Posted: 6/22/07

Following Scripture not easy
recipe for political choices, ethicists insist

By Robert Dilday

Virginia Religious Herald

RICHMOND, Va. (ABP)—Abortion is the most pressing moral issue of the day, said Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican candidate for president, at a recent GOP debate. So much so, the Catholic senator continued, that he doesn’t think his party can nominate anyone who isn’t pro-life because that’s “at our core.”

Not so fast, said former senator John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate from North Carolina. The “great moral issue of our time” is poverty in the United States, Edwards, a Methodist who was raised Southern Baptist, said in a Democratic candidate forum hosted by a Christian group. “As long as I am alive and breathing, I will be out there fighting with everything I have to help the poor in this country.”

Both are Christians. Both base policies on deep faith. Each arrives at a different place.

What’s an evangelical to do?

Evangelicals have long entered the political fray armed with Scripture, confident that commitment to its teachings offers a clear guide for political action. At least in the public mind, that’s placed them squarely on the conservative side of most social issues, such as abortion and gay rights.

But increasingly, the nation’s estimated 60 million evangelicals are finding that same commitment to Scripture is pitting them against each other—sometimes in very public ways.

This year that split has been intense in an unlikely quarter—global warming. Climate change has become a hot topic among evangelicals, who disagree over how prominent a role it deserves in their political agenda.

Richard Cizik, the environmentally-minded vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, has taken hits for his efforts to add global warming to the NAE’s traditional pro-life and anti-homosexuality agenda.

That disagreement spilled over into a congressional hearing in Washington June 7, when Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., said liberals have struck upon a “brilliant idea” to use global warming to “divide and conquer the evangelical community and get people (moving) away from the core values issues.”

Christian leaders like Cizik do “not represent the view of most evangelicals,” said Inhofe, who was echoed by other witnesses at the hearing—including Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Southern Baptists and other likeminded evangelicals “are concerned that tying Bible verses to any specific legislation on global warming, especially when there are potentially harmful results, could serve both to harm the public interest and trivialize the Christian gospel,” Moore said.

That view coincides with a resolution passed at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting this month, which urged “Southern Baptists to proceed cautiously in the human-induced global warming debate in light of conflicting scientific research.”

But Jim Ball, a Baptist who is president of the Evangelical Environmental Network, testified that recent polls suggest 70 percent of evangelicals think global warming poses a threat to future generations. Ball also pointed to the Evangelical Climate Initiative, which was signed by more than 100 Christian leaders “who believe that a vigorous response to global warming is a spiritual and moral imperative.”

“We’re engaged on this issue because we care about the poor,” who would be hardest hit by the effects of climate change, Ball said.

There are other issues about which evangelicals are having an increasingly robust policy debate. The community’s views on eliminating poverty, battling abortion and protecting gay and lesbian civil rights—subjects once thought settled in the evangelical community—are increasingly diverse.

Complicating the issue this year for many evangelicals who have looked to the Republican Party to champion their causes are the positions of some of the GOP’s top candidates. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is vocal in his support of abortion rights, though he says he’s personally opposed. And Mitt Romney, while governor of Massachusetts, endorsed civil rights for gay couples and fewer restrictions on abortion—although he has since modified his views on both issues.

Meanwhile, Democratic candidates have ratcheted up their appeal to evangelicals, talking unabashedly about their faith—especially in a recent forum sponsored by the progressive Christian social-justice group Sojourners. Edwards, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama sounded almost like they were testifying at a revival meeting when talking about how their faith affects their policy choices.

So, if Scripture is bottom line for evangelicals, why are they coming down on different sides of policy issues?

One answer is the priorities they set, said Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “Very honest people read the same Bible and come out with different emphases.”

“People prioritize issues in different ways,” he said. “If your principal priority is concern for the poor, someone might actually support abortion rights because that person considers poverty a higher priority than concern for life. And if you have conflicting priorities just in light of the fact that you have to prioritize—you might have a deep concern for women in poverty who find themselves with an unexpected pregnancy, but don’t think they should abort because of a higher concern for life.”

Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, says evangelicals’ approach to Scripture is key to prioritizing.

“Some come to the Bible with a pre-existing ideological agenda. They hunt for a Bible verse that will justify their predetermined agenda,” he said. “Others approach the Bible with an undetermined agenda, letting the Bible shape their position on issues.”

“I would hope no one who is a serious reader of the Bible would let political affiliation set the priority,” Duke said. But, he acknowledged, “It’s hard to imagine our life experiences don’t color that to some degree. Sometimes we have to resist personal experience when we’re trying to determine what God wants us to do.”

Differences in the interpretation of specific texts can also influence how Christians who take the Bible seriously come down on political issues, Parham said.

“For example, some evangelicals favor unfettered free enterprise as the God-ordained economic approach and oppose care for the earth,” he said. “They justify unlimited population growth and economic development with a proof-text from Genesis 1:28, which says, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion.’

“Other evangelicals understand that text should not be read literally. They know that the key word in that text, ‘dominion,’ does not mean uncontrolled domination. Dominion means a just service over nature, like a just king rules for the welfare of his people. … They would read Jesus’ commandment to love neighbor and understand that love for neighbor extends to future generations. They would understand that the only way to love a neighbor across time is to leave them a decent place to live.”

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 6/22/07

Pastors challenged to link faith,
society in their sermons

By Ted Parks

Associated Baptist Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP)—Prophecy is not about gazing into the future. It’s about passion for a better world right now, speakers at a celebration of preaching stressed.

While many think of the prophets of the Bible primarily as predictors of the future, that prophetic proclamation is mostly a critique of social evil and a call to justice, they said.

