%1

Rolland Slade, senior pastor of Meridian Baptist Church in El Cajon, California, has been elected as the first African American chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Execu­tive Committee, the group that runs the business of the nation’s largest Protes­tant denomination outside its annual meetings.

He was elected unanimously.

Slade was previously vice chairman of the Executive Committee and chair of its Cooperative Program Committee, which handles the denomination’s central funding mechanism.

In January 2021, Javier A. Viera will become the first person of color to head Garrett-Evangelical Theological Semi­nary. The native of San Juan, Puerto Rico, will succeed Lallene J. Rector, who has served as seminary president since 2013. Earlier this year, Rector announced her intention to step down in order to help care for loved ones with serious health conditions.

Inner World, the Dalai Lama’s first album is set to be released on July 6, his 85th birthday. The 11-track project, featuring teachings and mantras by the Da­lai Lama set to music, was re­leased in conjunction with a companion booklet.

“The entire purpose of this project is to try to help people,” said Junelle Kunin, a New Zealand Buddhist who first had the idea for the album. “It’s not a Buddhist project, it’s to help everyday people like myself, even though I am Buddhist. The messages couldn’t be more poignant for our current social climate and needs as humanity.”

In a landslide vote on June 20, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) elected its first Na­tive American moderator of a General Assembly.

Elona Street-Stewart, a member of the Dela­ware Nanticoke tribe, ran for comoderator of the 2020 General Assembly alongside Gregory J. Bentley, pastor of Fellowship Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama.

On June 2, former pastor Ella Jones was elected mayor of Fergu­son, Missouri, with 54 percent of the votes cast. Jones currently serves as the council member for Ferguson Ward 1. She will be the first black mayor of Fer­guson, as well as the first female mayor.

This was the second time Jones ran for mayor in Ferguson. In 2017, she lost to incumbent James Knowles III, who—due to term limits—was unable to run for reelection this year.

Since the beginning of 2019, Southern Baptist Convention president J. D. Greear has been among the highest-profile advocates for preventing sexual abuse and protecting victims of abuse in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

Now advocates for abuse survivors are criticizing Greear af­ter his church de­cided to hire a teaching pastor who has been accused of mishandling an abuse claim in the past.

A day after Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University in Virginia, tweeted an image of a face mask depicting figures in blackface and dressed as Klansmen, Christopher House, an online instructor for the university, announced his resignation on Facebook.

Francis Collins, world-renowned ge­neticist and director of the National Institutes of Health, is the 2020 recipient of the Templeton Prize. The award, valued at $1.3 million, honors individuals who use scientific advancements to answer the deepest questions related to humanity’s existence and purpose.

Popular Christian evangelist and apologist Ravi Zacharias died May 19 at age 74, a few months af­ter being diagnosed with cancer.

Zacharias rose to prominence in 1983 when he was invited by Billy Graham to speak at the inaugural International Conference for Itinerant Evangelists in Amsterdam, according to an obituary published by the ministry Zacha­rias founded.

In his message, he pleaded with Chris­tians not to try to “humiliate” those with different worldviews.

“When you are trying to reach someone, please be sensitive to what he holds valuable,” he said.

A Muslim leader who spent the past several years leading a small national following from a federal prison has been released early due to the coronavirus.

Earl Abdulmalik Mohammed claims to be the rightful ideological successor of W. Deen Mo­hammed, the massively influential black Muslim leader who shepherded the Nation of Islam toward orthodox Sunni Islam under a new association, the American Society of Muslims.