Southern Baptists still believe in hell.

At their annual convention this week, they voted to affirm the reality of a literal hell, an "eternal, conscious punishment of the unregenerate."

The move came in reaction to Love Wins, a book by Pastor Rob Bell, which "challenges traditional thinking about eternal damnation," according to the Associated Baptist Press.

Bell's views on hell, the evangelical leaders said, "bordered on heresy."

Mormonism's integrated future • About 300 Latter-day Saints gathered in a Cottonwood Heights park recently for a picnic of the Genesis Group, a support group for black Mormons.

There also were Latinos, American Indians and whites, along with parents, children and friends. "It was the most racially integrated church event I had ever attended," reported Mark Oppenheimer in a New York Times column. The Genesis Group, he wrote, is "a small correction to the stereotype, largely accurate, of U.S. Mormonism as lily-white."

Ken Chitwood, writing for The Houston Chronicle, says Mormonism is by no means "predominantly white and prosperous" beyond the U.S. He argues American Mormonism will become more "brown" and more "ethnically and economically diverse." —

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