The speakers addressed as many as 2,000 church leaders from across the nation during a Celebration of Prophetic Preaching event in Nashville, Tenn., sponsored by the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment. The one-day celebration was part of a longer Festival of Homiletics, an annual event aimed at promoting good preaching.

Some presenters approached the theme of prophetic preaching directly, identifying its key characteristics. Others held up visions of what a world shaped by the values of a prophetic faith could look like.

Author and activist Jim Wallis spoke of longing for preaching that links faith with real problems. An evangelical Christian, Wallis edits the Washington, D.C.-based Sojourners Magazine.

“The two great hungers in our world today are the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social justice, and the connection between the two is the one the world’s waiting for,” Wallis said. “There’s a whole generation out there waiting for a different kind of message. I think prophetic preaching is meant to clear up the confusion of what faith means.”

Pastors who speak prophetically must go beyond dissent and critique, the Washington activist explained.

“Prophetic preaching says a clear ‘no,’ but prophetic preaching also has to have a strong and clear ‘yes,’” Wallis said.

Citing an Old Testament example, Wallis said the prophet Habakkuk pointed to the injustice around him and demanded God do something about it. But the text doesn’t stop there. “Somebody’s got to write a vision and make it plain,” Wallis said, echoing the response God gave Habakkuk.

Preaching that links faith to society may be the only hope for fundamental change, Wallis suggested.

“When politics fails to even address the biggest issues, what normally happens is social movements rise up to change politics. And the best social movements have spiritual foundations,” he said. “We won’t even get to social justice without a revival of faith.”

Joseph Lowery, a United Metho-dist pastor and co-founder with Martin Luther King Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, underscored the role of faith in the struggle for racial justice.

Lowery said even in the days of slavery, the church had served as a source of spiritual strength and a center for organizing resistance to oppression.

“Jesus meant two things: he meant liberation from sin, and liberation from the sin of slavery—personal sin, social sin.”

A key participant in the Civil Rights movement, the 85-year-old Lowery stressed the motivation behind the non-violent approach of King’s generation of prophetic leaders.

“It was a movement that was rooted in love, faith, hope and love,” he said. “We preached that black people cannot love themselves and hate white people, and white people cannot love themselves and hate black people.”

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 6/22/07

Pulpit politics run risk for churches

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

DALLAS—Churches engaged in partisan politics risk losing not only their tax-exempt status, but also their credibility, several experts in church-state relations agree.

Churches and religious organizations—like other IRS 501(c) (3) nonprofit organizations—are free to speak out on social, moral and ethical issues. But they cannot support or oppose candidates for office without running the risk of losing their tax-exemption.

Some lawmakers—spurred on by the Religious Right—have tried to change the law to allow overt political endorsements in places of worship. But the Baptist Joint Committee in Washington, D.C., consistently has opposed any attempts to change the rules for churches—particularly efforts to allow ministers to endorse candidates from the pulpit without threatening churches’ tax-exempt status.

“Allowing religious organizations to engage in electioneering activities—while continuing to prohibit secular nonprofits from doing so—would be fundamentally unfair,” a public issues guide published by the Baptist Joint Committee’s Religious Liberty Council states.

Beyond the issue of fairness, the Baptist agency also notes the negative impact church-based partisan politics can have on congregations.

“It would invite a highly divisive element into virtually every congregation, tend to balkanize congregations into Democratic and Republican congregations, and engender a corrosive mix of religion and politics that would turn pulpit prophets into puppets of politicians,” the group’s issues guide warns.

Derek Davis, a church-state attorney and dean of the College of Humanities and the Graduate School at the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor in Belton, believes restrictions on partisan political activity by churches benefit faith communities because they “force the American religious community to remain focused on spiritual rather than political matters.”

In effect, the restrictions help prevent churches from “becoming fickle—and in some cases, irrelevant—institutions,” Davis said. “The restrictions represent yet another recognition that separating of church and state is good for both church and state.”

Candidates rise and fall, but churches and their mission remain. So, when churches associate too closely with political parties or personalities, they undercut their lasting impact, he stressed.

“Politics is all about the temporal; churches and other houses of worship should focus on the permanent, the values and principles that are eternal, the truths that are lasting and affect all of us at all times and in all places,” said Davis, former director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor University in Waco.

The ups and downs of political fortune create “a roller-coaster existence” that undermines churches’ health, he stressed.

“By riding the waves of a particular political party or candidate, churches are setting themselves up for disappointment and failure. They might enjoy success for a season, but political fortunes change, and they are sure to be on the losing side of things at least some of the time,” he said.

Suzii Paynter, director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Christian Life Commission, likewise stressed the risks churches run when they become too closely linked to a political party or candidate.

“The church can jeopardize its witness if it finds itself used for political ends by a political group, even a group with a very sympathetic cause,” Paynter said. “The church has a long-term interest in Christian citizenship, while many groups want the church’s immediate endorsement for the expedient purpose of one election or campaign.”

Single-issue groups particularly pose a danger for churches, she noted.

“There are many organizations that want the blessing and endorsement of the church to bolster their agenda, both for issues and candidates. This type of manipulation of the church—or church leadership—often happens when the group involved has one compelling issue, whereas the church in its biblical commitment has a broad spectrum of concerns about the world.”

Ethicist Joe Trull of Denton emphasized partisan political activity hurts churches by undermining their credibility among their more politically savvy neighbors.

“When a church or minister becomes identified with a particular political party or movement or candidate, the community at large perceives the church as being used by that group (and) being naïve,” said Trull, editor of Christian Ethics Today. “And eventually, they will be disappointed, because the politician or party can never fulfill its promises to the religious group.”

