Staff ReportsSeptember 12, 2019
30min194
Is it another lost season at City Hall, too?
Tag: first baptist church
Staff ReportsSeptember 12, 2019
A.G. GancarskiFebruary 21, 2017
3min176
Pastors from Jacksonville’s First Baptist Church took a provocative position in the wake of Jacksonville expanding its Human Rights Ordinance to include the LGBT community. They claimed that the expansion of the ordinance, which allows for civil fines for discrimination against the LGBT community in housing, employment, and public accommodations, turns Christians into “targets.” And they […]
A.G. GancarskiSeptember 18, 2016
4min333
On Sunday morning, GOP VP nominee Mike Pence addressed the congregation at Jacksonville’s First Baptist Church. The downtown church has been a political institution for decades in Jacksonville, and is pushing the socially conservative agenda one might expect from a mainline Baptist church in the Sunbelt. Pence’s most interesting comments, beyond a discussion of his […]
Associated PressFebruary 27, 2016
4min181
Marco Rubio released summaries of his last five years of tax filings on Saturday, revealing him to be a candidate with a senator’s steady annual income of $176,000 who reaped repeated windfalls from book deals. During his first four years in the Senate, Rubio and his wife Jeanette together earned an average of $531,000 a […]
A.G. GancarskiFebruary 2, 2016
4min286
They say that First Baptist Church runs Jacksonville. And a good litmus test: the Jacksonville Human Rights Ordinance debate. They oppose expansion. They issued a call to pastors for a Thursday lunch before the Committee of the Whole meets at Jacksonville’s City Hall, to discuss the “direct threat to their church” posed by HRO expansion. […]
A.G. GancarskiJanuary 28, 2016
4min205
Where does Lenny Curry fall on the expansion of Jacksonville’s Human Rights Ordinance to the LGBT community? The decision, which he pledged to make by the end of January, is imminent, said Kerri Stewart, Curry’s Chief of Staff, Thursday. Stewart added that he has been locked in “discernment,” as Council President Greg Anderson described it earlier this month. However, […]
A.G. GancarskiDecember 21, 2015
3min683
In August 2012, after two different Human Rights Ordinance expansion bills failed in Jacksonville’s City Council, the No votes got a victory lap at First Baptist Church. “These are the council members that stood in the gap for us and represented us with their votes,” the minister said. First Baptist Church, thus far, has avoided […]
A.G. GancarskiDecember 8, 2014
8min306
Jacksonville is a city that has changed drastically in many ways over the last quarter century, with the influx of new corporate capital and the migration patterns that begets making the city more liberal on many issues. Despite this, some things remain the same. One of which is that socially conservative politicians, and the arguments […]