By Will Hall, Message Editor ALEXANDRIA (LBM) — U.S. District Court Judge Glen H. Davidson, the senior jurist for the Northern District of Mississippi, Aberdeen Division, ruled Jan. 18, 2018, that a federal lawsuit against the North American Mission Board may proceed. Will McRaney, the former executive director of the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware, filed a complaint April 7, 2017, alleging NAMB President Kevin Ezell played a role in his termination from the state convention, and subsequently in McRaney being “uninvited” from speaking at a conference in Mississippi. NAMB lawyers filed “answers and defenses” for the Southern Baptist Convention entity a little more than a month later, May 18, asserting 19 defenses. But the Court focused on NAMB’s claim of a “ministerial exception” and its invoking the “ecclesiastical abstention doctrine,” as well as NAMB’s questioning of “[w]hether McRaney has adequately pled his claims.” In denying NAMB’s motion with regard to the “ministerial exception” (which prevents a court from interfering in issues between a religious institution and its ministers) against McRaney’s assertion of defamation, Judge Davidson wrote that “McRaney was indisputably not employed by NAMB … and … [Read more...]