Trull, former professor of Christian ethics at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, believes even an implied endorsement by a minister smacks of inappropriate activity.

“When a church or minister becomes identified with any candidate, sooner or later that candidate will embarrass you,” he said.

While blatant endorsement of a candidate from the pulpit clearly crosses the line, churches can engage in some other political activities, experts agreed:

• Candidate forum. A church can hold a candidate forum at its place of worship, but the congregation needs to make every effort to involve all candidates—not “stack the deck” in favor of one political party.

The Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission sponsored candidate forums in several churches around the state before the 2006 elections, Paynter noted.

“We arranged for a moderator from the League of Women Voters who structured the questions, comments and response times,” she explained.

The churches’ experiences offered a case study in Christian civility and responsible citizenship, Paynter observed.

“This was a great witness to the community. … Respect for the democratic processes was lived out in real time,” she said.

• Voters’ guides. Chur-ches can distribute a copy of legislators’ voting records on key issues and responses to their questions on specific issues. But experts stress the guides need to be truly impartial—not thinly disguised promotional materials for special-interest groups.

“Some publications are called ‘voters’ guides’ but are, in fact, a public relations piece for a specific special interest group,” Paynter said.

• Prophetic witness. Churches and ministers have the right to speak out on moral issues, even when they may be controversial. Trull pointed to the example of preachers who “took very strong and unpopular positions in opposition to segregation” during the Civil Rights movement.

Churches also can make an impact through what Paynter called “acts of prophetic generosity”—doing more than what the law requires.

“The story is told of a church that enjoyed, as all churches, the benefit of tax-exempt status. In that same town, the firemen and police of the city were losing their jobs for lack of tax revenue,” she said.

“The church pondered its role and calculated what it would pay in taxes if it were not exempt from property tax. As a gesture of discipleship and community, the church gave a gift of that calculated tax amount to the city every year.

“Sometimes witness is pro-active. … Acts of generosity can be as prophetic as acts of resistance.”

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 6/22/07

'Red Letter Christians' a growing political force

By Hannah Elliott

Associated Baptist Press

NEW YORK (ABP)—In what is shaping up to be a faith-filled race for the presidency, Republican and Democratic candidates have pulled out all the stops—hiring religion gurus, conscientiously attending church, discussing the intimate details of their prayer lives on national TV and publicly admitting personal struggles with sin.

It’s an effort to appeal to religious voters and—especially for Democratic candidates—dispel a perception that they don’t take religion seriously. The latest manifestation of that effort came at a George Washington University forum sponsored by the progressive Christian group Sojourners.

At the event, Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John Edwards (D-N.C.) spoke at length about their faith. Some pundits called it an indication the left has stopped assuming religious voters automatically will vote for the Republican Party. Others claim Democrats are pandering.

But exactly who are the religious voters they hope to attract? Tony Campolo, noted author and sociologist, has coined a term that describes at least part of the movement: “red-letter Christians.” These people—named after the red ink some Bible publishers use to denote the words of Jesus—hold to traditional Christian beliefs and believe the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible, which they view as authoritative and relevant for faith and practice.

But unlike many evangelicals, the red-letter Christians have broadened their agenda to include issues that, in the past, had seemed like the province of liberals—environmental protection, gun control and opposition to war and capital punishment. They also affirm a Christianity that sees Jesus as transcending partisan politics. 

“We are people who want to assure that Jesus is neither defined as a Republican nor a Democrat,” Campolo said. “When asked about party affiliation, the red-letter Christian is prone to answer, ‘Please name the issue.’” 

These evangelicals are fed up with “gay-bashing, anti-feminism, anti-environmentalism, pro-war, pro-gun, and Religious Right politics” and looking for candidates who take positions on issues that are “in harmony with the clear teachings of Jesus,” Campolo said.

“These red-letter Christians are going to end the monologue wherein the Religious Right has been the overwhelmingly dominant voice that has been heard in the media.”

They’re savvy to religious manipulation, too, Campolo noted.

“We don’t want candidates playing games with us, wherein they quote Bible verses or refer to childhood spiritual experiences to validate their claim to being deeply religious people,” he said. “Any efforts to lure young evangelicals by phony displays of religiosity by candidates are likely to turn off the Gen-Xers. These young people want candidates who address issues.”

Campolo believes young people play a major role in the evangelical left. For those who have rejected the term “evangelical” because of its increasingly pejorative status in secular life, the “red-letter” term lets them recognize a significant evangelical minority with which to identify, he said.

It’s a sizable group, to be sure, encompassing the “emergent church,” the house-church movement and “various other alternatives to traditional religiosity.” Sociologists estimate up to 35 percent of evangelicals fall into the “red-letter” category, according to Campolo.

Melissa Rogers, a visiting professor of religion and public policy at Wake Forest University Divinity School, believes moderate evangelicals often take liberal stances politically but remain conservative theologically. Many African-American pastors remain conservative in their theology but liberal in their politics.

“Evangelical left” is a relative term, Rogers said. “It’s just important to remember that there are these important categories. Even Jimmy Carter has a pretty moderate-to-conservative theological position, yet he’s a Democrat and fairly liberal in politics.”

According to a 2007 report by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, just 44 percent of evangelicals say they approve of the job President Bush is doing. Catholics especially are a swing constituency; according to the New York Times, Bush won 52 percent of the Catholic vote in the 2004 elections against Kerry, who is Catholic. Bush received just 47 percent of their vote in 2000. But in the midterm elections last year, 55 percent of Catholics voted Democratic.

Becky Garrison, author of Red and Blue God, Black and Blue Church and senior contributing editor of the Christian satire magazine The Witten-burg Door, characterized the progressive evangelicals as a diverse group slowly gaining momentum but that hasn’t quite “gelled” yet.

