Baptist leaders praise housing allowance ruling
CHICAGO (BP)—Southern Baptist entity leaders applauded a federal appeals court decision March 15 upholding the constitutionality of the ministerial housing allowance. A three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled unanimously the long-standing clergy allowance does not violate the First Amendment clause that prohibits government establishment of religion. The decision reversed a federal judge’s 2017...
Unborn made in ‘image of God,’ Trump tells nation
WASHINGTON (BP) — President Trump affirmed unborn children as image bearers of God and urged Congress to ban late-term abortions in his second State of the Union speech. Trump called for both parties to work together for the good of the country in his address Tuesday night (Feb. 5) to a joint session of Congress and a national television audience. He repeated his requirement, however, of a policy that had helped produce a...
N.Y. abortion bill: ‘alarming in every sense’
ALBANY, N.Y. (BP)—New York may have re-established itself as America’s leading abortion state by enacting a law that critics say goes beyond even the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the Reproductive Health Act (RHA) into law Jan. 22 shortly after the state legislature completed passage of the controversial proposal. Enactment of the legislation came on the 46th...
Protestants remain majority group in Congress
WASHINGTON (BP)—Self-identified Protestant Christians—including more than 30 Southern Baptists—continue to make up by far the largest religious group in Congress. Protestants total 293 members, or 55 percent, of the 116th Congress, according to a study published Jan. 3 by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. The analysis of data on members of the Senate and House of Representatives showed a decline of six Protestants from the previous...
Reconsider Roe v. Wade, brief urges Supreme Court
WASHINGTON (BP) — The Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and allies have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion. A spotlight on Roe could come in the Supreme Court’s review of a lower court opinion nullifying a state law that bars discrimination against certain classes of unborn children, such as sex, race and disability, according to a...
