Posted: 5/30/03

Nigerian e-mail scams taking on language of faith

By Mark Wingfield

Managing Editor

Mrs. Sikiratu Seki Adams of Nigeria doesn't really want to donate $6 million to your church.

In fact, the e-mail that says she does probably wasn't sent by anyone with that name. It's just another variation on one of the most prevalent frauds perpetrated over the Internet, according to the FBI, Secret Service and a host of other scam-watcher groups.

Last year, Nigeria ranked first among all countries beyond the United States as the source of Internet scams, according to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, a joint effort between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. Most were variations on what law-enforcement officials call a “419 scam,” a reference to the section of Nigerian law that covers advance-fee fraud.

One of the latest variations begins by offering “Calvary greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The writer then claims to be a new Christian convert dying of breast cancer and the widow of a former military official killed in the Gulf War. She wants to donate $6 million of her late husband's money to your church or ministry to further evangelism and ministry to the poor.

Another new version claims to be from the legal adviser to a Nigerian Christian couple who died in a plane crash last year and left him $20 million to distribute to Christian ministries. If you will use these funds “honestly for things that will glorify God's name,” then he would like to give you the money.

Previous versions of the Nigerian scams have outlined a person's urgent need to get money out of the country before it is seized. The writer wants to deposit millions of dollars in the recipient's bank account for safekeeping and pledges to pay 10 percent to 15 percent to the recipient.

The scam-busting website Urban Legend Zeitgeist (www.urbanlegends.com) explains the set-up: “If you take the bait, you'll be contacted by the perpetrators, who'll attempt to establish their credibility as government officials, businessmen or bankers. They will offer you apparently valid bank accounts and documentation. But before you can collect your money, some problem arises. A bribe must be paid to an official or a fee or tax must be paid so the money can be transferred. And you as the victim will be asked to pay up in order to receive the promised big payoff. There is no end to the fees, bribes, even outright blackmail, that will be extorted from you.”

In some cases, those caught up in the scam have traveled to Nigeria or other African or European countries to try to collect their money and have met with violence, the website reports.

The Internet Fraud Complaint Center reports that Nigerian scams like this produced the highest median dollar losses among all Internet fraud last year. The median loss of all reported cases was $3,864, higher than reported cases of identity theft ($2,000) and check fraud ($1,100).

The FBI warns Internet users to “be skeptical of individuals representing themselves as Nigerian or other foreign government officials asking for your help in placing large sums of money in overseas bank accounts. Do not believe the promise of large sums of money for your cooperation.”

Further, the FBI warns, do not give personal information about savings, checking, credit or other financial accounts to people who solicit you by e-mail.

For more information, visit the Internet Fraud Complaint Center at http://ifccfbi.gov/ strategy/nls.asp.

Posted: 5/30/03

Texas evangelist worked behind
the scenes to comfort Smart family

A Texas evangelist played a behind-the-scenes role in encouraging the family of Elizabeth Smart through prayer and fasting.

Michael Relton, an evangelist and former pastor, currently lives in Dallas, where he is a member of Prestonwood Baptist Church. He is the author of “Dear God … Prayer Book,” a collection of prayers for specific life problems.

Smart is the Salt Lake City girl who was abducted from her bedroom last June, sparking nationwide interest in the search for her.

When Relton first heard the news reports of Smart's abduction, he began to pray for her and her family, he said. “I prayed for her protection and safe return and also to reveal her whereabouts.”

He called Smart's father, Ed, to encourage him and pray with him. Ed Smart acknowledged the Texas evangelist's ministry in an interview on the CBS “Early Show” March 13, the day after Elizabeth Smart was found alive.

“Had we not had the people out there helping us and trying so hard–I mean, Rev. Relton, we're here, we're home, and thank you for your help.”

The interviewer asked for an explanation of who that was, and Smart said: “I had this one reverend from Texas that kept calling and calling, and he actually came up here a couple of weeks ago and prayed with me, and I appreciate that.”

By Relton's account, God told him in February that he should do more than pray for Elizabeth. “He said I must go and meet the father and pray with him and do fasting and prayer on behalf of her,” Relton said.

