Free Republic

If helping to build an abortuary doesn’t qualify as a disciplinary offense in the Southern Baptist Convention, suffice it to say that nothing does. Pulpit & Pen brought you the news story of a new child sacrifice center being renovated in Oklahoma, and the various construction outfits providing the services necessary for it to become a baby-killing facility (source link). We then brought to you information regarding one of those service companies professing to be “Christians,” and in fact, its owner being a deacon of a Southern Baptist Church (source link). Then, I talked about this on the Pulpit &...

An email message sent out Friday morning by the campaign of Republican presidential contender Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) claims the junior senator from Florida "is leading the Billy Graham wing" of evangelical Christians, while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) "is leading the Jerry Falwell wing," and GOP frontrunner Donald Trump "is leading the Jimmy Swaggart wing." The email was signed by Eric Teetsell, who was hired by the Rubio campaign in November to serve as its director of Faith Outreach. It began with a controversial quote made at Roll Call last week by Russell Moore, an advocate of amnesty for illegal...

Current and former leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention were reportedly in attendance for a two-day meeting in Texas to galvanize the Religious Right behind Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the 2016 presidential election.A Southern Baptist Convention official gave positive reviews to a private gathering of roughly 300 pastors and faith leaders aimed at consolidating religious conservatives to support Sen. Ted Cruz in the upcoming Republican presidential primaries. Paige Patterson Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, described remarks by Cruz to the two-day gathering at the Cisco, Texas, ranch of fracking billionaire Farris Wilks...

Science vs. scientism: a necessary distinction J. Daniel McDonald — December 1, 2015 We all have those TV shows that define our childhood - shows that captured our little minds and imaginations. For me, it was Sesame Street (don't laugh; some of you watched Barney), Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, and Dukes of Hazzard. While I have no interest in these shows now, I look upon them with a sense of nostalgia because they represent, in part, may days as a young tike whose greatest concerns were snack time and Hot Wheels.A show that many of our Boyce students (and Southern students?)...

A leading voice on the religious right sharply criticized the "dangerous" anti-refugee sentiment that has permeated the recent political debate in the United States -- and warned that some Republican presidential candidates may turn off Christian voters with their lack of compassion. Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, told BuzzFeed News on Thursday that he was shocked by the "overheated" rhetoric being employed by high-profile politicians in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris. "Donald Trump is saber-rattling about shutting down mosques in this country, which, as somebody who...

The largest Protestant denomination in the United States has passed a resolution stating that marriage is between one man and one woman regardless of what the U.S. Supreme Court concludes later this month. Messengers for the Southern Baptist Convention voted Tuesday afternoon in favor of Resolution 5, which among other things, prayerfully calls for the Supreme Court to "uphold the right of the citizens to define marriage as exclusively the union of one man and one woman." "Southern Baptists recognize that no governing institution has the authority to negate or usurp God's definition of marriage," read Resolution 5, in part....

Southern Baptists pass resolution opposing gay marriage Arkansas Pastor Ronnie Floyd, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, gives the presidential address to the Southern Baptist Convention at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, in Columbus, Ohio, June 16, 2015. Floyd exhorted members to stand united against same-sex marriage and vows that he will never officiate a same-sex union. The Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution Tuesday, June 16, opposing gay marriage, reaffirming a long-standing position of the denomination. "The Southern Baptist Convention calls on Southern Baptists and all Christians of like-mindedness to stand firm on the Bible's witness on the private...

The statement [...], was released [...]Wednesday morning at a press conference: As Southern Baptist Christians, we are committed to Biblical faith and ethics. As a result, this body of Believers stands on the authority of Scripture and God’s Truth as central to our lives. What the Bible says about marriage is clear, definitive and unchanging. We affirm biblical, traditional, natural marriage as the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. The Scriptures’ teaching on marriage is not negotiable. We stake our lives upon the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus. Consequently, we...

Forget decades of scientific studies and transgender people’s own lives—the Southern Baptist Convention has gone ahead and decided gender is only about your junk. “Gender” refers to one’s felt, and societally constructed, sense of being male, female, or somewhere in between. As understood by a generation of psychologists, sociologists, and other scientists, it is distinct from sex, which has to do with biology, genitalia, and genetics. Put roughly, sex is between your legs. Gender is between your ears.

