Church Membership and the Tough Cases: Reflections on Divorce and Remarriage

W. Jackson Watts In a prior article I discussed the centrality of church membership to our evaluations of where we are as churches at this point in the COVID-19 pandemic. The truth is that church membership touches all aspects of church life and Christian experience. I have an…

Matthew Bracey’s “The Institutional Good of Marriage, Family, and Society”: Review and Response

W. Jackson Watts I was pleased to listen to Matthew Bracey’s excellent paper on marriage, family, and society at the 2018 Symposium in October. This is a subject of great interest to me, and I know one which Bracey has spent an extensive amount of time delving into.…

Legal and Religious Liberty Implications of the Supreme Court Decision on Same-sex Marriage (Part I)

by Matthew Steven Bracey  *This five-part series is adapted from Matthew Bracey’s presentation, “Legal and Religious Liberty Implications of the Supreme Court Decision on Same-sex Marriage,” Theological Integrity Seminar (presentation at the annual meeting for the National Association of Free Will Baptists, Kansas City, Missouri, July 17-20, 2016),…

Nervous about Numbers

by Kevin Hester Numbers can be depressing. When we hear that over half of all marriages end in divorce, we cringe. It doesn’t help that some versions of the statistics show that Christian marriages are no better. What about church attendance? A 2007 LifeWay Research Study documented that…