Southern Baptist leaders have spoken out about this past weekend’s Revoice Conference for LGBT Christians. Many are concerned and ‘troubled’ by the conference, while others think it may bring about important conversation.

The Revoice Conference, which met this past weekend in St. Louis, defines itself as “Supporting, encouraging, and empowering gay, lesbian, same-sex-attracted, and other LGBT Christians so they can flourish while observing the historic, Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality.”

Referring to their beliefs, founder Nate Collins told Christianity Today, “We all believe that the Bible teaches a traditional, historic understanding of sexuality in marriage, and so we are not attempting in any way to redefine any of those doctrines. We’re trying to live within the bounds of historic Christian teaching about sexuality and gender. But we find difficulty doing that for a lot of reasons.”

Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said of Revoice:

“It is encouraging that they state their intention to hold to a biblical understanding of sexual behavior and to define the only appropriate expression of sexual behavior to be marriage as the union of a man and a woman,” the Baptist Press quotes, “‘But that said, it appears they’re trying to create a halfway house” between cultural norms and biblical morality “that is…

July 30 is World Day against Trafficking in Persons. Today is the day that we reflect on all of the victims of human trafficking throughout the world, including sex trafficking and labor trafficking.

Currently, there are more than 21 million trafficked people, worldwide. Most of these are women and children, with the amount of children trafficked estimated to be around one-third of this total number, including both boys and girls.

“Every country in the world is affected by human trafficking, whether as a country of origin, transit, or destination for victims,” the UN reports.

People are trafficked for sexual exploitation as well as for labor, with some being forced to work in sweatshops. FreedomFund reports, “Today’s slaves are trapped in fishing fleets and sweatshops, in mines and brothels, and in the fields and plantations of countries across the world. It can be called human trafficking, forced labour, slavery, or it can refer to the slavery-like practices that include debt bondage, forced or servile marriage, and the sale or exploitation of children.”

Many of those that are trafficked are refugees. With 25.4 million worldwide and many of them underage, they are a prime target for traffickers: “…as the UN ODC identifies, cross-border trafficking flows often resemble regular migration flows,” Forbes writes, “Migrants, and especially refugees, are extremely vulnerable…

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Monday, criticized recent attacks on religious freedom and announced the creation of a Religious Liberty Task Force that will work to “fully implement” the department’s religious liberty guidance.

The task force will be chaired by the associate attorney general and the assistant attorney general for the office of legal policy. The department issued religious liberty guidelines in October.

In remarks applauded by Christian leaders and religious liberty groups, Sessions bemoaned the hostility toward religious liberty. 

“We have gotten to the point where courts have held that morality cannot be a basis for law, where ministers are fearful to affirm, as they understand it, holy writ from the pulpit, and where one group can actively target religious groups by labeling them a hate group on the basis of their sincerely held religious beliefs,” Sessions said. “This president and this Department of Justice are determined to protect and even advance this magnificent heritage.”

The Founders, he said, realized that “an individual’s relationship to God is a natural right and precedes the existence of the state, and is not subject to state control.”

“There can be no doubt that we are stronger as a nation because of the contribution of religious Americans,” Sessions said.

Referencing specific instances of…

Firefighters are working around the clock in California to stop fires in the Redding, California area.

Six people have already died in the fires and another seven people are missing.

Three victims that have been named are Melody Bledsoe and her two great-grandchildren. Bledsoe, 70, reportedly, covered her great-grandchildren with a wet blanket to try to save them.

“I would’ve liked to have went in there and died with them,” Ed Bledsoe, Melody Bledsoe’s widower, told CNN.

Hundreds of homes have been destroyed, and thousands have had to evacuate, according to CBN News.

“We lost stuff. We still have our health. Other people here don’t,” said one resident.

The Carr Fire started about a week ago outside Redding, California, and doubled in size over the weekend, according to Reuters.

More than 3,000 firefighters battling the Carr Fire started gaining control of the blaze Sunday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).

Strong winds had strengthened the fires, but have started to drop to moderate speeds.

There are some 17 wildfires in the California area. Temperatures are in the 100-degree range.

But firefighters who are working long hours are also helping the community. One group of firefighters who had ended their shift bought stickers for children who had lost everything.

“Kids started coming back to their homes and it was all burnt. We gave them some stickers, but…

Nearly 700 hikers, tourists and villagers remain trapped on a volcano following an Indonesian earthquake that killed more than a dozen people.

The 6.4-magnitude earthquake sparked landslides on Mount Rinjani, an active volcano that is popular among hikers on Lombok Island. It is more than 12,000 feet high.

Sixteen were killed and more than 1,400 homes destroyed during the quake, according to the Associated Press.

Rescuers are concentrating on those trapped on the mountain. CNN quoted Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency as saying 149 climbers were still trapped on the mountain and 500 people were stranded at Sembalun Village on the volcano’s slopes, blocked from all exits. Another 40 tourists were trapped at Batu Ceper near the mountain.

Tipatai Phusit was one of the hikers on the volcano when the earthquake struck:

“I saw landslides and there were some people falling down. After that I was falling down there, too,” he told CNN.

There have been more than 120 aftershocks following the Sunday morning earthquake.  

“We were still sleeping when we felt the earthquake, so we rushed outside of our building,” hotel owner Jean Paul Volchaert told CNN, “There was about 20 seconds of shaking, the water in the pool was making quite large waves.”

His hotel was spared, but the rest of the island wasn’t so fortunate.

“We felt aftershocks for two…