He wasn't excited about the idea for several reasons–weather, distance and the fact that the Smarts are Mormons–but finally he “decided to obey God,” he said.

On Friday, Feb. 21, Smart met with Relton in his hotel room in Salt Lake City. They talked and prayed together for more than two hours, Relton said.

While in Salt Lake City, Relton felt he should fast for three days on Elizabeth's behalf. Upon breaking the fast, “I felt a strong assurance that Elizabeth is alive and well,” he reported.

He called the Smart family to tell them his impression not only that Elizabeth would be found alive but that she would be found near Salt Lake City wearing a disguise. He further told the family he believed God told him she would be found in two weeks.

In fact, less than three weeks later, Elizabeth was found alive in a suburb of Salt Lake City, and she was wearing a disguise at the direction of her captors.

“I would like to encourage all the believers not to give up on God if he did not answer your prayers,” Relton declared. “First, make sure you are praying according to his will, and then after a considerable amount of time, if nothing happens, try fasting and prayer.”

Posted: 5/30/03

Prime time sexual content declines

WASHINGTON (RNS)–Almost every broadcast network saw a marked decrease in sexual content during the evening “family hour” between 1998 and 2002, the Parents Television Council reports.

With the exception of the WB, every broadcast network decreased its sexual content from 8 to 9 p.m. in recent years. All the networks except the WB and UPN also showed a reduction in such content during the hour from 9 to 10 p.m.

“For years, conventional wisdom in Hollywood had it that 'sex sells,' and therefore the more of it, the better,” said Brent Bozell, president of the Los Angeles-based council.

“But ratings data and survey results prove that's not true. Parents don't want their kids to be exposed to irresponsible messages and explicit depictions of sex on TV. But more than that, parents don't want to see it either.”

Analysts for the council found sexual content during the family hour dropped 67 percent on ABC from 1998 to 2002. In that same period, similar content decreased 48 percent on Fox, 13 percent on UPN and 6 percent on CBS. NBC's sexual content during the family hour decreased by 34 percent from 2000 to 2002.

Researchers looked at 400 program-hours of prime-time entertainment on the major broadcast television networks during the first two weeks of the 1998, 2000 and 2002 November sweeps periods.

Posted: 5/30/03

VMI's prayers ruled unconstitutional

RICHMOND, Va. (RNS)–An appellate court has ruled that the Virginia Military Institute's tradition of prayer before evening meals is unconstitutional.

“In establishing its supper prayer, VMI has done precisely what the First Amendment forbids,” a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled April 28.

The decision upheld a lower court ruling.

The panel rejected arguments that the prayer is voluntary because the cadets are adults. It emphasized that the high level of obedience expected from VMI cadets doesn't give them the freedom to choose whether to take part in what has been called a voluntary, non-denominational dinner prayer.

“Put simply, VMI's supper prayer exacts an unconstitutional toll on the consciences of religious objectors,” wrote Judge Robert King.

Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore said the prayers are “part of the fabric of our country,” and he plans to appeal the decision to the entire appeals court.

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, welcomed the ruling.

“No Americans should be forced to sing for their supper or pray to get it either,” said Lynn, whose organization filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the two cadets who sued.

“It's a sweeping decision that means public universities have no business promoting religion at mealtimes, bedtimes or any other times.”

In light of the ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland suggested the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., review its practice of leading students in lunchtime prayer. Academy officials did not comment, but a Navy official said the service will review the decision.

Posted: 5/30/03

Fort Worth program places
ministers alongside police officers

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

FORT WORTH–Some Baptists are known for stands against dancing and drinking and smoking, but Randy Austin wants to let Fort Worth know Baptists also will take a stand against crime.

The chief of security at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is one of 37 ministers across faith lines participating in Ministers Against Crime, a federally funded initiative in Fort Worth. It enables ministers help connect police officers to the community and minister to the needs of residents. The effort is one of 13 faith-based partnerships with police departments around the nation.

Ministers are trained through the police academy so they can better understand the work and stresses of police officers. The training also involves understanding the mindset and needs of crime victims.

