founder of the Kansas church held in disgust worldwide for its antigay protests of prominent funerals, is in hospice care and "on the edge of death," according to one of his estranged sons. Nate Phelps posted the information on Facebook Saturday night, adding the revelation that his father had been excommunicated from the church in 2013. A church spokesman told the Topeka Capitol-Journal that Phelps was indeed in the hospice but that Nate Phelps "is not well informed." The spokesman also refused to comment on the allegation that the elder Mr. Phelps has been excommunicated. Another...

CHRIS McDANIEL FOR U.S. SENATE FROM MISSISSIPPI Chris McDaniel has a proven record of fighting for conservative principles in the Mississippi State Senate. He has been a champion of limited government, free enterprise, civic participation, reduced tax rates, a strong national defense, and a return to the original checks and balances of the Constitution.

MUSCLE SHOALS, Ala. (BP) -- A Baptist children's pastor in Alabama has pleaded guilty to 16 counts of sodomy, three counts of sexual abuse of a child under the age of 12 and one count of child pornography. Jeffrey Dale Eddie, the children's pastor and administrator of Highland Park Baptist Church in Muscle Shoals, was arrested Feb. 4. Eddie, who was released from his duties upon arrest, had served on the Highland Park staff for 16 years. Eddie was charged with two counts of child pornography, 31 counts of second-degree sodomy and three counts of sexual abuse of a child...

Some church leaders in Kentucky say guns can be an effective way to beef up the flock. Organizers of a Baptist church convention said it will use guns giveaways across the state to attract nonbelievers who are more prone to go duck hunting than sit in a church pew, The Courier-Journal reported. The goal of the Kentucky Baptist Convention's "Second Amendment Celebrations" is to "point people to Christ," the report said.

Questions about the morality of birth control increasingly appear in columns and blogs by SBC ethicists and ministers.On the surface, Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists might seem unlikely bedfellows in opposing mandated coverage of contraceptives under Obamacare, but observers say it points to ongoing reconsideration of the morality of birth control among the Southern Baptist Convention’s leading thinkers. “Evangelical leaders are tripping over themselves in the rush to stand with Roman Catholic bishops against this perceived governmental overreach,” Jacob Lupfer, a doctoral candidate in political science at Georgetown University, said in a Religion News Service commentary in December. “At the...

On Tuesday, the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) announced a drastic turnaround on the part of the federal government: The German Romeike family, which sought asylum in the United States to home-school their children, will now be allowed to stay in America. “The Romeikes can stay!!!” the HSLDA announced on its Facebook page. Just one day ago, the Romeikes thought they would be forced to return to Germany, where the state could take custody of their children because of their decision to home-school. At a minimum, they would face increasingly harsh fines for violating Germany’s compulsory attendance law....

Oleksandr Turchynov, a well-known Baptist pastor and top opposition politician in Ukraine, took office on Sunday, Feb. 23, as acting president after the Parliament voted to oust President Yanukovych.... ...... Monday night in Kiev, Turchynov, 49, spoke publicly for the first time since taking office as acting president. According to an unofficial translation, he said, "Unprecedented cruelty and brutality of the dictatorial regime did not stop citizens. They selflessly gave their lives to defend their rights—and won.... "Our first task today is to stop the confrontation, to regain control … to ensure peace and tranquility, to prevent new victims, local...

When First Baptist's Robert Jeffress proclaimed a couple of weeks back that President Obama is "paving the way for the antichrist," we dismissed it as a publicity stunt designed to sell copies of his new book on the end times. Not everyone was so quick to call Jeffress' claim empty bombast. Take this Christian Post piece from over the weekend in which a reporter, apparently keeping a straight face, asks two Baptist biblical scholars -- or rather as the headline suggests "experts" on the Obama-antichrist link -- to weigh in on the controversy. Darrell Bock, a professor at Dallas Theological...