“It’s simmering,” she said. “There are a lot of young people under the surface doing amazing things. Something is going on here. There is a seismic shift. There’s something happening that is going on well beyond the institutional church that we see on TV.”

Along with the grassroots current, several prominent voices have emerged in the middle ground between evangelical and progressive, including former President Carter, megachurch pastor and author Rick Warren and Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals.

Cizik, a self-described “Ronald Reagan conservative,” has urged evangelicals to make environmental stewardship central to their political mission—and has been attacked for it by prominent old-guard evangelical leaders like James Dobson.

Warren, pastor of the Southern Baptist-affiliated Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., has held conferences, including one with special guest Obama, about combating Third-World poverty, human trafficking and AIDS. Warren, like Cizik, dismissed criticism from far-right groups.

The movement of Warren and other evangelicals into seemingly uncharted territory for the Religious Right is not entirely new, experts say.

Carter didn’t shy away from talking about his faith in office, Rogers pointed out.

What is new is the attention the new evangelical field has received from politicos and the media.

“One of the things that has … (captured) our attention has been the findings about the correlation between the church attendance factor and one’s voting factor—the God-gap,” said Rogers, who runs a blog about the intersection of religion and politics (melissarogers.typepad.com).

“This area, which has always been somewhat sort of interesting and relevant, suddenly got white-hot.”

Now that these politically moderate evangelicals could play a possible role in deciding close elections, the mainstream media and political strategists have taken note.

“The media has realized they’ve given too much attention and fed the presumption that the evangelical community is monolithic, and they need to go back and revise that statement,” Rogers said.

“Because we’ve come off of a lot of close elections, people are looking at all types of communities. They’re looking for small shifts that can make a significant difference.”

But the rise of an evangelical middle isn’t the same thing as the re-emergence of a “Religious Left” as powerful or unified as its counterpart on the right.

Indeed, a 2006 article in the Washington Post noted that although the mellowing of evangelical Christianity may be “the big American religious story of this decade,” that evolution should not be confused with a rise of the religious left.

And even though the Republican advantage among evangelicals most likely will decline from the high-water mark in 2004, “a substantial majority of white evangelicals will probably remain conservative and continue to vote Republican.”

But Rogers said one thing that unites evangelicals, regardless of their political commitments, is their willingness to question religious authorities and “pull back the curtain” to challenge the people calling the political shots.

And no matter what party they’re voting for this election, evangelicals and their increasingly complex subgroups show no sign of fading from the public consciousness as a political force.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 6/22/07

RENDER TO CAESAR:
Some Baptists feel ‘caught in the middle’

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

It may look dead, but it’s really just evolving—even though its members might not like that word. And it may be developing into something its founders wouldn’t recognize.

That’s what some experts say about the future of the Religious Right as a political movement. And even many very conservative Southern Baptists are part of the trend.

The recent death of Virginia Baptist pastor and political activist Jerry Falwell put an exclamation point on months’ worth of media attention to the ever-more-evident fissures within conservative Christian ranks over how to proceed in secular politics.

Although his influence had waned in recent years, Falwell widely was regarded as a godfather of the Religious Right. Historians of religion and politics regard his launch of the Moral Majority in 1979 as seminal in unifying conservative Christians as a voting bloc.

But now Falwell is dead, and his peers in the “Big Three” of the Religious Right—Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson and Focus on the Family head James Dobson—are advanced in years.

The movement they launched, meanwhile, seems to have passed the apex of its power. In 1994, Christian conservatives helped elect a Republican Congress dominated by their own kind; it stayed in power more than a decade. They twice helped provide the margin of victory for a president—George W. Bush—who not only spoke their theological language, but also provided at least lip service to their favorite legislative goals. And they, with the elevation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, finally were within reach of having a reliable socially conservative majority on that powerful body.

But Democrats won the 2006 congressional elections handily, and the current top contenders for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination don’t inspire in Religious Right leaders the same kind of trust that Bush did—to put it mildly.

At the same time, many younger evangelicals are rethinking which issues influence their voting. Some are beginning to assert that protecting the environment, supporting international human rights and avoiding war are “pro-life” issues just as much as efforts to stop abortion. And polls show homosexuality and government-sanctioned prayers don’t get young evangelicals nearly as exercised as those old “wedge issues” do their elders.

Is it time to break out the dirges and the black veils for a political movement?

“No,” says Barry Hankins, an expert on Christian conservatives who teaches at Baylor University, noting it’s not the first time some prematurely have declared the Religious Right dead.

“It came up in about 1989 or so when Jerry Falwell shut down the Moral Majority,” he recalled. Another flurry of eulogies for the Religious Right appeared in the press in the late 1990s, after the Moral Majority’s successor—the Christian Coalition—began to flounder.

Several years ago, Hankins proposed the notion the Christian Right wasn’t dying; it was maturing. Rather than existing as a single, highly visible organization, it was becoming a movement with diverse influences.

Such maturation could be happening to the Christian conservative movement again, Han-kins said—but it might end up looking fundamentally different as a result.

“I think you have this new kind of wider segment of evangelicals who are publicly oriented and politically conscious, but they’re not tied to the old Christian Right machinery,” he said.

Randall Ballmer, a Columbia University historian and expert in American evangelicalism, agreed. “The younger folks are worried about the environment, they’re worried about climate change, they’re worried about global warming,” he said.

Younger evangelicals also focus on international human rights, poverty and healthcare. Southern Baptist mega-celebrity Rick Warren, for instance, has adopted alleviating the AIDS crisis in Africa and other Third World concerns as a major emphasis of his California church’s ministry.

