Just over 100 years ago, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was on the brink of financial collapse.
The school’s trustees were thinking about closing the doors.
Then a man named Joseph E. Brown made a $50,000 donation to save the school.
The seminary’s leaders hailed the gift as an answer to prayer. They eventually honored Brown, who also served as governor of Georgia and a member of the seminary’s Board of Trustees, with a professorship in his name.
They never had a second thought about where the money came from.

Joseph E. Brown, the secessionist governor of Georgia during the Civil War. Photo courtesy of LOC/Creative Commons
Brown gained his wealth on the backs of incarcerated black men through the heinous practice of convict leasing. His business, Dade Coal Company, paid the state a fee for the work of incarcerated men and, in turn, worked these laborers under draconian conditions.....



But there’s more to the story.
Evangelicals — including Southern Baptists — have continued to demonstrate complicity with racism since the civil rights era and to the present day. From slavery to Jim Crow segregation, and now in the post-civil rights era, the narrative of white racial superiority persists, particularly among white evangelicals.

Faith takes work. Faith is a process, a path that one journeys upon. It isn’t solely a set of beliefs that one has to affirm. Rather, those beliefs are stepping stones to manifesting true faith in one’s actions. Take, for example, the basic belief that there is a God. The affirming of this belief causes one to act in a beautiful way and to work towards meeting this Lord who sustains His creation.

Know what the Bible is – and what it isn't. The Bible is the story of God's relationship with the people he has called to himself. It is not intended to be read as history text, a science book, or a political manifesto. In the Bible, God teaches us the truths that we need for the sake of our salvation.

Granted that the expression of faith, such as it is found in the sacred Scripture acknowledged by all, has had to renew itself continually in order to meet new situations, which explains the "rereadings" of many of the biblical texts, the interpretation of the Bible should likewise involve an aspect of creativity; it ought also to confront new questions so as to respond to them out of the Bible.
Granted that tensions can exist in the relationship between various texts of sacred Scripture, interpretation must necessarily show a certain pluralism. No single interpretation can exhaust the meaning of the whole, which is a symphony of many voices. Thus, the interpretation of one particular text has to avoid seeking to dominate at the expense of others.

At Catholic Answers, we get questions all the time like, "What is the Catholic position on this Scripture passage?" Many people seem to have the idea that the Catholic Church has an official interpretation of every passage of Scripture. It isn’t true.
First, Scripture has more than one level of meaning. The two basic levels are the literal and the spiritual senses, the latter of which may contain up to three different kinds of meanings, depending on whether it foreshadows something in the New Testament, something at the end of time, or what moral lesson it may teach. Since the literal sense and the subdivisions of the spiritual sense can each be ambiguous (that is, they can carry more than one meaning by the author’s design), the multiplicity of meanings would guarantee that a commentary on the meaning of Scripture would run into the millions of propositions.

The percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religious tradition continues to rise annually. Not all of them, however, are atheists or agnostics. Many of these people believe in a higher power, if not organized religion, and their numbers too are steadily increasing.
The history of organized religion is full of schisms, heresies and other breakaways. What is different at this time is a seemingly indiscriminate mixing of diverse religious traditions to form a personalized spirituality, often referred to as “cafeteria spirituality.” This involves picking and choosing the religious ideas one likes best.

In a development hailed as "victory," the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a case that sought to prevent Medicaid patients from accessing key healthcare services from Planned Parenthood....


In the 6-3 decision, it was Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch who dissented, saying the high court should have taken up the cases. Notably, conservatives Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the liberal justices in refusing to hear the challenges.

Thanks to the committed leadership of the youth-led Sunrise Movement and more than 100 other social justice and climate action groups, over the past two weeks 22 Democratic members of the House have now joined the call for presumptive House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to form a Select Committee.

For creator Harry Lennix, the new movie “Revival!” — a retelling of the Gospel of John with a mostly black cast — is a film whose time has come.
“I think to be able to imagine yourself as somebody like Christ is a great, powerful tool that has been denied us, not necessarily even from outside sources,” said Lennix, a black writer, producer and actor in the film.