Baptist News

Directors of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North Carolina voted recently to authorize funding for conflict transformation training in Sudan/South Sudan and the Philippines and to assist with creation of a Baptist Peace Fellowship of Latin America and the Caribbean.

An unusual sight — an 11-foot-tall wooden cross with hundreds of written prayer requests nailed to it — has been turning motorists’ heads and prompting some of them to get out of their cars during pastor Terry Long’s 100-day vigil at the busy intersection of Highways 63 and 613 near the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The pastor estimates there have been some 1,500 visits to pray and nail requests to the cross since Jan. 23, and 23 people have prayed to receive Christ as their Lord and Savior.

When President Obama told the Justice Department in February 2011 to stop defending a key federal law that defines marriage as between r man and a woman, it was widely assumed the department would take a neutral position and sit on the sidelines. But with little fanfare since that announcement, the Justice Department has actually started filing legal briefs arguing that the law in question — the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — should be overturned because, the department says, it is unconstitutional.

Chinese human rights advocate Chen Guangcheng remains under “de facto house arrest” in a Beijing hospital with his wife and two children despite his desire to travel to the United States, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith said May 15.

On May 15, the Baptist Messenger, the newspaper of the Baptist General Convention, reached a milestone few publications do. The Messenger officially turned 100 years old. Oklahoma’s Gov. Mary Fallin and Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb jointly declared May 15, 2012, as “Baptist Messenger Day” in Oklahoma through an official citation.

Southern Baptist pastor Steve Willis, author of “Winning the Food Fight,” warns of ties between Americans’ meat-driven diet and the overuse of manmade antibiotics in animals.

Sports can provide a way for churches to evangelize those who don’t attend traditional worship. Sports consultant John Garner shares ways to reach the lost through America’s sports-crazy culture.