The police department furnishes ministers with pagers, cell phones and credentials so the clergy can be contacted to help at the scene of an incident.

While many people in high-crime areas distrust police officers and refuse to speak to them, officers found community residents easily open up to pastors, said Sgt. Mark Thorne, liaison between the Fort Worth Police Department and Ministers Against Crime.

Officers also noticed people responded better to pastors' words than rebukes by police, Thorne explained at a Baptist General Convention of Texas-sponsored session during the Texas Crime Victim Clearinghouse Conference in Austin. Ministers are connected to entire families and are credible in the neighborhoods, he continued.

By partnering law enforcement with ministers, officers have found it easier to connect with the neighborhoods they serve, Thorne noted. People are more willing to speak with them, and trust has increased.

People who are initially rude with officers often become very friendly when they see a minister standing beside the lawperson, Thorne said. Because of this, ministers have helped resolve issues people have with officers.

“We are out there to help build bridges to the community,” Austin emphasized.

But the ministers' work does not stop there. Thorne commonly calls on them to pray for specific situations and times of need. The ministers then enlist their congregations to pray for God's help.

Specifically challenged one day by a non-believer to “see what your God can do,” Thorne quickly asked the ministers to start praying over an area. The church leaders did, he said, and the crime rate dropped 50 percent that month. Prayer has calmed riotous vibes in the community as well, he said.

“We have tapped into a resource in Fort Worth that is changing our community,” Thorne happily declared.

Posted: 5/30/03

Project frees physicians from debt for missions

By Deann Alford

Religion News Service

TEMPLE (RNS)–Africa needs doctors, and in 1997 Tracy and Patty Goen were Christian physicians ready to respond to the need as medical missionaries. But like most medical school graduates, the couple was saddled with student debt. Together they owed $100,000.

Mission agencies, however, insist that candidates be debt-free before sending them into the field. For the Goens, that would mean a five-year delay to work and repay the money before they could move to Africa.

That is, unless somebody paid their debt.

Enter David Topazian, a missionary and retired oral and maxillofacial surgeon on Yale University's medical school faculty. He knew if doctors such as the Goens had to go into private practice to repay their debts, chances are they would get settled into comfortable lifestyles and never make it to places that desperately need them.

So in 1994, he and Daniel Fountain founded Project MedSend. The next year, MedSend made Nepal-bound missionary physician Martha Carlough its first grant recipient. In 1997, MedSend accepted the Goens.

The deal: Project MedSend would partner with a mission agency–in the Goens' case, the South Carolina-based evangelical SIM International–and take over their monthly student loan payments for as long as they remained in the field–potentially adding years of service to a missionary's career.

MedSend has given grants to 185 other physicians, nurses, dentists, physician assistants and other health professionals, each of whom serves under the authority of one of 49 mission boards that now collaborate with MedSend. These medical missionaries work in more than 55 countries, many of which are “creative access,” or restrictive of missionary activity.

Half the world's people have no access to health care, yet dozens of church and mission hospitals have closed in India and Africa–including one in Egbe, Nigeria, that the Goens have reopened–in part because of a lack of medical professionals to staff them.

Diseases once thought to be virtually eradicated, such as tuberculosis, are on the rise. AIDS has killed 20 million people, and experts note that the worst of its death toll has yet to come.

Topazian, who has served as president of the Christian Medical and Dental Association, said the association's missionary members took note of the crisis in the mission field–the dearth of caregivers.

“We started receiving reports from missionaries in the field who were overworked, who were due for furlough and couldn't come home on home assignment because there was no one to replace them,” Topazian said. The rising costs of health education and the need to pay that off before going into the mission field were shrinking the replacement pool.

The association asked Topazian to look into the issue. He surveyed mission boards with health ministries, hospitals or health-development ministries. From the 33 mission boards that answered the survey, he learned that 49 physicians were partly through the candidate process but had been told to go work off their debt and then return. Meanwhile, 30 clinics and hospitals represented in that group of missions had no health professional in charge. “They were empty and closed,” Topazian said.

Topazian and some CMDA members asked those same mission boards to tell them what type of organization could best help relieve what he terms the “increasing educational debt barrier” for those wanting to be missionaries. What he and the others learned at the meeting laid the groundwork for Project MedSend.

