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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(ANALYSIS) Fifty years ago, on June 3, 1972, as Sally J. Priesand became the first woman ordained a rabbi by a Jewish seminary, her 35 male classmates spontaneously rose to their feet to acknowledge her historic feat.
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(OPINION) As we await a final Supreme Court ruling, we could be in for a long summer of violence and vandalism. My criticism here is not in the news coverage this issue has received. Instead, it’s the lack of coverage. The vandalism of the past few weeks and the lack of news coverage could very well be a template of what’s to come once the Supreme Court makes public a final decision.
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This week’s Weekend Plug-in opens with God and guns — and the debate among religious people over firearms. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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For the second week in a row, this week’s Weekend Plug-in leads with the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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(OPINION) National news coverage regarding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi being banned by San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone from taking Holy Communion because of her continued support — in words and deeds — for abortion rights spanned from very good to baffling and very poor.
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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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(ANALYSIS) Temples in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often referred to as the Mormon church, have long been a site of curiosity, suspicion and admiration. They are where the faith’s most sacred rites or “ordinances” are performed, so church members were traditionally taught not to discuss some of them publicly.
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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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(ANALYSIS) The Ark Encounter boasts a re-creation of the story of Noah’s Ark from the Bible. But what is particularly striking about Ark Encounter is that it is a tourist site devoted to emphasizing — with great specificity — the wrathful nature of God and the eternal damnation that awaits unrepentant sinners.
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(ANALYSIS) If there was ever a doubt that Americans are living in two, separate news universes, then the past two weeks certainly crystallized that reality even more than the polarizing presidential elections of 2016 and 2020. As a result, a major news story on pro-abortion rights protesters at churches was totally ignored by many mainstream news sites.
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Is it hard to be a Christian and a journalist? Is it possible to be a Christian and a journalist? This week’s Weekend Plug-in highlights recent first-person pieces that explore these questions. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith?
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Weekend Plug-in features a reporter roundtable on this week’s bombshell news: the leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion that would reverse Roe v. Wade. Plus, as always, catch up on all the week’s best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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(ANALYSIS) On Tuesday, a preliminary draft Supreme Court opinion was leaked to Politico, revealing that the court — as of February — intended to overturn Roe v. Wade. What does the leak mean for the court and America, and how have faith voices responded?
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(ANALYSIS) Something akin to a Catholic “Trial of the Century” has gotten underway in Rome and there’s plenty of palace intrigue to go around. The trial involving corruption, bad real estate deals and financial wrongdoing has placed Pope Francis in the center of a controversy that for the first time doesn’t involve doctrine or theology.
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This week’s Weekend Plug-in highlights the arguments in the case of a high school football coach who wants to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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(ANALYSIS) As a child, the late Mwai Kibaki was taken to school by Consolata Missionaries because he did not have the strength for the back-breaking tasks of peasant farming and looking after animals. Those early interactions with Catholics became evident in Kibaki’s moderate dealings as a lecturer, politician and eventual president of Kenya.
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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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(REVIEW) Images from 31 unique ancient objects, including Christian manuscripts in Latin, the Getty’s treasured Rothschild Pentateuch in Hebrew and two printed Hebrew books — from between 1040 to 1592 — are on display until May 29 at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. But the Getty’s text descriptions seem intended to push a misinterpretation of the Christian images as works of antisemitism and misogyny, based on little or no evidence.
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