(RNS) — One of the most important stories coming out of the 2020 presidential election is that the United States will soon swear in its first female vice president. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris noted this in her victory speech on...

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis says the Christmas season provides reason for hope amid the difficulties of the coronavirus pandemic. During his Sunday blessing, Francis noted that the Vatican’s Christmas tree had gone up last week...

Dec. 9, 2020 by Luis Andres Henao, David Crary, & Jessie Wardarski, AP NOEL, Mo. (AP) — Thirty miles of rural Missouri separate the two churches, and so much else. One is mostly White; the other hosts services in five languages for a...

Republished with permission from Word & Way. On Nov. 25, the day before Thanksgiving, vandals attacked Mount Vernon Missionary Baptist Church, a historic Black Baptist church in rural Callaway County, Missouri. The damage,...

Republished with permission from Word & Way. The angriest I ever saw one of my former ministry bosses and mentors came after someone wrote a column suggesting a conflict in Baptist life could be over if people just prayed more. As...

(RNS) — A pastor pursuing a doctorate at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, announced in an editorial Wednesday (Dec. 16) that he was withdrawing from his degree program and severing his megachurch’s...

Republished with permission from Word & Way (RNS) — The president of the National African American Fellowship of the Southern Baptist Convention has asked for a meeting with six seminary presidents who recently declared that an...

Justice looks like the Great Commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and, love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-38, Mark 12:30-31, Luke...

Republished with permission from Word & Way. The pastor of Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris’s Baptist church praises her as “human decency and dignity at its best.” Amos C. Brown, a longtime civil rights activist who has pastored...

Republished with permission from Word & Way. For 23 years, Highland Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, has held a service on the second Sunday of Advent with a cross on its lawn for each person killed that year by homicide in the...

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Boise police are investigating after the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial was defaced by swastika stickers earlier this week. The stickers, which included the words, “we are everywhere” as well as the Nazi...

What are you doing for Christmas? That’s a tough question to answer this year, because many of us are not doing what we traditionally do, what we want to do. We also may find the question tough to answer, because we’re not sure what the...

As the coronavirus surges again, houses of worship struggle to serve their communities safely. Read full piece in The New York Times.

The first phase of excavation has ended for a Colonial Williamsburg archaeology project aiming to help tell the story of Williamsburg’s First Baptist Church, one of America’s oldest churches founded by free and enslaved Blacks. Read full...

BOB SMIETANA, RNS For months, the leaders of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations have urged churches to social distance, wear masks, and do their part to slow the spread of COVID-19. Unfortunately, says the association of...

Andy Stanley, the pastor of one of the largest megachurches in the country, ponders the future of an influential corner of American Christianity. Read full piece in The Atlantic.

Listen to episode 145 of the Baptist Without An Adjective podcast here. Starlette Thomas, author, activist, and minister to empower congregations for the D.C. Baptist Convention, talks with Word&Way Editor & President Brian Kaylor...

By Brian Kaylor, Word & Way With winter approaching, my son is already asking about when it will snow, how many days until Christmas, and when we can start decorating. When we do decorate — after Thanksgiving, as it should be done! —...

(RNS) — Over the past five years, the U.S. has seen a marked increase in political violence — from an uptick in hate crimes nationally to the attempted assassinations of leading political figures to threats of violence...

After leaving Sukkoth they camped at Etham on the edge of the desert.By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they...

(RNS) — Timothy Filston, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Thomasville, Georgia, had a request for his mask-wearing congregation during a recent sermon. “Give me all you can through your eyebrows,” said Filston. The church has begun...

Jack Goodyear In 2020, there is little need to convince someone American politics increasingly are hyperpartisan. As Paul Taylor wrote in The Next America, hyperpartisanship is “arguably the most powerful force in...

Bethany Rivera Molinar, president of the Texas Christian Community Development Network and operations director of Ciudad Nueva in El Paso, challenged No Need Among You online conference participants to consider the lenses through which...

AARON MORRISON, AP NEW YORK (AP) — For Jimmy Gates Sr., the 2008 presidential election year was one to remember — and not just because it yielded a historic result as the nation elected its first Black president. The pastor of Zion Hill...

Brian Kaylor Moses told Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” Hey, Moses, stop being political. Samuel rebukes King Saul, “You have done a foolish thing.” Hey, Samuel, stop being political.  Nathan confronts King David, saying “You are that...

OCTOBER 7, 2020 Eric Black / Editor Among my grandparents’ generation, trust was high. People trusted societal institutions and each other. Since my parents reached adulthood, trust has been trending down in each successive generation to...

William J. Barber II speaks at the Red Letter Revival in Lynchburg, Va., in 2018. (RNS photo by Jack Jenkins) Yonat Shimron / Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS) — White evangelicals who comprise President Trump’s base have attracted...

WACO—Using smartphone check-ins twice a day for two weeks, Baylor University and Harvard University researchers have found a link between individuals’ daily spiritual experiences and overall well-being. While other studies have found such...

Dr. Fredricc and Pastor Kan’Dace Brock are co-founders and lead pastors of The Message Church in San Antonio, a church plant supported by the Baptist General Convention of Texas. From deep in the hearts of two Texans, they share their...