MedSend isn't a sending agency, but rather partners with Christian ministries that send medical professionals. After a ministry pays MedSend a one-time participation fee, MedSend looks at the candidate's qualifications and financial situation. MedSend assumes the debts for as long as they're in the field. The average grant is $30,000, but grants for physicians can be more than $100,000. Most donors are Christian doctors.

So far, two families aided by Project MedSend have left mission work for health reasons, but no one has left to pursue a more lucrative career once MedSend repaid their loans.

“We're picking people who have an open-ended calling to a career in the mission field, and they just stay,” Topazian said.

Egbe Hospital, where the Goens practice–he as a surgeon and she as a pediatrician–offers the only health care available for nomadic Muslim Fulani cattle-herders in southwestern Nigeria. At first, the Fulani had nothing to do with the hospital because the Goens are openly Christian. They did, however, take up an offer by Tracy Goen–who had finished part of a veterinary medicine degree before he switched to human medicine–to vaccinate and treat the cattle, which are key to the Fulani's culture and livelihood.

But not long after the physician couple arrived in the area, he saved the lives of a snake-bitten boy and a teenager bleeding to death from a sword slash that had almost severed his arm.

The boy turned out to be the grandson of a powerful Fulani leader. After saving the teen's life and arm in a five-hour surgery, Goen learned that he was a prince. His father was the new king, who then invited the Goens to share their Christian faith as they wished among the Fulani.

Now on weekends, Tracy Goen travels the area to vaccinate cattle and show a film on the life of Christ dubbed in Fufulde, the Fulani language. Although Nigeria is embroiled in violent Muslim/ Christian conflict, Goen said he's never afraid of attack for his Christian faith because the Fulani are so grateful to them.

Without MedSend, the couple would have been working to pay off their loans until last year, when MedSend finished repaying them.

Tracy Goen says he has zero desire for the fruits of the lucrative private practice he was poised to build. Today, he and his family live with no electricity, phone or television. A teacher from their Temple church recently joined them to educate their five children. That freed Patty Goen, who had been home-schooling them, to serve more hours in the hospital.

“We've never felt like we're in need of anything,” Tracy Goen said. “God has met our needs.” In addition to an appreciative clientele, their practice has other perks: no lawyers and no insurance.

“We had built a house in the middle of a cousin's ranch in College Station,” Goen said. “We'd have lived happily ever after. I really don't think we'd have gotten to the mission field had I gone into private practice to pay off the debt. MedSend made it possible.”

Posted: 5/30/03

On the Move

Walter Allen to Simpsonville Church in Pittsburg as pastor.

Jason Edwards to First Church in Waco as youth minister.

Greg Gasaway to Central Church in Pampa as minister of youth/music from Second Church in Levelland, where he was minister of youth/education.

Brad Jurkovich to Southcrest Church in Lubbock as pastor from First Church in Lavaca, Ark.

Larry Lormand to North Orange Church in Orange as minister of education from Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Fla.

Robert McKenzie to Good Shepherd Church in Lubbock as pastor from Bethel Church in McAllen.

Geoffrey Nance to North Orange Church in Orange as minister of youth and recreation from New Beginnings Church in Ponte Verde, Fla.

David Speegle to Colonial Hill Church in Snyder as minister of music from First Church in Mineral Wells.

Roy Taylor to Westview Church in Slaton as pastor.

Posted: 5/30/03

AMY NOBLES:
Woman of worship

By Leann Callaway

Special to the Standard

At an age when most children make music by banging on pots and pans, Amy Nobles began setting herself apart by tackling the piano.

Today, Nobles still distinguishes herself from the world as a worship leader.

She graduated from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary this spring with a master of divinity degree, but she got her start in the family living room.

“I began playing the piano around age 3 or 4,” Nobles explained. “My dad told me that I crawled up on the bench and picked out 'Jesus Loves Me' at that young age, and he immediately knew God would use music in my life.

“I never set out to make my own music ministry or be a worship leader. I have tried to follow the Lord where he leads, and, as a result, he has cultivated the opportunity to lead worship and bless people with that. The Lord has been training me as a musician since the age of 5, and he has given me more than a song; he has given me a message.”

