https://politicalresearch.org/ The latest research related to southern baptist convention en https://religiondispatches.org/2023/06/28/hold-your-applause-potential-changes-roles-catholic-women-and-lgbtq-people-may-just-be The Southern Baptist Convention stole headlines from the Vatican this season when the nation’s largest Protestant denomination recently finalized the expulsion of two congregations for having women serve as pastors. One of the two is the mega Saddleback Church whose… Wed, 28 Jun 2023 08:00:16 EDT Mary Hunt 03c84b18-c938-43f2-95db-1a95a511f0f4 https://religiondispatches.org/2023/03/03/correction-sbc-does-not-oppose-womens-ordination-just-women-pastors Imagine my embarrassment when I heard from the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee’s media relations director that I had made a fundamental error in my Feb. 27 article about the SBC’s recent disfellowshipping of five churches over the role of… Fri, 03 Mar 2023 02:46:26 EST Caroline Matas fbb4829c-c1ad-44bb-b207-747c866b0a6c https://religiondispatches.org/2022/12/14/we-declare-you-restored-how-christian-forgiveness-deployed-enable-abuse-and-corruption Popular theology routinely enables powerful men to rehabilitate their public image after their misconduct goes public. This pattern applies especially to men known for their dedication to Jesus. The standard line holds that the man has repented of his sin… Wed, 14 Dec 2022 03:21:08 EST Greg Carey 648afa3f-04df-45fc-8980-11146ddc3486 https://religiondispatches.org/2022/11/21/three-cheers-mormon-support-same-sex-legislation-not-so-fast Last week, the LDS Church formally came out in support of the federal Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA), a legislative initiative that would repeal the notorious Bill Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and compel all American states to honor… Mon, 21 Nov 2022 01:27:33 EST Chrissy Stroop 3d36242a-419b-49d8-b44a-286106c411b6 https://religiondispatches.org/2022/07/27/if-family-research-council-church-im-taxthechurches-supporter Like other authoritarians, right-wing Christians often prefer to minimize transparency in order to avoid accountability. Those who have considerable power within the social hierarchies prescribed by conservative Christianity can often evade accountability on a variety of fronts. The success of… Wed, 27 Jul 2022 01:26:23 EDT Chrissy Stroop 7be1dc5a-c096-4bfd-a138-f90757e3ea83 https://religiondispatches.org/2022/06/24/citing-jewish-law-florida-synagogue-challenges-abortion-ban-heres-problem-religious Days before the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey , a Florida synagogue filed a lawsuit challenging Florida’s abortion ban on the grounds that it violates Jews’ religious freedom. Halakhah, or Jewish law, the… Fri, 24 Jun 2022 12:34:36 EDT Rebecca Epstein-Levi 411e5ad3-73b6-47f9-a11d-e464586d55ac https://religiondispatches.org/2022/06/14/weeks-meeting-will-sbc-vote-voddie-baucham-homeschooling-star-who-embraces-right-wing On March 4, news broke that African Christian University dean Voddie Baucham was asked to accept a nomination to be President of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest Baptist denomination in the world—a denomination also in the spotlight at… Tue, 14 Jun 2022 05:39:36 EDT R.L. Stollar 800c87ca-2f16-4abe-9c8a-4da811f6a616 https://religiondispatches.org/2022/06/03/sbc-sexual-abuse-scandal-success-story-theological-vision-and-social-structure I don’t recall the specific date in late summer 1985—but I remember exactly where I was standing. In the sunshine, near the windows in the library of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. I was pulling Gustaf Aulén’s Christus Victor from the shelves… Fri, 03 Jun 2022 12:12:58 EDT Diana Butler Bass 13516692-6b47-41b1-b495-92caeb55da62 