After being sexually harassed while serving at her first pastorate, Pastor Amy Butler calls out the church and herself in their complicity of “just taking it.” (Baptist News Global)

A federal law was supposed to put an end to the use of local zoning laws as tools of discrimination. It hasn’t. (The Atlantic)

In the aftermath of the worst shooting in Texas history at First Baptist Sutherland Springs, Ferrell Foster argues that all churches should hire professional security.

When Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church Dallas, interviewed Fox News host Sean Hannity, many opposed it for its commingling of church and politics.

Five hundred years after Reformation Day, Molly T. Marshall wonders if Baptists are still reforming themselves. (BNG)

“What is the actual evidence on the relationship between religion and morality?”

Jonathan Merritt discusses the merits of “Church Clarity,” a new website seeking to reveal official church stances on their “affirming” or “non-affirming” stances regarding homosexuality.

Matthew Levering and Kevin J. Vanhoozer debate the merit of the Reformation: Should it have occurred, and is it still occurring today?

Richard Mouw reflects on a trip to North Korea where he witnessed “one of the four legally permitted Christian worship services in the country.”

How do you define a healthy church? Instead of numbers, Jim Kitchens and the Center for Healthy Churches “look at how much that church follows in the way of Jesus.”

Congressman Chris Smith, chairman of the global human rights subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, suggests that more can and should be done for persecuted Christians and Yazidis in Iraq.

What of American churches? Are most too divided, declining, naïve, immobilized, silent to offer effective responses to firearm violence and the spiritual (yes, spiritual) issues that impact them? When an agnostic or two show up after this or the next shooting incident, will we have any good news? (from BNG)