Nobles began leading worship while attending Texas A&M University. She was asked to sing with a college praise team at church and there began to sense God's call on her life.

“During those years, the worship movement among college students was new,” she explained. “I remember going to Choice, a Bible study at Baylor led by Louie Giglio–this was long before people even knew who Louie Giglio was. I will never forget those nights of worship in Waco and the two tapes I got with all the worship music from that Bible study. Those songs gave me a deeper reason to sing. For the first time, I felt like I was singing songs that matched my thoughts about God.

“In a sense, that Bible study and the music there gave me a passion for worship music. From that point on, I knew I wanted to be involved with worship.”

A desire to be available to serve anywhere has taken her from small Texas towns like Giddings to Bonn, Germany.

Her first worship album is titled “To the Ends of the Earth.” It features songs that focus on God's heart for every nation.

After graduation, she plans to find more ways to serve the local church and the church abroad.

“I have met many Christian workers from around the world as a result of these mission opportunities,” she explained. “It has been a privilege to encourage them by leading worship for them. I have led worship for people who are persecuted in their countries for open displays of religion. To serve them in worship is quite humbling and amazing. I thank Jesus that he has opened my eyes to see all he is doing in the world. God is so much bigger to me now, and as a result, worship is sweeter.”

Posted: 5/30/03

Layman's whodunit book takes on
the case of Jesus' empty tomb

By George Henson

Staff Writer

MIDLOTHIAN–It's a classic whodunit. Only the mystery isn't in the murder–scores of people witnessed that–but in who took the body.

The stage is set for a private eye with an attitude to strut in, follow the clues and finger the culprit.

That's the setting for “Jake Palestine P.I. and the Case of the Empty Tomb,” the latest effort by Robert Nix to expose people to the gospel in a creative way.

“My goal is to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ who might not have that great an interest and in a creative way that will make them pay attention,” Nix said. The novel portrays the hard-boiled detective being hired by Pilate and Jewish religious leaders to find the body of Jesus before rumors of a resurrection gain steam.

“Jake Palestine” is the Texas Baptist layman's first book, but he has written a number of humorous plays and skits that are available through Parable Ministries, which he founded. “The book is targeted toward a younger audience, but truthfully I think more older people have actually read it,” Nix said. “No matter how old they are, the goal is to reach people who may not read another type of religious book.”

He wanted the story to be entertaining so people would read it, but the crucial part is that “the tomb was empty,” he said. “There is not a more important message in the world than that.”

A Sunday School teacher at Longbranch Community Baptist Church in Midlothian, Nix and his wife teach kindergarten through fourth grade. He also works full time in technology sales.

To prepare for writing the book, Nix studied not only Jewish history, but Roman history as well.

“As Christians, we spend time reading the Bible and studying the Bible, but we lose sight of the impact of the Romans,” he explained. “They would not have rested, could not have rested, until the body was found–if it could have been found.”

He readily acknowledges, however, that his book is a fictional work inspired by the truth of the Bible.

“Not every page is historical, but I've tried to place a context that is historical,” he explained. “Why was Pilate frightened of the Jewish leadership? I tried to place a very accurate historical background along with actual biblical references and then insert a fictional character into all of it.”

Along with the dramas, the book is just one more way Nix hopes Parable Ministries can help churches and youth groups “illustrate the gospel creatively.”

Currently, he is creating a study guide to go along with the book.

Dramas published by Parable Ministries center on the lives of Jesus, Noah and David.

In the dramas and the book alike, his goal is evangelistic.

“I think there will be some who read the book and decide if Jesus isn't in the tomb, he's someone they need to get to know more about.”

Posted: 5/30/03

Broad coalition supporting workplace freedom bill

By Kevin Eckstrom

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON–An unusually broad coalition of religious groups is pushing a bill that would protect religious expression in the workplace. But civil liberties groups are concerned the bill could be used to advance on-the-job proselytizing.

The Workplace Religious Freedom Act, introduced by Sens. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and John Kerry, D-Mass., would force employers to “reasonably accommodate” employees who want to wear religious articles or take time off for worship services.