The divide between the Religious Right power structure and new leaders who want to adopt a broader set of causes as core emphases has been laid bare by well-publicized intramural battles in recent months.

One was a long-simmering dispute over the chief public-policy officer for the National Association of Evangelicals. In March, a group of conservative Christian luminaries—including Dobson and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council—sent a letter to NAE board members asking them to rein in or fire Richard Cizik, the organization’s vice president for governmental affairs. Dobson and his colleagues were upset with Cizik for his outspokenness on confronting global warming.

He and other environmentalist Christians have argued that, if the scientific consensus is right that global warming is real and human-induced, millions of the world’s poor people’s lives and livelihoods are threatened by rising sea levels and changing weather patterns. Therefore, Cizik has said, drastic action to reverse global warming’s effects is necessary.

Not so fast, said the letter writers, who echoed the view of many pro-business conservatives that whether global warming is human-caused still is an open question—as is the question of whether drastic efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions would end up having a more detrimental economic effect than climate change itself.

Just as importantly, they argued, Cizik was “using the global-warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage, and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children. In their place has come a preoccupation with climate concerns that extend beyond the NAE’s mandate and its own statement of purpose.”

They released the missive to news outlets in an effort to mount a public-relations campaign against Cizik, but NAE board members rebuffed the ouster attempt.

Ballmer hopes a broadening of the evangelical agenda reflects the movement coming back to its past.

“It’s evangelicals reclaiming their birthright and their historical legacy as reformers, in the 19th-century sense of the term,” he said, noting that evangelicals in 19th-century America and Britain often were at the forefront of progressive political movements. They led fights against slavery, for women’s rights and for child welfare, for instance.

“What I hope is happening is that evangelicals are beginning to wake up to that, to recognize that evangelical activism in the 19th century—particularly in the antebellum period—was oriented toward those on the margins of society,” he said.

Whether it’s a departure from the Religious Right or an evolution of it, the trend is evident even within the Southern Baptist Convention. Some blogging Southern Baptist pastors have included, among their complaints about the SBC leadership, critiques of its close relationship with the right wing of the Republican Party.

“While I’ve been a card-carrying member of the so-called ‘Religious Right’ since I first voted for Pat Buchanan in the 1996 Presidential primaries, I’m sick and tired of the Religious Right,” said Texas pastor Benjamin Cole, in a post on his blog (baptistblog.wordpress.com) written prior to Falwell’s death.

“I can no longer stand to see Southern Baptist leaders pander to Republican politicians, and I’m ready for a man to occupy the White House who won’t shun evangelical voters on the one hand, or flirt with them on the other.”

Cole, pastor of Parkview Baptist Church in Arlington, said merely opposing legalized abortion doesn’t make someone 100 percent pro-life. For example, messengers to the SBC annual meeting watered down an already-mild resolution about global warming after some objected the resolution encouraged too much government involvement in the issue.

“Our predecessors in the Southern Baptist Convention, the most ardent supporters of the conservative resurgence, somehow see global warming and … ecological concerns among young evangelicals (as) somehow apart from any Christian concern,” he said. “But they think the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is very much an issue of religious liberty.”

Cole said pastors like him find a dissonance in such views. “I think there’s a lot of young, emerging, arising—whatever you want to call it—evangelicals who watch that and go, ‘There is no coherent political philosophy of the Religious Right. There is no unifying theme except for support for the Republican Party,’” he said.

Paul Littleton, an Oklahoma pastor who operates the “Caught in the Middle” blog (middlekid.typepad.com) said in a December post that he—a Republican—is nonetheless tired of evangelicalism’s close association with the GOP.

“I’m conflicted because I am a part of an American evangelical Christianity that is almost entirely and uncritically in bed with the Republican Party—who will support them as long as they support capitalism and oppose abortion and homosexual marriage. Do that, and we’ll vote for you, we’ll go to war with you, we’ll let you spend the country into oblivion, and we’ll be silent when you make sexual advances toward minor pages. And I don’t go for any of that stuff,” said Littleton, pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Sapulpa, a suburb of Tulsa.

Baylor’s Hankins said the SBC’s leaders getting closely involved with the Republican Party was an understandable part of the “ebb and flow” of Southern Baptist life.

“I think part of what we’ve seen over the last quarter-century is that, as the Southern Baptist conservative movement gained ascendancy and gained control of the denomination, it was a heady experience to be aligned with political power. But, on the other hand, it was genuinely a way of having an influence in the culture,” he said.

“And as these things go, the avenue to Southern Baptists exercising influence in the culture can also work the other way around, with the Republican Party utilizing the power and influence of Southern Baptists for Republican ends. So, you had a nice symbiotic relationship there.”

Cole hopes his generation is beginning to “regard partisan politics as the ‘tar baby.’ You know, you can punch at it, but you’re going to get stuck in it,” he said.

“As a Southern Baptist, I don’t want to wake up any more in the morning and look on the pillow beside me and find an elephant.”

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 6/22/07

Senator asserts global warming divides,
distracts evangelicals from core issues

By Daniel Burke

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON—Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., criticized efforts to enlist evangelicals to fight global warming as a “brilliant idea to divide and conquer” and distract them from “core values issues.”

Inhofe, who has been highly critical of climate change “alarmists,” made his remarks during a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee dedicated to religious views on global warming.

Global warming has become a hot topic among evangelicals and other religious conservatives, with old-line conservatives such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson battling attempts by younger Christians to make it part of the agenda for the nation’s estimated 60 million evangelicals.

Inhofe, a Presbyterian, used the hearing to slam Richard Cizik, the environmentally minded vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, as an “alarmist” who “does not represent the views of most evangelicals.” He also challenged recent surveys that report a growing number of evangelicals are concerned about the issue.

