Amid the continued declines, Southern Baptists are celebrating back-to-back years of growth in worship attendance and baptism.

Despite years of record-setting declines shrinking the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) to its lowest membership in nearly half a century, Southern Baptists have begun to see some signs of life within their 46,906 churches.

Worship attendance, small group attendance, and baptisms were up last year in the SBC’s annual statistical report, released Tuesday, while membership fell below 13 million.

2023 marks 17 straight years of decline for the country’s biggest Protestant denomination. It’s down 3.3 million from its peak, with the steepest drops coming during the pandemic. The SBC lost 1.3 million members between 2020 and 2022 alone.

Beyond COVID-19 disruptions, Southern Baptists have recently confronted some contentious issues within their convention, responding to sexual abuse and clamping down on female preachers, which have led some congregations to leave the SBC (including prominent megachurch Saddleback Church).

But statistics indicate that church departures aren’t a significant driver of membership decline; the SBC was down 292 churches last year, just 0.63 percent of its total.

In 2023, membership fell by 241,000, its smallest decrease since 2018. Yet attendance at SBC churches increased 6.5 percent, reaching above 4 million a week for the first time since the pandemic.

Attendance at small groups and Bible studies ticked up 4 percent to 2.4 million.

With fewer Americans than ever attending church and religious disaffiliation on the rise, leaders see even small increases in engagement and discipleship as worth celebrating.

It’s the first time in over a decade that SBC worship attendance has grown two years in a row, though it still lags behind pre-pandemic numbers. Back in ...

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(UPDATED) Migrant rights have been off-radar for many Panamanian Christians. But as pressures increase, some are speaking out ahead of this weekend’s general elections.

Update (May 6, 2024): José Raúl Mulino will be Panama’s new president after the Realizando Metas (Realizing Goals) party candidate won 34.2 percent of the vote.

Mulino began the campaign as the running mate of former president Ricardo Martinelli. (Martinelli previously served from 2009 to 2014.) When Martinelli was booted from the ticket after receiving a 10-year prison sentence for money laundering, Mulino assumed the top of the ticket. While other candidates fought to get him removed from the ballot for bypassing the party’s selection process, the country’s supreme court declared it legal two days prior to the election.

Last month, Mulino promised to close the Darién Gap, where tens of thousands of migrants have crossed from Colombia to Panama on their journey to the US border. On Monday, the president-elect reiterated his desire to do so, saying that he will work with the governments of Colombia and the United States to jointly create a long-term solution.

“Currently we have technology to survey the border, and I hope to start a repatriation process as early as possible,” he said in an interview Monday with Radio Blu.

Mulino is set to be inaugurated on July 1.

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On May 5, Panamanians will vote for a new president. The outcome of this election may have consequences for far more than its 4.4 million residents; it could change the migration reality for the hundreds of thousands of people traveling from South America, Asia, and Africa who pass through the Central American country en route to the United States.

Leading in the polls is José Raúl Mulino, a candidate for Realizando Metas (Realizing Goals), a right-wing populist party founded by disgraced president Ricardo ...

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Discrimination case claims that noncommercial religious broadcasters are paying far more than fellow stations to cover royalties for music played online.

The website for 99.1 JOY FM in St. Louis features a scrolling playlist of its lineup of Christian pop music and a “listen now” button to tune in to the simulcast broadcast. But visitors may find that after a few hours of streaming artists like Lauren Daigle and Brandon Lake, the site may kick them off.

Because of higher royalty costs, many noncommercial religious broadcasters are choosing to either limit the number of online listeners they allow at a time or simply not promote their online platforms at all. A new lawsuit from some of these broadcasters, including many Christian stations, claims that their royalty rate, which exceeds what other stations pay, is effectively a form of religious discrimination.

“The government is charging religious broadcasters a significantly higher rate,” said Rory Gray, with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). “It suppresses religious speech in the public sphere.”

Noncommercial radio stations—which rely on listener support and grant funding rather than ad sales—have traditionally been able to negotiate lower royalty rates for the music they play. But religious broadcasters, like JOY FM’s owner, Gateway Creative Broadcasting, lost out on that deal during negotiations in 2016 with SoundExchange, the rights management company that distributes royalties to artists.

Then streaming costs for religious radio increased in 2021, following a ruling from the US Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), and Christian stations were subject to the standard rates. A suit filed in February against the board claims that due to the discrepancy in rates set by the CRB and privately negotiated rates, noncommercial religious broadcasters are forced to restrict their streams ...

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A Honduran church leads the way in local garbage collection while praying for an international plastics treaty.

A banner hangs outside the Church of God in the village of El Rincón, Honduras, that says, “Let’s be part of the solution, not the pollution.”

It’s a message pastor Wilfredo Vásquez posted after witnessing the harmful effects of plastics in his community.