Current law mandates that employers allow such expression as long as it does not impose an “undue hardship” on the company. Supporters, however, say a 1977 Supreme Court ruling gutted the law and has not protected employees' rights.

“America is distinguished internationally as a land of religious freedom,” Santorum said in introducing the bill. “It should be a place where people should not be forced to choose between keeping their faith and keeping their job.”

The American Jewish Committee, one of the bill's primary backers, point to cases like Amric Singh Rathour, who was fired as a New York City traffic cop when he refused to shave his religiously mandated beard or remove his turban. Rathour's suit against the city, filed in March, is pending.

The AJC also defended a New York Rastafarian who was fired from his job at FedEx when he refused to cut his dreadlocks, a part-time Methodist minister who was fired from a furniture store for taking time off to conduct a funeral, and a Muslim woman who was fired from Alamo Rent-A-Car for insisting that she wear a headscarf.

Religious groups, including Seventh-day Adventists, Muslims, Southern Baptists, the National Council of Churches and others, say religious minorities are especially vulnerable to discrimination.

“We need a stronger position so that employers are not denying what is reasonable,” said Clarence Hodges, director of public affairs and religious liberty for the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, who take Saturday as their Sabbath. “They need to understand that 'reasonable' means reasonable, and that you can do what you need to do without upsetting everything and everybody.”

The employer mandate was inserted into Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act in 1972. Five years later, however, the Supreme Court ruled that even a minimal hardship on employers was not covered under the act.

The new bill would define “undue hardship” as something that imposes “significant difficulty or expense” on the employer or that would keep an employee from carrying out the “essential functions” of the job. The law does not apply to businesses with fewer than 15 employees.

Business lobbyists have stalled attempts to advance the bill for almost a decade. And the American Civil Liberties Union, which has defended the rights of religious employees in so-called “appearance and scheduling” cases, said the current bill is too broad.

Christopher Anders, the ACLU's legislative counsel, said the new law would sanction activities by employees that have not been allowed under current law, such as a Catholic Chicago police officer who refused to guard an abortion clinic, or a state nurse in Connecticut who, while visiting the home of a gay AIDS patient, condemned the man's lifestyle and told him to repent.

Anders said there are no protections in the bill to prohibit an employee from forcing religious beliefs on other workers or from allowing a worker to dictate his or her duties because of religious or moral convictions.

Nathan Diament, Washington director for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, dismissed such “slippery slope” predictions.

“You can turn anything into a law school hypothetical, but we feel that this bill does not obviously allow for those kinds of things,” Diament said.

The bill, S. 893, is awaiting action in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Posted: 5/30/03

Evangelical group urges
temperance in talk about Islam

WASHINGTON (RNS)–While affirming their right to proselytize, leaders of the evangelical Christian community issued guidelines last month to foster better relations between Christians and Muslims and criticized some prominent evangelicals' strongly negative generalizations about Islam.

The guidelines were issued at a half-day forum sponsored by the National Association of Evangelicals and the Institute on Religion and Democracy. The forum was attended by 50 representatives of mission, advocacy and educational evangelical organizations.

It is dangerous to oversimplify Islam by labeling it, said Clive Calver, president of World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals.

“As evangelical Christians, we disagree with Islam, and we are allowed to disagree, but how we disagree is important,” he said. “The question is: How do you disagree without being disagreeable?”

Although not mentioned by name, participants were acutely aware of the public scrutiny of evangelical groups since Franklin Graham, head of the aid organization Samaritan's Purse, called Islam a “wicked” religion. Similar views have been voiced by evangelical broadcasters Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, as well as former Southern Baptist Convention President Jerry Vines.

SBC officials, through a release in Baptist Press, criticized the national media for drawing a connection between the conference statements and the previous firestorms created by Graham, Robertson, Falwell and Vines.

At the conference, NAE President Ted Haggard warned that everything evangelicals say is public rhetoric now.

The Washington-based IRD, a conservative think tank that monitors religious freedom issues, released guidelines authored by IRD Vice President Alan Wisdom on what is appropriate and inappropriate in Christian-Muslim communication.

