Posted: 5/14/04
TEXAS BAPTIST FORUM
Seminary colleges
I don't understand the latest trend of our Southern Baptist seminaries–establishing an undergraduate college on their campuses. It sounds like a good idea, but it will prove to be a failure in the long run.
Yes, the young man or woman who enters a seminary undergraduate college will be theologically correct at an affordable price. However, the young man or woman will miss the benefits of receiving an education at a liberal arts college or even a tech school.
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By going to these schools first, the young man or woman will be exposed to other people and ideas that will give them an idea of the world as well as educating them in other things useful for ministry that are not taught in seminary.
I wish Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary would reconsider establishing an undergraduate college. Doing so runs the risk of training a generation of ministers who will be naîve and uninformed about the world they are trying to minister to.
Jeff Stehle
Brenham
Absurd resolution
I have just read the text of the Christian education resolution proposed by T.C. Pinckney and Bruce N. Shortt for consideration by the Southern Baptist Convention in June. The resolution “encourages all officers and members of the Southern Baptist Convention and the churches associated with it to remove their children from the government schools and see to it that they receive a thoroughly Christian education.”
This resolution is shockingly absurd.
It throws into the garbage pit the historic Baptist emphasis on separation of church and state. It provides further evidence of the separationist tendencies of right-wing Southern Baptist fundamentalism, namely, the desire to separate from the Baptist World Alliance, from women in ministry, from academic freedom, from voluntary confessionalism, ad infinitum.
The resolution fails on multiple points.
It fails to recognize that a public school is not and should not be a church. It fails to acknowledge that public schools nationwide build character for millions of children and youth on a daily basis. It fails to affirm that tens of thousands of teachers in public schools are Baptist men and women who genuinely care about students. It just simply fails!
Should this resolution reach the floor of the SBC, I urge Southern Baptist messengers to vote it down. The self-purification process promoted by some SBC leaders counters the claim of Christ for Southern Baptists to be salt and light in the world–and that includes public schools.
Charles Deweese
Brentwood, Tenn.
Spiritual desertion
The resolution T.C. Pinckney plans to introduce at the SBC in June urging that all Southern Baptists withdraw their children from public schools reveals a shriveled-up sense of missions and a spiritual desertion of one of the main arenas of Christian witness.
In the states where Southern Baptists are in the majority, two out of every three teachers in public schools are members of Baptist or other evangelical churches. Such a resolution would be a slap in the face to these hard-working and influential Christians.
When Pinckney insists that all Southern Baptists home school their children, he wants the convention to desert Baptist homes where both parents work to keep their heads above the financial floods. Such a resolution would make Baptist parents who choose to keep their children in public schools for whatever reason second-class Christians and church members.
And that brings us to Christians who strive to make their homes Christian as a single parent with school-age children. Ninety percent cannot home school or afford private school. They must depend on the public schools to educate their children.
Pinckney fails to admit that his type of opposition and fight against adequately funding public education has had a far greater influence on the slippage of our schools in world rankings than has any atheist anti-Christian conspiracy. The words “doofus thinking” come to mind.
Cyrus B. Fletcher
Baytown
Parallel abuse
The abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers bears a striking parallel with our abuse of animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses. In fact, the Washington Post notes that some of the photos showed a cow being skinned and gutted and soldiers posing with its severed head.
The abuse of Iraqi prisoners is merely a manifestation of our culture of violence and insensitivity to the suffering of those we view as “the others.”
It matters not whether these are Iraqi prisoners, Vietnamese villagers or animals raised for food. It's a culture that gives otherwise kind and gentle farmers a license to keep dairy calves, pregnant sows and laying hens in cramped cages–drugged and deprived of natural food and sunshine. It's a culture that leads otherwise normal slaughterhouse workers to skin, dismember and disembowel cows and pigs while they are still conscious.
Punishing a dozen soldiers and apologizing to the Arab world merely places a bandage on this cultural scourge that will rear its ugly head again and again, whenever otherwise normal people feel that they have the license to unleash their violent and insensitive leanings.
The only effective long-term solution is to instill in our children the notions of kindness and sensitivity to all suffering. A good time to start is when they first ask where hamburgers come from.
Alex Grift
Dallas
Holy war
As President Bush's Iraq war of choice worsens significantly, there will come a time when the president will have to finally admit his mistakes in stirring up anti-American hatred in the Arab world.
This war has the potential, God forbid, to evolve into the worst kind of war imaginable–a holy war in the region where civilization began. We can be sure God, Bush's higher father, is not behind Bush's militarism, arrogance and bias toward the rich.
The God we know through Scripture is for turning swords into plowshares to feed a hungry world and wants us to study war no more. War creates more problems than it solves. God abhors our love for nuclear weapons and weeps over our lack of faith and trust in him.
We know what God is like through what we know about Jesus Christ. Jesus was almighty, but, oh, so humble. Humility is a quality only truly great people have. Jesus did not make mistakes, but all of us do. A humble spirit can swallow pride, admit mistakes and in the process save face. We respect and can identify with leaders who have the ability to express honest self-doubt.
God loves everyone but has a special bias for the poor and oppressed of this world. God wants the needs of the least of our brothers and sisters to be met first. The rich will always have much more than enough. In America, our trickle-down tax policies make the rich richer, the poor poorer.
Paul L. Whiteley Sr.
Louisville, Ky.
Pure study
I was happy to see the Baptist General Convention of Texas is abandoning its exclusive use of LifeWay services.
I have nothing against LifeWay, but I would like to see our churches abandon their near-exclusive use of quarterlies in Bible classes. While the canned messages offered in quarterlies are often needful, they shouldn't replace pure Bible study.
About two years ago, my wife and I moved back to Texas from northern California, where I had lived for 30 years, and where I attended some wonderful churches. In the great University Presbyterian Church near the Berkeley campus, I never saw a quarterly. Instead, our Sunday school classes were devoted to studies in the Bible itself, usually chapter-by-chapter studies in either the Old or the New Testament. It fostered a love of Scripture and a desire to read the Bible that cannot be duplicated.
Ken Boren
Rowlett
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