RELIGIION HEADLINES MON 6-15

(SRN NEWS)-(  )  Codifying a ban on female pastors was not the only action that delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual summer meeting took last week.  SBC messengers also approved a resolution denouncing political violence and hateful speech. They approved another that called for humane treatment of illegal aliens while affirming the legitimacy of immigration enforcement and rejecting nativistic and dehumanizing rhetoric.  The delegates also gave their support to a resolution denouncing anti-Semitic violence and conspiracy theories, notably those arising after the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023.

(  )  The United Nations is again sounding an alarm about anti-Christian violence in Nigeria.  The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says it is being swamped with reports of attacks by Muslim terrorists on believers in Nigeria and women are suffering the most.  The U.N. says there has been a surge in abductions, sexual violence, forced marriage, and enforced disappearance, especially in the country’s northern and Middle Belt regions.  At least two Muslim terror groups, Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province are at work in Nigeria.  Some accuse the government of a tepid response.

(  )  Evangelical Christians continue to be one of President Trump’s key constituencies.  An AP-NORC poll finds that about two-thirds of white born-again Protestants approved of Trump’s overall performance in April.  Mr. Trump won the support of about eight-in-10 White Evangelical Christian voters in 2020 and 2024.  Prominent clergymen have been some of the president’s strongest supporters.  Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, says he especially appreciated Mr. Trump’s establishment of the Religious Liberty Commission, where Jeffress testified about unfair scrutiny of his church by the IRS.