Inhofe claimed liberals have struck upon a “brilliant idea” to use global warming to “divide and conquer the evangelical community and get people (moving) away from the core values issues.”

The witnesses Inhofe called—Jim Tonkowich of the Institute on Religion and Democracy; Russell Moore, dean of the school of theology of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; and controversial author David Barton—all challenged the idea that evangelicals support government action on climate change.

But Jim Ball, president of the Evangelical Environmental Network, said recent polls suggest 70 percent of evangelicals think global warming poses a threat to future generations. Ball also pointed to the Evangelical Climate Initiative, signed by more than 100 senior and evangelical leaders “who believe that a vigorous response to global warming is a spiritual and moral imperative.”

“We’re engaged on this issue because we care about the poor,” who would be hardest hit by the effects of climate change, Ball said.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 6/22/07

Rockwall church focuses
on families, majors on missions

By Jessica Dooley

Communications Intern

ROCKWALL—Grace Fellowship of Rockwall built its church around a simple but uncommon approach. It doesn’t split up families when they enter the church building.

Grace Fellowship believes this helps nurture the relationship between the children and parents.

“It is important for our church to be focused on families, because God considered families important and modeled the church after it,” Pastor Ken Lovelace said.

Grace Fellowship started in May 2004. Before it officially became a church, Lovelace and his wife, Lygia, met with a small group for Bible study and worship at a restaurant in Mesquite.

From there, a site-selection team began seeking God’s will about where to locate Grace Fellowship. The group sensed God closed all possible locations except Rockwall, and Lovelace became convinced this was God’s calling.

“We just try to stay out of God’s way and let him do all the work,” he said.

Intrigued with the family-focused aspect and the new church’s commitment to missions, Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas helped sponsor Grace Fellowship shortly after Lovelace approached them.

“Rockwall is a growing area with lots of families, and with Ken and Lygia’s focus on missions and family, we knew the church would be attractive to folks there,” said Jeff Byrd, associate pastor of missions at Park Cities Baptist.

Grace Fellowship’s leaders want their church to meet the needs of families of all ages and sizes, and the congregation remains committed to the church’s motto of being family-focused, mission-minded and Christ-centered.

“We are designed for the whole family, from babies to teenagers to those in their 60s and 70s. It provides an opportunity for younger families to gain wisdom from the older families,” Lovelace said.

Lovelace and his wife team-teach a class on Sunday mornings, where families have the opportunity to study the Bible together.

In the youth and children ministries, parents lead the Bible studies and fellowships, creating an opportunity for children and their parents to strengthen their relationships.

The church also provides other activities for families such as Wednesday night home fellowships and Sunday night activities like Super Summer Sunday—an opportunity for families to eat and play games together.

Along with the family-focused aspect of Grace Fellowship, the church also is mission-minded. And to bring together those two goals, Grace Fellowship offers several family-oriented mission trips.

“Mission-minded is about getting outside the four walls of the church. Jesus said ‘go tell,’ not ‘come hear.’ It’s been enlightening, getting out of the comfort zone, and it has blessed us greatly,” Lovelace said.

Grace Fellowship has monthly missions events geared for all ages of the family, along with two national events and one international event a year.

For more information on Grace Fellowship of Rockwall visit the congregation’s website at www.gracerockwall.com.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 6/22/07

Global warming debate
generates resolutions heat at SBC

By Marv Knox

Editor

SAN ANTONIO—Southern Baptist Convention messengers generated some heat during their annual meeting as they debated the government’s responsibility to address global warming.

They also stood by the SBC resolution committee’s decision not to address how many people actually populate Southern Baptist churches.

The global warming resolution did not generate debate on its basic points: global temperatures have risen for decades, “scientific evidence does not support computer models of catastrophic human-induced global warming” and major steps to reduce greenhouse gases would unfairly impact the world’s poorest people.

But messengers disagreed over the SBC resolutions committee’s call for the government to do something about climate change.

The committee’s proposal encouraged “continued government funding to find definitive answers on the issue of human-induced global warming that are based on empirical facts and are free of ideology and partisanship.” It also supported “economically responsible government initiatives and funding to locate and implement viable energy alternatives” that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Messengers approved an amendment proposed by Bob Carpenter of Cedar Street Baptist Church in Holt, Mich., deleting the two sections of the resolution that called for government action.

“For 70 years, beginning with the Franklin Roosevelt administration, we’ve endured expansion of government,” Carpenter said, calling government “part of the cause of the problem rather than the solution.”

The government cannot provide simple solutions to problems, he contended, adding, “hundreds of millions of tax dollars already are being spent” by the government on global warming. He insisted private enterprise is a founding principle of the country. “We solve problems … when government stays out of the way.”

The only other extended debate featured a suggested resolution the committee declined to propose. Tom Ascol, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Fla., noted he submitted a resolution on “integrity in church membership” that did not get past the committee.

While the convention’s annual survey claims SBC-affiliated churches are composed of 16.3 million members, only 6,138,776 of them attend a worship service in a typical week, Ascol said.

Southern Baptists should “repent of our failure to retain responsible church membership and our widespread failure to lovingly correct church members” when they lapse from regular church attendance, he added.

If the convention does not take seriously its responsibility to retain a regenerate church membership and to discipline members, then a call to repentance—the subject of an approved resolution—“is meaningless,” he insisted.

The resolutions committee maintained Ascol’s proposal infringed upon the principle of church autonomy. The proposal failed to receive a two-thirds vote required to override the committee’s decision not to recommend the resolution.