“More and more, I understand that if we want to see changes in any area of society, we as children of God must take the initiative for those changes, because the church is the hope of the world,” he told CT.

Vásquez, who shepherds the Wesleyan-Arminian congregation in the Central American town of about 4,000 people, has started taking steps to help his community and hopes world leaders will do the same by establishing an international treaty on plastics.

From April 23 to 29, delegates from around the world met in Ottawa for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC-4). It’s the fourth stage in a five-stage process working toward an agreement that has the potential to change how plastic is handled globally.

If passed, experts believe it could have a similar impact on plastic usage as the Montreal Protocol of 1987 had on chemicals such as freon.

While the final stage of the process isn’t until November in South Korea, after the most recent round of discussions in Canada, delegates from more than 150 countries agreed to begin intercessional work. Right away, delegates will start meeting to develop ways to identify plastic products and chemicals of concern.

In El Rincón, 3,600 miles away from the latest round of discussions, Vásquez is praying for the treaty’s passage.

Vásquez knows exactly what’s at stake and what a difference even ...

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Victim says she wants accountability more than money.

Hillsong Church Australia’s legal settlement with a former student who was groped by a worship leader fell apart on Thursday when the survivor refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

“I will not give up my voice,” Anna Crenshaw, daughter of Pennsylvania megachurch pastor Ed Crenshaw, told Australian reporters. “This has never been about money for me but about justice and accountability.”

According to lawyers, one condition of the agreement was a joint statement saying the church reported the assault immediately. Crenshaw claims Hillsong—embroiled at the time in a scandal over founder Brian Houston’s failure to report his father Frank’s sexual abuse of a young boy—actually waited four or five months to contact police.

Crenshaw was studying at Hillsong College in 2016 when Jason Mays, an administrative staff member and volunteer worship leader, put his hand on her inner thigh. The young woman—18 at the time—got up to leave, but Mays, 24, grabbed her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and touched her legs, butt, and crotch, according to a statement Crenshaw wrote several years later.

“He lifted up my shirt and was kissing my stomach,” Crenshaw, now 26, said in a TV news interview. “So I’m just, like, stuck there with this guy groping me.”

Crenshaw did not immediately report the incident because, she said, she was ashamed.

She also didn’t believe she could report Mays to human resources, because the department was run by Mays’s father. Two years later, a counselor pushed her to report to someone, and Crenshaw went to the head of pastoral care, who said, “I’m sure he’s really sorry,” according to ...

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An ancient codex, containing perhaps the earliest complete versions of Jonah and 1 Peter, goes up for auction in June. Will it disappear?

One of the oldest books in existence, which contains what is perhaps the oldest complete versions of Jonah and 1 Peter, is going up for auction in June. The sale of the Crosby-Schøyen Codex has scholars excited to talk about its uniqueness—and nervous about whether it could go into private hands and disappear.

The Crosby-Schøyen Codex is a primary example of the invention of books, which coincided with the spread of Christianity, said Eugenio Donadoni, a specialist in books and manuscripts at Christie’s London, which is auctioning the codex. The growth of Christianity spurred the need to “maximize the text you can write down and transmit … around the Mediterranean,” Donadoni said.

Before codices appeared in roughly the third century, scrolls “for several thousand years were the primary vehicle for transmitting literature,” said Brent Nongbri, an expert in early Christian manuscripts and a professor at the Norwegian School of Theology.

Codices were a technological advancement that “that wouldn’t be surpassed until the discovery of the printing press,” Donadoni added. Donadoni just finished touring the codex for potential buyers in New York and Paris before returning it to London, where it will be auctioned on June 11. About the codex he said, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

A single scribe wrote out the texts of the codex on papyrus leaves in Sahidic Coptic somewhere between A.D. 250 and 350, according to carbon dating of the codex conducted in 2020. That means it’s likely the text was written before the fourth-century church councils and during the time of the great persecutions.

“This is being used at a time when Christians ...

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After years of disagreement and the departure of thousands of churches, the change passed without debate.

United Methodists meeting for their top legislative assembly Wednesday overwhelmingly overturned a measure that barred gay clergy from ordination in the denomination, a historic step for the nation’s second-largest Protestant body.

With a simple vote call and without debate, delegates to the General Conference removed the ban on the ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals”—a prohibition that dates to 1984.

With that vote, the worldwide denomination of some 11 million members joins the majority of liberal Protestant denominations such as the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the United Church of Christ, which also ordain LGBTQ clergy.

“We’ve singled out one group for discrimination for 52 years,” said Ken Carter, bishop of the Western North Carolina Conference. “And we’ve done that on an understanding of homosexuality whose origins came when it was understood to be a disease and a disorder.”

That, he said, has now changed. “Increasingly,” he said, “people see that God’s spirit is in gay and lesbian people.”

