Andy Olsen

Bethany Christian Services, long described as the country’s largest Protestant adoption and foster care agency, will no longer allow LGBTQ couples to foster or adopt. In a press release posted Wednesday, the Michigan-based agency announced that its board voted to “clarify and reinforce” its Christian faith commitments.

Last week, the first campers arrived at Camp Blessing in Brenham, Texas, to careen down a zipline, wobble in kayaks, glue objects to construction paper, and strut their stuff in a talent show. That they came at all was no small feat. Six years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Camp Blessing, which serves children with intellectual, developmental, and physical disabilities, to cancel its summer sessions The virus posed a particularly dire threat to its campers.

A proposal by the nation’s largest Protestant denomination to ban churches that have women pastors or let women preach on Sunday mornings passed overwhelmingly on Wednesday, marking the first step toward enshrining the ban in the Southern Baptist Convention’s constitution. Almost three-quarters (74.6%) of local church delegates, known as messengers, voted in favor of the so-called Truth and Unity Amendment during a Wednesday morning session of the SBC’s annual meeting.