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How is SBC supposed to work? Executive Committee ignites firestorm with sex-abuse logjam

How is SBC supposed to work? Executive Committee ignites firestorm with sex-abuse logjam

Welcome to Nashville, Liam Adams.

Enjoy the journalistic whiplash.

Adams, The Tennessean’s new religion writer, has received quite an introduction to the Godbeat in Music City.

Upon starting his new job last week, Adams immediately found himself covering two days of high-profile meetings by the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee.

He’s back at it this week, reporting on the committee again delaying “action on a third-party investigation into the committee’s handling of sexual abuse claims.”

“So I’m going to take a guess that this isn’t normally what happens in the Southern Baptist Convention, right?” Adams joked on Twitter. “Asking for a friend who just so happens to be in his second week reporting the news on all of this.”

Elsewhere, Religion News Service’s Yonat Shimron and Bob Smietana report that the “presidents of all six Southern Baptist seminaries have issued statements or tweets expressing their dismay at the Executive Committee’s unwillingness to act at the convention’s direction.”

According to Baptist News Global’s Mark Wingfield, new details have emerged about the committee’s handling of the investigation, “as outrage mounts among other Southern Baptist leaders.”

Read additional coverage by The Associated Press’ Holly Meyer (Adams’ predecessor at The Tennessean) and Christianity Today’s Kate Shellnutt.

For more context, see our past Plug-ins — here, here and here — focused on the Southern Baptist controversy.


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Chris Pratt and Anna Faris announce a 'separation': Might faith play a role in this story?

It was one of those zippy entertainment stories produced during the PR festivals that are scheduled before the release of major motion pictures.

In this case, journalists were covering a sci-fi flick called "Passengers."

As always, superstar Jennifer Lawrence -- who grew up in mainstream, middle-class America -- was candid to the point of near-embarrassment, producing the following fodder for Tinseltown discussion. This is from Vanity Fair:

“I had my first real sex scene a couple weeks ago, and it was really bizarre,” Lawrence admitted to fellow actresses Helen Mirren and Cate Blanchett during The Hollywood Reporter’s awards-season roundtable. “It was really weird.” ...
Lawrence said she couldn’t get past the fact that she had to film a love scene with a married man.
“It was going to be my first time kissing a married man, and guilt is the worst feeling in your stomach,” Lawrence explained. “And I knew it was my job, but I couldn’t tell my stomach that. ...”

The married co-star on the other end of the kiss was, of course, rising superstar Chris Pratt.

Other than the fact that Pratt is married -- half of the Hollywood power couple with actress Anna Faris -- it also helps to know that he is one of the most outspoken evangelical Christians in Hollywood (click here for more Vanity Fair coverage). Hold that thought.

That leads us to the current explosion in tabloid America, care of People magazine, of course:

Chris Pratt has stepped back into the public eye after he announced his separation from wife Anna Faris.


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