The document's first recommendation called on evangelicals to “seek to understand Islam and Muslim peoples.”

Paul Marshall, a fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, a Washington organization that promotes global human rights, noted that Muslims “know much more about the West than we know about them,” pointing out that many Muslim extremists obtained advanced degrees in Europe or America.

But sometimes understanding can go too far and “attempts to meld Christianity and Islam” by overemphasizing commonalities is damaging, according to Wisdom.

While dialogue, both locally and abroad, is a good start, it must have a goal, Marshall said, asserting that communication could stimulate cooperation between Muslims and Christians on relief work, religious freedom and human rights issues.

However, IRD President Diane Knippers noted that evangelicals “always want to talk about Jesus.”

A spokesperson from the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations said it's OK for evangelicals to want to spread their faith.

“That's something that is not particular to evangelicals, and in the marketplace of ideas, that's fine,” said Hodan Hassan. “The problem is when the line gets crossed and leaders within any faith begin to demonize another faith.”

Posted: 5/30/03

Heritage: Baptist women can thank
pioneer pair for opening doors

By Ken Camp

Texas Baptist Communications

BELTON–A pair of Texas Baptist pioneers opened doors for women in missions and education, according to panelists at a recent meeting of the Baptist History & Heritage Society.

Rosalie Beck, an associate professor in the religion department at Baylor University in Waco, and Portia Sikes McKown, administrator at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, participated in a panel discussion about Baptist women on the frontier.

Beck examined the contributions of frontier missionary Mina Everett, and McKown described Elli Moore Townsend's role in providing educational opportunities for women–particularly poor young women–on the Texas frontier.

“Mina's life was filled with firsts,” Beck observed. Everett's time in Brazil marked her as the first single woman missionary appointed by the Southern Baptist Convention's Foreign Mission Board for service in the western hemisphere.

She went on to be appointed the first paid missionary in Texas to work with Hispanics and the first female missionary employed by the state missions arm of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

In 1889, she became corresponding secretary and organizer for the Baptist Woman's Mission Workers in Texas, the first paid woman staff worker for Woman's Missionary Union in any state. The SBC's mission boards and the BGCT jointly provided her salary.

“Mina's employment with the state and Southern Baptist Convention boards ended because of her willingness to speak to mixed audiences in an effort to raise support for and consciousness of missions. Through her time as a BGCT employee, some powerful pastors criticized her 'forwardness' in speaking to both men and women,” Beck said.

One of Everett's most outspoken critics was B.H. Carroll, pastor of First Baptist Church in Waco and later the founder of the Baylor University religion department and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

“Although First Baptist Waco had women deacons, in Carroll's public statements he did not support women in ministry,” Beck noted. Carroll was chair of the BGCT state missions board in 1895 when that body voted to forbid Everett from speaking in public meetings “because such action was unseemly for a woman.”

Leaders among Baptist women in Texas convinced Everett to leave the state so they could argue in principle for a permanent Texas Baptist staff position for women's mission work, without getting entangled in personality conflicts.

“Mina Everett succeeded in many areas of her frontier work, but she crashed on the ministry barrier between genders in Victorian Texas. She always believed that one day, no barriers would separate God's people in their work for and worship of the Lord,” Beck said.
Likewise, Elli Moore Townsend opened up new vistas educationally for “girls of ambition and limited funds,” McKown observed.

She served as “lady principal” and presiding teacher for 12 years at Baylor Female College, now the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. In the early 1890s, she launched Cottage Home, where poor but deserving students could live while working their way through school by milking cows, tending the garden and keeping house in exchange for college tuition and expenses.

When money for Cottage Home ran short in 1893, she sold a silver box of heirloom jewelry to buy groceries for the girls who lived there. After she married E.G. Townsend, dean and Bible teacher at the school, together the couple developed a cottage system of seven homes.

“Elli Moore Townsend was certainly an incredible lady who was a legend in her own time,” McKown said. “Strong-willed and determined from youth, she set out to help educate young women of her time and those to follow through the Cottage Home System, considered a forerunner of the modern work study program in college.”