The Southern Baptists are electing a new president to succeed the Rev. Fred Luter Jr., who became the denomination’s first African-American president in 2012. Contenders include the Rev. Dennis Kim, pastor of a Korean church in Silver Springs, Maryland, and the Rev. Ronnie Floyd, pastor of Cross Church, with several locations in northwest Arkansas. Members meeting in Baltimore will vote for the new president Tuesday. …

A Southern Baptist church in California has broken with the denomination's stance on homosexuality and has decided to accept the LGBT community without judgment. The church made the change after its lead pastor announced that he no longer holds to the teaching that homosexuality is a sin. Danny Cortez, who leads New Heart Community Church in La Mirada, explained his journey in a letter to progressive Christian blogger John Shore, founder of Unfundamentalist Christians, last month. At the end of that journey, his son came out to him as gay. "I recently became gay affirming after a 15-year journey of...

Southern Baptists Face a Moment of Decision on Gay Marriage (and You Will Too) Al Mohler | President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary | Monday, June 02, 2014 ChristianHeadlines.com SOUTHERN BAPTISTS FACE A MOMENT OF DECISION ON GAY MARRIAGE (AND YOU WILL TOO) 10 Comments Print Email #gay marriage #church #opinion #southern baptists 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...

Some Christian denominations around the U.S. have been slowly warming to the idea of gay marriage. A few have even made an about-face. Not so with the country's largest protestant group, Southern Baptists. The Southern Baptist Convention still preaches that marriage can only be between one man and one woman. But some pastors are softening their message. A Change Of ToneThe Southern Baptist Convention held a gathering of pastors at its Nashville headquarters in April. For an organization that has previously used opposition to gay marriage as a rallying point, statements here from church leaders, like Kevin Smith of Kentucky,...

Jimmy Carter has blamed the Catholic and Southern Baptist churches for the abuse of women around the world. According to Carter, men around the world use the doctrine of those churches on the role of women as justification for abusing women. Appearing on today's Morning Joe, the former president said: "with the writing of St. Paul, you can selectively take verses out of the Bible and you can justify women not being able to be priests and so forth, so the Catholic church and the Southern Baptist Convention and others quite often say well women are not qualified to have...

<p>HOUSTON (AP) — The Southern Baptist Convention has passed a resolution calling on all Southern Baptists to report allegations of child abuse to authorities.</p>

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--It is time for the Southern Baptist Convention to move from denial to decision. It has happened again. The SBC reported membership has declined, again. And, baptisms are at their lowest level in 60 years. I remember the first time the membership declined, just a few years ago. I pointed out (based on data from LifeWay's now-retired statistician Cliff Tharp) that it was not an aberration, but a pattern. The 50-year membership trend was moving into negative territory. "Put simply," I wrote in light of 2007 data, "membership may go up next year, but the trend points to...

Church membership for more than a third of the nation's largest churches took a hit last year while non-Orthodox Christian churches are on the rise, a new report on denominations finds. The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's second largest denomination, reported a .42 percent decline in membership to 16,160,088 members, according to National Council of Churches' 2011 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, released Monday. Still dominating the list of the nation's top 25 mainline churches is the Catholic Church, which posted a .57 growth at 68.5 million members. But a few church bodies, regarded as cults by some Christians,...

Dr. Paul DeBell believes that he was once a caveman. Not only that, he is fairly certain that his life as a caveman ended violently. “I was going along, going along, going along, and I got eaten,” said the psychiatrist. To his life as a caveman, Dr. DeBell adds his knowledge of previous lives as a Tibetan monk and “a conscientious German who refused to betray his Jewish neighbors in the Holocaust.” Dr. DeBell’s account is found in “Remembrances of Lives Past” by Lisa Miller of Newsweek magazine, published in the August 29, 2010 edition of The New York Times....

After more than 60 years together, Jimmy Carter has announced himself at odds with the Southern Baptist Church -- and he's decided it's time they go their separate ways. Via Feministing, the former president called the decision "unavoidable" after church leaders prohibited women from being ordained and insisted women be "subservient to their husbands." Said Carter in an essay in The Age: At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions...

Prison Fellowship founder Charles Colson predicts pastors will soon face prosecution under hate crimes laws if they preach that same-sex relationships are sinful. Colson, who served prison time for his role in the Watergate scandal, delivered a grim forecast to Southern Baptist pastors at their annual meeting in Louisville, Ky. Sponsors of congressional hate crimes legislation insist it won't restrict speech, but Colson warned that ministers will face the threat of prosecution within the next two years. He also said medical professionals are losing their conscience right to refuse to perform abortions, and faith-based ministries could soon have to hire...