All of the committee’s other resolutions passed without significant discussion or debate. They included:

• Child abuse. Messen-gers expressed their “deep level of moral outrage and concern at any instance of child victimization” and recommended reporting child abuse “in a timely and forthright manner.”

The resolution called for churches and convention organizations to perform criminal background checks on ministers, employees and volunteers, and it renounced individuals who commit child abuse and “individuals, churches or other religious bodies that cover up, ignore or otherwise contribute to or condone the abuse of children.”

• Hate crimes. While urging Americans to “avoid acts of hatred and violence toward homosexuals and transgendered people” and calling on Christians to love and show compassion for them, the resolution condemned the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007.

The proposed law, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives and has been introduced in the Senate, provides a level of protection for homosexuals and transgendered people, the resolution noted.

But it said hate crimes legislation “violates the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amend-ment guarantee of equal protection under the law” and “criminalizes beliefs as well as action, creating a form of thought crime.”

• Racism. Marking the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott Decision—which declared African-Americans “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect”—the resolution affirmed the Declaration of Independence’s affirmation that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”

Messengers repudiated the Dred Scott Decision and affirmed the SBC’s 1995 vote to “unwaveringly denounce racism, in all its forms, as deplorable sin.”

They also commended churches that reach out to all people, regardless of race, and they urged other churches to follow that example.

• Pastors, culture and civic duty. “There is a great need for a new generation of pastors to take the lead in courageously confronting an American culture and government that is hurtling downward to new depths of moral decadence,” the resolution noted.

It cited “continued threats to the sanctity of human life, the sacredness of marriage between one man and one woman, and the fundamental freedom to express our faith in the public arena.”

It called on pastors to “preach the whole counsel of God, not only passionately inviting people to Jesus, but also prophetically declaring biblical truth concerning the burning moral issues that are being debated in the culture and government.”

It also encouraged them to model and promote “informed and active Christian citizenship among the membership of our churches.”

• Personal and corporate repentance. Citing Scriptures that condemn vindictiveness, bitterness, slander, sexual immorality and “failure to obey God,” the resolution called for “all Southern Baptists to humble ourselves before God” and “embrace a spirit of repentance, pursue face-to-face reconciliation where necessary and enter into a time of fasting and prayer for the lost.”

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 6/22/07

WMU: Seeking God means following his will

By Charlie Warren, Lisa Watson & Bill Webb

Arkansas Baptist, Word & Way

SAN ANTONIO—Prayer for missions took center stage as Woman’s Missionary Union leaders and missionaries challenged participants at the WMU Annual Meeting, held prior to the Southern Baptist Convention gathering in San Antonio.

In her annual address, WMU President Kaye Miller of Little Rock, Ark., cited 2 Chronicles 7:14, highlighting from the passage “humble yourselves” and “pray and seek God.”

Miller recounted her experience growing up in Thailand, where her parents were career missionaries. She recalled her missionary surgeon father treating the sores of lepers.

“It took a special kind of man to humble himself before a leper, to sponge out foul-smelling wounds, to carefully wrap bandages around people no one else wanted to be around, to listen, to care, to love in Jesus’ name,” she said.

Miller, a nurse, also remembered a motherless 2-year-old with AIDS whom no one wanted to hold or rock and the response to her appeal to fellow WMU members to help.

Within hours, volunteers were waiting for their chance to care for the dying youngster, and they were with him when he died.

“What would happen if we, as God’s people, would truly pray and seek God?” she asked. “Often in our churches and in our personal lives, we spend much more time talking about prayer than actually praying. Let us, as Woman’s Missionary Union, keep calling ourselves by his name, keep praying and seeking his face so that we will keep reaching and teaching the generations.”

Miller was re-elected WMU president, and Kathy Hillman of Waco was re-elected WMU recording secretary.

Travis Collins, pastor of Bon Air Baptist Church of Richmond, Va., and author of Directionally Challenged, used the acrostic COMPASS—constancy, observation by others, motive, peculiar passions, aptitudes, seasoning and sensible decision-making—to discuss how Christians determine God’s will.

“Do you have a vision that won’t go away?” asked Collins, “It might be a divine call.”

He warned participants not to blame God for their own bad decisions. “Sometimes it’s easy to baptize our agendas in God language,” he said.

Collins urged participants to be aware of people who may need God’s direction in their lives. “There may be somebody you know who has missed a turn or two in life, and they need someone to say, ‘Can I help you find where you want to go?’ It might change their life.”

Collins later spoke about having courage to follow the call of God. He encouraged participants to stand against the “cultural tide of declining morals, character and values” and avoid a “narcissistic, self-centered, consumer-oriented Christianity.”

“Courage is not the absence of fear but the willingness to do something even though you may be terribly afraid,” he said. “Remember, the Lord of all creation will be with you wherever you go.”

Also at the WMU Annual Meeting:

• Robin VanSickle Hoke of Midland received the Martha Myers Girls in Action Alumna of Distinction Award, which honors a GA alum who exhibits a missions lifestyle and has dramatically influenced the lives of others, especially young girls, through missions, ministry and/or civic duty. After growing up as a GA, Hoke was a GA leader in some capacity from 1980 to 2002. From 1992 to 2002, she was GA director for First Baptist Church of Midland.

• Participants marked the 100th anniversary of the WMU Training School and the 10th anniversary of Christian Women’s Job Corps. The program that teaches job and life skills to low-income women has 168 sites serving 2,134 participants and involving 13,163 volunteers.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 6/22/07

Texas Baptist Men send toolboxes to Sudan

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

DALLAS—Texas Baptist young men are sending more than 190 toolboxes to Sudan to help husbands and fathers there learn carpentry skills so they can support their families.

