The move to disfellowship churches with female pastors in top positions has spurred a larger debate. Nobody expected Rick Warren’s appeal to be successful—not even Rick Warren. But he still stood up in front of 13,000 Southern Baptists gathered in New Orleans to make his case. “No one is asking any Southern Baptist to change…
A former dean alleges over $1 million in staff kickbacks and payouts as his case against the university goes to court. Four months after Liberty University filed a motion to dismiss a whistleblower’s lawsuit, the former dean suing the school amended his complaint with more detail about the alleged fraud he reported to authorities. He…
The costs and complications of UMC disaffiliation are leaving many congregations stuck. Editor’s note: This story was updated with the new information about disaffiliations on June 14. Carolyn Moore assumed that her Evans, Georgia, church would be one of the congregations disaffiliating from the United Methodist Church (UMC). Across the country, as of June 14,…
(UPDATED) The costs and complications of UMC disaffiliation are leaving many congregations stuck. Editor’s note: This article was updated with new information about disaffiliations on June 16. Carolyn Moore assumed that her Evans, Georgia, church would be one of the congregations disaffiliating from the United Methodist Church (UMC). Across the country, as of June 16,…
Scripture is clear that both go hand in hand. In seminary, my discipleship courses had a particular focus: passing on what the apostles had taught about doctrines like the Atonement and practices like Bible reading and prayer. For me, as for many evangelicals today, this made discipleship mainly a matter of nurturing faith and spiritual…
No less than her martyred husband, she could be inspiring and frustrating all at once. Elisabeth Elliot was one of the most extraordinary and controversial evangelicals of the post–World War II era. Anyone even marginally affiliated with the American missionary community knows the stirring and tragic story of Elisabeth and her first husband, Jim Elliot,…
The city some dismiss as “The Swamp” is fertile ground for evangelicals. The District Church could be a Baptist church. The lead pastor, after all, grew up as a Southern Baptist missionary kid and still has a lot of ties to that denomination. It could also be Anglican, with the way it leans into liturgy…
Our view of the end times should affect our politics. But how? For decades, the dominant evangelical perspective on the end times has been a premillennial, dispensationalist eschatology. As shown in the Left Behind series, this view says the end is nigh and the world—politics included—will grow increasingly wicked and catastrophic until the end comes….
Can we recover a healthy, Christ-honoring vision for masculinity? In recent decades, evangelicals have invested a colossal amount of discipleship, activist, and publishing energy toward promoting “sexual purity” and a “biblical” vision for sexuality. Despite this, the pattern of scandal, abuse, and misconduct by men and male leaders makes clear that the purity movement has…
For Amos, it depends on whether the God we worship demands justice. In this Close Reading series, biblical scholars reflect on a passage in their area of expertise that has been formational in their own discipleship and continues to speak to them today. My mother was Guatemalan, and she went to great lengths to make…
