This week’s Weekend Plug-in highlights the latest news from the Southern Baptist Convention. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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This week’s Weekend Plug-in covers the resignation of a top Southern Baptist Convention official for lying on his resume. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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(OPINION) The issue isn’t who is a Baptist and who is not. Church historians struggle to count the number of organized Baptist groups, and thousands of Baptist churches are totally independent. The question is whether the SBC’s DNA has changed in ways that will affect local churches, as well as agencies, boards and seminaries at the state and national levels.
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This week’s Weekend Plug-in highlights the ongoing battles over who’s in — and who’s out — among Southern Baptists and United Methodists. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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(OPINION) A New York Times piece was an example of what dialogue between church folks and the secular media can look like if people on both sides check their preconceptions, remain open and speak civilly. They might not form a merger, but they can come to know each other.
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This week’s Weekend Plug-in highlights the most consequential Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in decades. Plus, catch up — as always — on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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(OPINION) In Southern Baptist polity — with sprawling structures of autonomous congregations that, to varying degrees, fund state, national and global ministries — there are no leadership structures resembling local Presbyterian presbyteries, regional annual conferences among United Methodists or the powerful diocesan structures of Catholics, Episcopalians and others. Local churches ordain, hire and fire clergy.
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This week’s Weekend Plug-in opens with the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers, along with the gunman. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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A special Monday edition of Weekend Plug-in highlights Sunday’s big news: the release of a 288-page investigative report on sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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The investigation of alleged mishandling of sexual abuse has cost the Southern Baptist Convention more than $1.7 million so far, a number that exceeds the original estimate made last fall. A 2019 investigation by the Houston Chronicle reported hundreds of abuse cases in Southern Baptist churches spanning decades.
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The culture war skirmish between Walt Disney World and Florida lawmakers, led by Gov. Ron DeSantis, leads this week’s Weekend Plug-in. Plus, catch up, as always, on the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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This week’s Weekend Plug-in starts with the historic confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, who will become the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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(OPINION) Years after Martin Luther King Jr., Southern Baptists are still divided based on skin color within the church. The Rev. Fred Luter says, "This is spiritual warfare of the enemy. ... As blood-washed, born-again, baptized believers in Jesus Christ, (we must) come together, realizing that the separation we have because of our skin color is an attack of the enemy."
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This week’s Weekend Plug-in covers the gang kidnapping of 17 American and Canadian missionaries in Haiti. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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(ANALYSIS) It's hard to follow warfare inside the Southern Baptist Convention without a working knowledge of biblical symbolism. Here is a recap of some of the images and references at play.
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(OPINION) Standard news judgment automatically puts the spotlight on hot disputes in the nation's two largest religious sectors — white evangelicalism and Catholicism. Meanwhile, the media consistently downplay the third-ranking religious category, "Mainline" Protestantism. Do these “Mainliners” hold insights into how to mitigate sexual abuse scandals in churches?
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This week’s Weekend Plug-in highlights the crucial developments at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. Plus, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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In an unexpected move, the more than 16,000 “messengers” to the Southern Baptist Convention narrowly elected Alabama pastor Ed Litton, known for preaching racial reconciliation, as the new president of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. Litton ran against the more conservative candidate Mike Stone in a runoff vote. The election signals an ideological divide in the SBC that is far from resolving.
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(ANALYSIS) The Southern Baptist Convention will convene its annual meeting on June 15, 2021 amid hemorrhaging membership. Southern Baptists have lost over 2 million members since 2006, with over 400,000 defections in the last year alone. A data-oriented analysis of the SBC’s past resolutions gives insight into the group’s history and trajectory.
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This week’s Weekend Plug-in summary highlights the drama expected to unfold at next week’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. Plus, find links to all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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