The morning vote on the motion was part of a larger series of calendar items voted on in bulk. They also included a motion barring superintendents, or overseers, from punishing clergy for performing a same-sex wedding or prohibiting a church from holding a same-sex wedding, though the actual ban on same-sex weddings in churches has yet to be voted on.

The vote on the calendar items was 692–51, or about 93 percent in favor.

After the vote, LGBTQ delegates and their allies gathered on the floor of the Charlotte Convention Center to sing, hug, cheer, and shed tears. ...

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As the presidential election approaches, the incumbent government seeks to win support with aid to churches and pastors.

In many countries, politicians try to win over religious voters by highlighting areas of shared interest between their agenda and the faithful’s priorities. In Venezuela, the current president is offering pastors cash.

With less than three months until Venezuela’s presidential elections, incumbent Nicolás Maduro is expanding two initiatives specifically aimed at the evangelical community, which represents 30.9 percent of the country’s population.

Bono El Buen Pastor (“The Good Shepherd Bonus”), created last year, and Plan Mi Iglesia Bien Equipada (“My Well-Equipped Church Plan”) offer resources to pastors and their churches, including cash, chairs, construction materials, and expensive sound equipment—no strings attached. Mi Iglesia Bien Equipada exists under Misión Venezuela Bella, a government program that invests in recreation and arts spaces, which has remodeled nearly 3,000 churches since 2019.

At the beginning of March, Maduro gathered 17,000 people in a pastors-only event in the northern city of Carabobo and announced that 20,000 additional pastors had become beneficiaries of the Bono El Buen Pastor program, which would deliver a monthly stipend of 495 bolivars (around $14 USD) to each new member. (Venezuela’s minimum legal monthly wage is 130 bolivars or $3.50.)

Officially, the government says the program aims to give churchgoers dignified spaces where they can develop their faith. There are, however, those who view the state’s generosity with some suspicion.

César Mermejo, president of the Evangelical Council of Venezuela and a leader of the Federación de Iglesias Mizpa de Venezuela, called these efforts by Maduro an attempt to buy ...

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The plan would organize UMC churches in four global regions, with each given more leeway around same-sex marriage and other theological issues.

The top legislative body of the United Methodist Church passed a series of measures Thursday to restructure the worldwide denomination to give each region greater equity in tailoring church life to its own customs and traditions.

The primary measure, voted on as the UMC General Conference met at the Charlotte Convention Center in North Carolina, was an amendment to the church’s constitution to divide the denomination into four equal regions—Africa, Europe, the Philippines, and the United States.

According to the plan, each region would be able to customize part of the denomination’s rulebook, the Book of Discipline, to fit local needs. While church regions in Africa, the Philippines, and Europe have already enjoyed some leeway in customizing church life, the United States has not.

The vote on the constitutional amendment passed 586–164, or by 78 percent, which means it surpassed the two-thirds majority needed for constitutional amendments. It must now go before each smaller church region, called an annual conference, for ratification by the end of 2025.

If ratified by two-thirds of delegates to the annual conferences, the restructuring would allow the four regions to set their own qualifications for ordaining clergy and lay leaders; publish their own hymnal and rituals, including rites for marriage; and establish its own judicial courts. A new Book of Discipline would have one section that could be revised and tailored for each of the four regional conferences.

The two-week worldwide meeting is the first meeting of the General Conference in five years, due mostly to delays associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. It follows a painful schism that has split some 7,600 US-based churches from the denomination—a ...

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NIL deals in college athletics present new challenges—and opportunities—for colleges and students.

When Deverin Muff played Division I college basketball at Eastern Kentucky University, student athletes weren’t allowed to earn money off their name, image, and likeness (NIL)—their personal brand.

Now he’s a professor at the university, and some of the players in his classes have agents. An NCAA policy change in 2021—heralded by Muff and other Christian athletes as a matter of fairness—allows college athletes to earn money beyond financial aid or scholarships.

“This is a matter of justice, frankly. … It righted a historic wrong,” said Pepperdine University sports administration professor Alicia Jessop. College sports, especially football and basketball, draw in billions in revenue.

Christians in college athletics have welcomed the change to allow NIL deals, according to interviews with CT. But they are also navigating an unknown landscape and finding challenges along the way. The NCAA itself is still reeling from the resulting shifts in the economics of college sports, passing additional NIL rules just last week.

Jessop was recently teaching a class on NIL deals at Pepperdine, where she is also the faculty representative to the NCAA. One student decided to put the class into practice immediately and reached out to a sunglasses brand to pitch a deal. In a short time, the student had a free pair of sunglasses delivered.

“It’s a teaching tool,” said Jessop. “They think they’re learning about NIL so they’re focused, but they’re getting a whole business curriculum put in front of them.”

Under the new NCAA rules passed last week, schools can be more directly involved in NIL deals and they can offer a support system that helps educate students ...

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