https://religiondispatches.org/2022/05/31/sexual-abuse-inevitable-christian-patriarchy-just-take-look-doug-wilsons-christ-church On Sunday, May 22, a third-party investigation of sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention released a nearly 300-page report detailing the cover-up of hundreds of abuse accusations and an overall failure of leaders in the SBC to make any… Tue, 31 May 2022 04:13:32 EDT Cait West 7c478a52-bf76-46ee-9218-c0cba6a2095d https://religiondispatches.org/2022/05/24/its-theology-stupid-why-shocking-sbc-report-anything-surprising On Sunday, an investigation firm called Guidepost Solutions released a 300-page report recounting a disturbingly familiar pattern of abuse and cover-up in the Southern Baptist Convention, the mostly white, evangelical Protestant denomination that accounts for over 5% of the adult… Tue, 24 May 2022 05:22:59 EDT Chrissy Stroop, Jessica Johnson 2c4cfa52-e3ce-47fa-aafd-0aeba8705786 https://religiondispatches.org/2022/05/13/pregnant-women-or-people-who-can-get-pregnant-how-do-we-balance-recognition-anti Over the same period in which advocates of reproductive justice have been fighting a rearguard effort to preserve Americans’ constitutional right to abortion care, LGBTQ advocates have fought to advance the use of more gender-inclusive language in a variety of… Fri, 13 May 2022 04:27:53 EDT Chrissy Stroop a4e54a49-a8f7-44f3-9a32-d62df31b6e6d https://religiondispatches.org/2022/03/29/gary-north-1942-2022-sought-deny-religious-liberty-enemies-god-he-was-willing-wait If you’ve never heard of Gary North that may be because he wanted it that way. Nevertheless, when North died in Georgia recently at age 80, he’d quietly become one of the notable religious and political architects of our time… Tue, 29 Mar 2022 05:27:33 EDT Frederick Clarkson b9dbb688-b255-45df-88e8-264dfa63f325 https://religiondispatches.org/2022/03/07/same-toxic-christian-right-theology-supports-both-online-bullying-i-experienced-and In late February, I went through an episode of online bullying that made me feel more dehumanized than I ever had since coming out as a transgender woman, leading to several days of heightened depressive symptoms and low productivity. The… Mon, 07 Mar 2022 04:28:16 EST Chrissy Stroop eec3237e-963f-4475-b28e-ac8862aea1ca https://religiondispatches.org/2022/01/24/florida-attempts-make-it-illegal-argument-sacred-work-white-discomfort In Florida, a state senate committee wants to make it illegal to cause discomfort to white people. This bill, which reads like a scene from 1984 , is a doozy. You can, and should, read the full text of it… Mon, 24 Jan 2022 06:27:41 EST Robert P. Jones ba57c5a8-05f8-4fcb-9688-c0e49a17f741 https://religiondispatches.org/2022/01/04/facing-white-christianitys-role-january-6th-insurrection On Jan. 20, 2021, President Joe Biden became the first commander in chief to use the words “white supremacy” in an inaugural address. Naming “the cry of racial justice four hundred years in the making” and its corollary, “a rise… Tue, 04 Jan 2022 05:07:34 EST Robert P. Jones c3940945-05ad-4621-8193-a2673e2c9399 https://religiondispatches.org/2021/10/27/evangelicals-continue-speak-over-not-ex-vangelicals Christianity Today magazine just can’t seem to leave exvangelicals alone. On October 19, they published Tish Harrison Warren’s commentary “The Church Needs Reformation, Not Deconstruction.” Then, just two days later they published a column by former Southern Baptist Convention bigwig… Wed, 27 Oct 2021 05:52:19 EDT Chrissy Stroop 2e4c8f6a-02e3-4537-976f-dc26039a7f42 https://religiondispatches.org/2021/09/07/bill-mill-ennialism-arkansas-end-times-politics-may-be-coming-state-near-you It was the best of the end times. It was the worst of the end times. It was the age of Trump. It was 2019. Trump was compared with the greatest of God’s biblical champions. Things would never