Inflation Fund Depleted, State Conventions & Jael and Deborah Uncovered

A $100,000 inflation relief fund for pastors in the Baptist General Convention of Texas was depleted within 24 hours of its availability, the BGCT announced July 13 as inflation reached its highest point in decades at 9.1 percent.

Two hundred pastors received grants averaging $500 each in the program announced July 11 and financed through a Lilly Endowment fund not available in other states, said Tammy Tervooren, a contracted grant administrator with the financial health team of the Texas Baptists Center for Ministerial Health.

The convention announced the grants July 11, and they were all gone by the 12th.

The work of Southern Baptist state conventions can be vital in the adoption of pro-life laws after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, acting Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission president Brent Leatherwood, said in a live video interview with Baptist Press.

The online event focused on recent Supreme Court decisions regarding abortion and religious freedom. Much of the conversation addressed Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a June 24 opinion that upheld a Mississippi ban on abortion after 15 weeks’ gestation.

The high court’s watershed judgment returned the regulation of abortion to the states, where it had rested before Roe.

Nearly half of the 50 states already have laws prohibiting abortion either throughout pregnancy or at some stage of pregnancy, but some state legislatures will continue to debate policies.

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The earliest known depiction of biblical heroines Jael and Deborah was discovered at an ancient synagogue in Israel, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced last week. A rendering of one figure driving a stake through the head of a military general was the initial clue that led the team to identify the figures, according to project director Jodi Magness.

The nearly 1,600-year-old mosaics were uncovered by a team of students and specialists as part of The Huqoq Excavation Project, which resumed its 10th season of excavations this summer at a synagogue in the ancient Jewish village of Huqoq in Lower Galilee. Mosaics were first discovered at the site in 2012, and Magness said the synagogue, which dates to the late fourth or early fifth century, is “unusually large and richly decorated.” In addition to its extensive, relatively well-preserved mosaics, the site is adorned with wall paintings and carved architecture.

The fourth chapter of the Book of Judges tells the story of Deborah, a judge and prophet who conquered the Canaanite army alongside Israelite general Barak. After the victory, the passage says, the Canaanite commander Sisera fled to the tent of Jael, where she drove a tent peg into his temple and killed him.