Religion and Values

Several months ago, I was broken-hearted at the news that a young mother had allegedly killed her daughters and then herself inside her Texas trailer. That sadness was triggered again at the news that a celebrity wrestler had reportedly chosen to murder his wife and child and then end his own...

I’m a gusher … that’s probably why I’ll never be a professional movie reviewer. If I like something I gush. If I don’t like something I rant. Since it’s rare that I don’t like something about a movie, I’d be perpetually in gush mode. So I liked “Evan The Almighty.” Actually...

“Til death do us part.” The familiar phrase uttered in many wedding ceremonies may not mean what it used to, but for some couples it is still a verbal commitment to a lasting bond of wedded love. Columnist Bryan Painter recently wrote about such couples and I have one on my mind in...

The annual meeting is over and I’ll soon be off to the airport to catch a flight back to Oklahoma City. Typically I meet other Oklahomans who are also making their way back from the meeting. I have one personal regret: I didn’t get to tour the Alamo. I visited San Antonio a few years ago...

Lots of folks scrambled to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center this morning to find out the vote on Rick Garner’s motion that was essentially a call to reaffirm the “suffiency” of the Baptist Faith and Message of 2007 as the Southern Baptist Convention’s statement of doctrinal...

Calling Bob Green … The Rev. Bob Green brought up an interesting issue Tuesday but my attempts to track him down have proved fruitless. Green is pastor of a Broken Arrow church and a former president of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. During an annual meeting session on Tuesday...

I’ve been accused of being single-minded in my various pursuits, but this was a no-brainer even for me. I had just settled in at my hotel in downtown San Antonio’s Market Square when I heard noises coming from the street. I’m talking honking car horns, people yelling and screaming at the...

Southern Baptists concerned about the issue of speaking in tongues will not be silenced. The subject has came up numerous times during this year’s annual meeting and it may be explored even further next year. Messenger Lee Saunders of Texas asked that consideration be given to the...

Downtown San Antonio is teeming with Southern Baptists, most wearing their annual meeting badges. A sign in the press room Monday night proclaimed that 6,000 had registered as of 4 p.m. Monday. I visited the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center Monday so that I would know my way around this...

I did not disappear into a black hole. I repeat: I did not disappear into a black hole. So much happened today, the first day of the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting, that I am just now finding time to blog. The Baptist messengers, more than 8,500 of them, have left us Baptist...

It’s the day before the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting and I will spend much of today traveling to San Antonio where the event is to take place. However, many Southern Baptists from across the country are already in San Antonio, participating in a wide variety of pre-meeting...