‘Missing part of its soul’: Jasper residents take stock of wildfire destruction

SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle Mariners right-hander Bryan Woo has not allowed a baserunner through six innings against the San Diego Padres on Wednesday night.

Woo has relied mostly on his fastball at the top of the strike zone to shut down the Padres. The closest San Diego has come to a hit was Manny Machado’s 113 mph line drive leading off the fifth inning that was grabbed by Randy Arozarena in left field with a diving catch.

Third baseman Josh Rojas also made an excellent defensive play charging a slow grounder from Xander Bogaerts and throwing him out to end the second inning.

Woo, in his second season in the majors, has struck out four. He’s thrown 64 pitches and has yet to get to a three-ball count.

Seattle leads 3-0.

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Less than two months after the Southern Baptists’ policy arm issued an embarrassing retraction of an announcement of its leader’s firing, it gave him a strong vote of confidence this week — but with a caution against stirring unnecessary controversy.

Trustees for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission affirmed both their president, Brent Leatherwood, and the direction of the organization, which has long been on the vanguard of the religious right in voicing the conservative views of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

“We strongly affirm the ERLC under the leadership of Brent Leatherwood,” said incoming chair Scott Foshie. “The world and Southern Baptists need to hear that.”

His words echoed a formal statement issued by the trustees Wednesday after a lengthy closed-door session Tuesday. The statement acknowledged that, while the commission speaks out on numerous contentious issues where controversy is inevitable, that’s all the more reason not to stir up more controversy on nonessential issues.

Trustees acknowledged that support for the organization is wavering among individual churches, who fund almost all its budget. They supported the commission’s plan, already in the works, to create a new office to work more closely with pastors to help them better understand and guide the agency’s work.

“In a time of deep division in our culture, from polarization in our political environment, to falling trust in institutions, to the fracturing of families, the ERLC is needed now as much as ever both to serve in the public square,” the statement said.

But it urged the commission to be careful.

It said the staff needs to follow a companion set of guidelines, also issued Wednesday, which says the commission needs to base its public stances on the Bible as well as on the official faith statement and other resolutions approved by Southern Baptists at annual meetings in recent decades. The guidelines state that if advocacy on a particular issue is likely to “upset certain segments of the SBC,” the staff needs to evaluate the issue carefully — but may still speak out if it’s deemed essential.

The commission has staked out staunchly conservative stances on religious and political issues, with strong opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Still, it has drawn the criticism of a vocal segment of the convention that wants to move the denomination even further to the right and sees it as drifting leftward.

Leatherwood has resisted calls to support the criminalization of women seeking abortion. He’s been criticized for supporting U.S. aid for Ukraine’s military defense and for supporting a Tennessee bill that would prevent access to firearms for people deemed a threat to others or themselves — an issue that is personal to Leatherwood after his children’s school was targeted in a deadly 2023 shooting.

Then in July, criticism erupted after Leatherwood issued a statement commending President Joe Biden for the “selfless act” of withdrawing from the presidential race after a dismal debate performance. Numerous voices in the Southern Baptist Convention, where overwhelmingly pro-Republican views prevail, denounced the statement, saying Biden acted not out of selflessness but out of political necessity.

Within a day, the commission’s chairman, Kevin Smith, moved to oust Leatherwood, and the agency issued a statement saying he had been removed. But after it emerged that Smith acted without a vote of the board’s executive committee, as required by bylaws, Smith resigned and the agency retracted its announcement.

Two members of the executive committee declined to comment on the episode in interviews, deferring to the agency’s strong statements in support of Leatherwood.

Even before that episode, Leatherwood recognized the problem of wavering support for the commission. At the Southern Baptists’ annual meeting in Indianapolis in June, church representatives voted down a proposal to abolish the commission entirely — but with a notable minority of voters supporting its abolition.

Those results “weren’t just disappointing, they were unacceptable,” Leatherwood said in an official address to the commission Tuesday.

“I say that not to the outrage artists and the grievance grifters who will never be on our side, who spin up political attack committees to come and throw bombs at us,” he said. “No, I’m talking to the local pastor and the everyday church member who just need to better understand our mission and the work that we do, and know that our work represents real Baptist leadership.”

He said the agency has already been taking such steps, surveying pastors and issuing lengthy guidebooks on issues they said were priorities, including election polarization and gender issues. It also issued a state-by-state guide to various abortion-related measures on November ballots.

“Our culture is not well right now,” Leatherwood said. Partisanship has been overwhelming “so many Christians,” he said. “Mistruths and conspiracy theories, they are everywhere right now.”

He urged Baptists to respond with gentleness and reason to such partisanship.

“The anxiety that people are feeling is real, but we help them understand it’s not supposed to be this way,” he said.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

EDMONTON – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she’s committed to Calgary’s multibillion-dollar Green Line light-rail transit project, but as it was originally envisioned.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Smith declined to say how much her government is now willing to fund.

But she said she is concerned the line is getting shorter while its budget has ballooned from the original price tag of $4.5 billion.

Smith called the Green Line “the incredible shrinking project,” and that it needs a complete “rethink” to be more cost-effective.

“It would cost $20 billion to build that entire line at the per kilometre rate we’re seeing now. That is the kind of project that could bankrupt a city,” said Smith in Lloydminster, Sask.

“I think we just have to do it a different way.”

The premier was making her first public comments on the Green Line since Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen announced last week the province will pull its $1.53 billion in funding from the $6.2-billion transit project if the city doesn’t change course.

The city’s current city council approved an updated, shortened line in July with an added $700 million in costs.

Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek has said that in light of the province’s decision, the city now can’t afford to build the line and the province needs to assume the financial risk.

Gondek has said she met with the premier earlier this week to say what the province wants won’t work. City council is set to meet next week to hear advice on how to abandon the project and offload the costs and delivery onto the province.

Smith, like Dreeshen, said the province is opposed to tunnelling underground for downtown stops as per the latest city plans. Her government also wants to see the rail line go farther into south Calgary.

Dreeshen in a recent interview, said if the city rejects the new alignment proposals, now expected from an engineering firm chosen by the province by the end of the year, the rail line will be on the shelf indefinitely.

If the city votes to try to wash its hands of the financial responsibility next week, Dreeshen suggested there’s another long battle ahead.

“Then it goes to the lawyers, and we’ll have to assess whatever they come up with at that time,” said Dreeshen in a Sept. 6 interview.

He declined to say whether the province would backstop liabilities for delayed or cancelled contracts.

To date, more than $1.4 billion has been spent on land acquisition, utility upgrades and a new fleet of rail vehicles — costs that could be tied to the existing plan.

The dispute has become highly politicized given that former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi became leader of the provincial NDP in June. The NDP is the Official Opposition and chief rival to Smith’s United Conservatives.

Nenshi left city hall in 2021. Dreeshen has now labelled the Green Line project the “Nenshi nightmare.” He calls Nenshi responsible for what he terms the mismanagement of the project from the start, saying it was never properly engineered.

Nenshi, in turn, has blamed Dreeshen for turning the Green Line into a political football and putting jobs at risk in the dispute.

Bill Black, head of the Calgary Construction Association, told The Canadian Press last week he doesn’t take sides on the design, but also doesn’t want to see a politicized spat sideline construction.

“It’s hard not to feel like the kids when the parents are going through a divorce, where the kids are always the collateral damage when the parents are fighting,” he said.

The federal government, which has also committed $1.53 billion, said it was taken by surprise with the Alberta government’s decision.

Federal Infrastructure Minister Sean Fraser has said Ottawa wants to work with Alberta on next steps, saying the withdrawal of provincial funding will impact thousands of jobs.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.