Baptist Briefs

Posted: 3/17/06

Baptist Briefs

Three students charged with Alabama church fires. Law enforcement officials arrested three men March 8 in connection with a string of nine fires at Baptist churches in rural Alabama. A 10th fire, although ruled arson, has yet to be connected to the initial nine. Benjamin Nathan Moseley and Russell Lee Debusk, both 19-year-old students at Birmingham-Southern College, said they set the fires as a “joke,” authorities said. Moseley and Debusk appeared in federal court March 8 on charges of arson and conspiracy, according to the office of Alabama Gov. Bob Riley. Later that day, officials also arrested 20-year-old Matthew Lee Cloyd, a student at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. If convicted, the students could face a minimum sentence of five years for each church they burned, according to U.S. Attorney Alice Martin.

BJC offers essay contest for teens. The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty has launched the 2006 Religious Liberty Essay Contest, seeking original compositions on the theme: “Why the separation of church and state is necessary to ensure religious liberty for all.” Open to all Baptist high school students in the classes of 2006 and 2007, the contest offers a grand prize of $1,000 and airfare and lodging for two to Washington, D.C. Second prize is $500, and third prize is $100. Winners will be announced in the summer of 2006 and will be featured in the BJC publication, Report from the Capital. The grand-prize winner also will be recognized Oct. 2 at the BJC board meeting in Washington, D.C. Essays should be 700 to 1,000 words. They will be judged on the depth of content and the skill with which they are written. Students should demonstrate a sound knowledge of the subject matter and support their assertions. For more information or to download a registration form and promotional flier, visit www.bjconline. org/contest/.

Central Seminary announces plans to move. Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo., has announced plans to move, mostly to help defer rising maintenance costs on its 16-acre campus. Administrators at Central—an American Baptist school—fought the financial drain by offering online classes and operating out of a fraction of its 11 buildings, but a resource mobilization team composed of board members, alumni and administration voted to cut losses and find a new location. Seminary President Molly Marshall said in a letter to students and faculty that after 82 years at its current campus, finding a new location would help Central Seminary continue its mission. The seminary’s aging facility faces roughly $5 million in deferred maintenance costs, and the move will save more than $400,000 a year, Marshall said.

N.C. leader resigns over changes. The recent sharp right turn in the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina has prompted one member of its governing board to resign, saying the state convention is becoming “a subsidiary of the Southern Baptist Convention.” Ken Boaz, pastor of Boonville Baptist Church in Boonville, resigned from the state board of directors, drawing objection to two actions taken at the North Carolina convention’s annual meeting in November. At that time, convention messengers agreed that money churches send to the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship should not count as state Cooperative Program gifts, and they directed the state’s board to approve a policy excluding any church that “knowingly affirms, approves or endorses homosexual behavior.”

Sibley moves from NAMB to Criswell. Jim Sibley, who served 10 years as coordinator of Jewish ministries with the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board, was named director of Criswell College’s Pasche Institute of Jewish Studies. The college formed the Pasche Institute in 2004 to train Christians in Jewish evangelism and ministries. Sibley and his wife, Kathy, served as Southern Baptist representatives in Israel 14 years.

Longtime professor Nash dies. Ronald Nash, who taught theology and philosophy for four decades at three schools, died March 10 at his home in Orlando, Fla., after a lengthy illness. He was 69. Nash was chairman of the department of philosophy and religion and director of graduate studies in humanities at Western Kentucky University, where he was on faculty from 1964 to 1991. Later, he was a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary and at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Nash wrote more than 35 books on philosophy, theology and apologetics. He is survived by his wife, Betty Jane, and two children, Jeffrey and Jennifer.