be the… Tue, 07 Sep 2021 02:43:35 EDT Frederick Clarkson 77201a1d-2b34-4fdf-a065-5f9e082fb830 https://religiondispatches.org/2021/08/30/evangelical-abortion-myth-excerpt-bad-faith The Religious Right’s most cherished and durable myth is its myth of origins. According to this well-rehearsed narrative, articulated by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and countless others, evangelical leaders were shaken out of their political complacency by the United States… Mon, 30 Aug 2021 04:43:14 EDT Randall Balmer 30ea78a2-4d7c-4c7b-bb72-51a0d2cb9718 https://religiondispatches.org/2021/07/21/satanic-or-systemic-promise-keepers-are-back-and-looking-end-racism-trickle-down-racial This past weekend at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, marked the official public return of the Promise Keepers, their first in-person gathering since the 1990s. Founded by former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney in 1990, Promise Keepers was… Wed, 21 Jul 2021 04:26:18 EDT A. E. Brooks-Key de165cb3-53fc-45e6-a99f-ddd18128c7fa https://religiondispatches.org/2021/07/07/critical-race-theory-just-latest-battle-bible-told-them-so-how-southern-evangelicals Last month, the internal politics of the Southern Baptist Convention became national news after Ed Litton defeated Mike Stone for the convention’s presidency. For months the conservative evangelical denomination had been embroiled in both scandal and controversy after noted Black… Wed, 07 Jul 2021 05:03:20 EDT Christopher D. Cantwell f38d1e67-4949-4765-a6ad-523e9a9df14f https://religiondispatches.org/2021/06/25/new-patriarch-same-patriarchy-despite-glowing-praise-new-sbc-president-theres-just-one In the midst of tense debates around race, gender, and partisan politics, the 2021 Southern Baptist Convention made waves by narrowly electing Ed Litton, a white Alabama pastor known for his commitment to racial reconciliation, to serve as its new… Fri, 25 Jun 2021 01:24:11 EDT Caroline Matas 66e6a665-b284-4915-98a4-06ee635c0e54 https://religiondispatches.org/2021/06/24/guns-god-and-government-coming-white-minority-rule In 2012 James Carville was ecstatic on CNN as incumbent President Barack Obama had just won re-election in convincing fashion over GOP challenger Mitt Romney. Carville who co-authored the 2008 book 40 More Years: How Democrats Will Rule the Next… Thu, 24 Jun 2021 02:10:28 EDT A. E. Brooks-Key c01956d4-081c-4c51-b91a-534044e7f092 https://religiondispatches.org/2021/06/23/where-did-white-evangelicalisms-hatred-critical-race-theory-really-begin Critical Race Theory (CRT), the academic study in which students and scholars examine how race and racism function, is under attack by conservatives who claim that CRT promotes a distorted view of American history through a racial and ideological lens… Wed, 23 Jun 2021 04:36:49 EDT Andre E. Johnson 5737f7b7-23a5-43f5-a7af-9906b50fc821 https://religiondispatches.org/2021/06/16/quote-about-pregnant-church-outgoing-sbc-president-deeply-troubling-anyone-concerned “Whenever the church gets in bed with politics, the church gets pregnant. And our offspring does not look like our Father in Heaven.” - J.D. Greear, Southern Baptist Convention President, June 15, 2021 Outgoing president of the Southern Baptist Convention… Wed, 16 Jun 2021 03:08:58 EDT Jill Hicks-Keeton 99a6b9a2-355f-405a-b9ae-7ed64dff1cf5 https://religiondispatches.org/2021/06/14/roots-white-evangelicalisms-crisis-are-white-evangelical-churches-not-republican In recent months, the Southern Baptist Convention has faced a steady stream of high-profile defections, including black pastors such as Charlie Dates , popular Bible teacher Beth Moore , and Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission President Russell Moore. The recent… Mon, 14 Jun 2021 10:36:35 EDT Jesse Curtis ac2f8782-8510-45db-8968-ee1c8e127a82