Top administrative leaders for the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America, said Tuesday that they will release a secret list of hundreds of pastors and other church-affiliated personnel accused of sexual abuse.
A blistering report on the Southern Baptist Convention’s mishandling of sex abuse allegations is raising the prospect that the denomination, for the first time, will create a publicly accessible database of pastors and other church personnel known to be abusers.
The Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee — and thousands of its rank-and-file members — now have opportunities to address a scathing investigative report that says top SBC leaders stonewalled and denigrated survivors of clergy sex abuse over two decades while seeking to protect their own reputations.
NEW YORK (AP) — For veteran anti-abortion activists, the leaked Supreme Court document read like a detailed dream come true, spelling out a potential ruling that would overturn the landmark Roe v.
OPELOUSAS, La. (AP) — Three years after an arsonist torched three small Black Baptist churches in rural Louisiana, rebuilding is well under way.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Members of California's first-in-the-nation reparations task force convened in a historic African American church in San Francisco on Wednesday, making their own history as they work to educate the public and develop a restitution proposal for the people harmed by the institution of slavery.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted some of America’s most prominent evangelical leaders to raise a provocative question — asking if the world is now in the biblically prophesied “end of days” that might culminate with the apocalypse and the second coming of Christ.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Nearly 20 members of Congress began an annual pilgrimage through Alabama’s civil rights sites Friday without the person who inspired so many to attend in past years: the late Rep.
Ed Litton, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, announced Tuesday he will break with tradition and not seek a second term in the top convention role.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee has offered a public apology and a confidential monetary settlement to sexual abuse survivor Jennifer Lyell, who was mischaracterized by the denomination’s in-house news service when she decided to go public with her story in March 2019.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee pastor Willie McLaurin has been named interim president and CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee, becoming the first African American to lead one of the denomination's ministry entities in its more than 175-year history.
MAYFIELD, Ky. (AP) — After riding out the violent tornado that devastated their town in a tunnel under their church, the Rev. Wes Fowler and his family emerged to devastation stretching for blocks: Crackling power lines, piles of rubble and calls for help they couldn't pinpoint in the darkness.
WEST COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — For years, Jill Biden couldn’t bring herself to pray, her faith shattered by the 2015 death of her son Beau from brain cancer at age 46.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A top Southern Baptist Convention administrator is resigning amid internal rifts over how to handle an investigation into the SBC's response to sexual abuse, a decision that underscores the broader ongoing turmoil in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) — The brick foundation of one of the nation's oldest Black churches has been unearthed at Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum in Virginia that continues to reckon with its past storytelling about the country's origins and the role of Black Americans.
A top committee of the Southern Baptist Convention agreed Tuesday to open up legally protected records to investigators who will look into how it handled, or mishandled, cases of sexual abuse within the nation's largest Protestant denomination over the past two decades.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A woman was arrested on a charge of starting a fire that did $25,000 worth of damage to the First Baptist Church of Montgomery, court records showed Monday.
Xiaoquin Yan, 27, was charged with second-degree arson and jailed with bond set at $30,000.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A top Southern Baptist Convention committee is facing mounting pressure from within the denomination to move forward without further delay an investigation into how it handled sexual abuse allegations.
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) — A top Southern Baptist Convention committee agreed Tuesday to fund a third-party investigation into its handling of sexual abuse allegations but held off on waiving its attorney-client privilege for the probe, delaying for the future a decision seen as a key demand of the thousands of Southern Baptists who set the review in motion.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A federal investigation is underway after arson damaged a historic Kansas City, Missouri, church that now serves a congregation predominantly made up of people from South Sudan.
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) — The Rev. Marshall Blalock feels the weight of his new responsibility.
The South Carolina pastor serves as vice chair of a recently formed Southern Baptist Convention task force charged with overseeing an investigation into how a top denominational committee handled sex abuse allegations, a review that comes years into the SBC's public reckoning with the scandal.
COVID-19 vaccine refusal rates may be high among white evangelical Christians, but the International Mission Board — which deploys thousands of missionaries — is not hesitant about the shot.
The global agency of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical Protestant denomination in the U.S., announced this month it is requiring vaccinations for missionaries they're sending into the field amid the pandemic.
KANO, Nigeria (AP) — Armed kidnappers in Nigeria have released 28 of the more than 120 students who were abducted at the beginning of July from the Bethel Baptist High School in the northern town of Damishi.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A popular strip club that once beckoned customers off a busy highway leading into Anchorage is now a church offering salvation — instead of temptation — thanks to a daughter of a former exotic dancer.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky reached a contract deal Thursday to continue placing youngsters with a Baptist-affiliated children’s agency, coming after the Democratic governor's administration removed LGBTQ anti-discrimination language that the agency steadfastly refused to sign.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Health officials in Tennessee have linked a small coronavirus cluster to last month's meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, Nashville's first large-scale conference after lifting restrictions on gatherings, The Tennessean reported.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky's contract renewal with a Baptist-affiliated children’s agency remains in limbo, but the state is continuing to place youngsters in its care, Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday.
(RNS) — The Southern Baptist Convention has trouble with a capital T — and that stands for trust.
The lack of trust was palpable during the SBC’s recent annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, where local church messengers often overruled Baptist leaders from the meeting floor.
Republicans turned up pressure on Kentucky's Democratic governor Thursday to renew a contract with a Baptist-affiliated children's agency, reacting to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling they say should settle the dispute between religious beliefs and gay rights.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Delegates at the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to create a task force to oversee an independent investigation into the denomination's handling of sexual abuse.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Southern Baptist Convention tamped down a push from the right at its largest meeting in decades on Tuesday, electing a new president who has worked to bridge racial divides in the church and defeating an effort to make an issue of critical race theory.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee on Monday quashed a push for an independent committee to lead a probe of its handling of sex abuse cases, but the proposal is almost certain to resurface when the nation's largest denomination holds its biggest and most contentious annual meeting in decades.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — As Southern Baptists prepare for their biggest annual meeting in more than a quarter-century, accusations that leaders have shielded churches from claims of sexual abuse and simmering tensions around race threaten to once again mire the nation’s largest Protestant denomination in a conflict that can look more political than theological.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee said Friday it is contracting an outside firm to investigate its actions amid accusations that top denominational leaders mishandled sex abuses cases, despite calls from some critics for a more independent probe.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Race-related tensions within the Southern Baptist Convention are high heading into a national meeting next week. The election of a new SBC president and debate over the concept of systemic racism may prove pivotal for some Black pastors as they decide whether to stay in the denomination or leave.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Releases of leaked letters and secret recordings from within the Southern Baptist Convention intensified Thursday as critics sought to show top leaders were slow to address sexual abuse in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination and worried more about its reputation and donations than about victims.
NEW YORK (AP) — First lady Jill Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci toured a COVID-19 vaccination site at a historic Harlem church on Sunday.
Biden, Fauci and U.S. Sen Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, watched as people got their shots in the basement of the Abyssinian Baptist Church.
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — When white attackers destroyed the prosperous Black neighborhood of Greenwood 100 years ago this week, they bypassed the original sanctuary of the First Baptist Church of North Tulsa.