Elementary, middle and high school boys across the state who are part of Texas Baptist Men’s Royal Ambassadors and Challengers missions education programs collected money and purchased toolboxes and tools to send to Sudan. Each toolbox is filled with about $150 of tools.

Sudan is the location of some of the worst human rights violations in the world. More than 2 million people have fled their homes and 200,000 people have been killed. The United Nations has asserted the Sudanese government is supporting these efforts, but the government has denied the accusations.

Keith Mack, TBM children and youth missions and ministry consultant, praised the boys’ commitment to helping people in Sudan. Each boy raised the money for the toolboxes and purchased the tools.

The experience helped the boys see how God is working around the globe, Mack said.

“This has been a great opportunity for men and boys,” he said. “While they are collecting the tools, they can also pray for the men that will be receiving the tools.”

Though TBM is finished collecting toolboxes, individuals can donate money to send additional tools to Sudan. Checks can be designated “Toolboxes for Sudan” and sent to Texas Baptist Men, 5351 Catron, Dallas 75227.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 6/22/07

Texas Tidbits

Communications interns on the job. Three Baylor University students are serving as Texas Baptist communications interns 12 weeks this summer in a cooperative venture involving the Baptist Standard, the Baptist General Convention of Texas communications team and the Buckner International communications office. Jessica Dooley of Ardmore, Okla., Whitney Farr of Caddo Mills and Rebekah Hardage of Waco are serving four weeks in each office. Matt Kennedy of Midlothian, a recent Baylor graduate, is working as an intern with Associated Baptist Press, based out of the Baptist Standard office.

Amarillo hospital dedicates new tower. Baptist St. Anthony’s Health System recently dedicated its new six-story Ware Tower. The new wing was the result of three years of extensive planning and construction. The building permit for the $60 million facility reportedly was the largest ever granted in Amarillo.

Haag Leaves South Texas Children’s Home; Roberson named interim. Todd Roberson, chief operating officer at South Texas Children’s Home, has been named the agency’s interim president, effective July 1. He fills the post vacated by Jerry Haag, 41, who has been named president of Florida Baptist Children’s Homes. Haag served as president of South Texas Children’s Home since 2000. Roberson has been on staff at South Texas Children’s Home about 15 years. Roberson and his wife, Jill, have two children—Lindsey and Parker. They are members of First Baptist Church in Beeville.

Dallas couple’s gift benefits nursing school. A $250,000 gift from Don and Ruth Buchholz of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas brought Baylor University’s Louise Herrington School of Nursing halfway to its simulator laboratory fund’s $500,000 goal. The fund will allow the nursing school to secure anatomically realistic patient simulators. The simulators, which emit realistic heart, lung and bowel sounds, react like real patients. After simulated procedures, performance feedback is generated immediately for students. Pre-programmed scenarios allow nursing students to learn about all aspects of patient care. With simulator training, Baylor nurses will require less orientation time and could begin their nursing careers much faster, helping to fill a critical nursing shortage.

Wayland choir visits China. Wayland Baptist University’s International Choir under the direction of Scott Herrington performed three concerts in six days during a trip to Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China. The performances in two universities and at Kowloon International Baptist Church in Hong Kong were scheduled in conjunction with the American Celebration of Music in China. Forty-seven students, faculty and alumni participated in the choir tour.

Correction. In the cover story of the June 11 Baptist Standard, The Recyle of Abuse, a Missouri church was incorrectly identified as East Bonne Femme Baptist Church. Its name is East Bonne Terre Baptist Church.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.

Posted: 6/22/07

TOGETHER:
Together, Texas Baptists touch lives

Here’s a potpourri of reasons to rejoice in the ministries we are able to do together as Texas Baptists:

• Camps. Each year, between 6,000 and 7,000 older children and youth are saved on the 31 campgrounds that relate to our convention. Pray for all those who administer the camps and all the church leaders who go as sponsors.

Executive Director BGCT Executive Board

An exciting development over the last five years has been the camp program for Asian young people sponsored by our intercultural ministry. This year’s camp was the largest, with 240 campers, sponsors and staff attending. All the recreation and media staff were Asian-American young people who have been “raised up” in the previous years of camp. There were seven professions of faith, 19 rededications and 10 commitments to full-time ministry.

For the first time, we had an African camp. Forty students and sponsors from Nigeria and Kenya participated. There were six professions of faith, several rededications and at least one commitment to vocational ministry.

• Disaster relief. Whenever I hear that a flood, fire, tornado or hurricane has touched communities in Texas, I breathe a prayer of gratitude for the thousands of Texas Baptists who are prepared to go at a moment’s notice to serve in affected areas.

Haltom City, Gainesville and Sherman have experienced flooding and loss of lives in recent days. Texas Baptist Men volunteers were there. First were the victims relief chaplains, then the feeding and shower units.

Congregational Strategist Richard Mangum spent three days with the pastors and churches helping to assess damages, encouraging cooperation, being a shoulder of support and praying. Our pastors in the area have reached out to encourage cooperation with the other churches in town, so the unity we have in Christ can soften and bless the hearts of the people.

You can send donations through the BGCT to provide help for those who have lost so much and to replenish the funds that make it possible for TBM to be there immediately and for our strategists to offer help to families and churches in their time of need. Your generosity has become a powerful witness to Texans that Texas Baptists will be there whatever the need.

• Breckenridge Village. I wish you could have been present. We crowded the chapel at Breckenridge Village in Tyler to celebrate the raising of sufficient funds to retire the debt incurred in building the beautiful facilities to serve the special-needs adults who live there.

When one of the residents stood to sing, “Thank you for giving to the Lord,” and another signed the words, you would have trembled inside for the privilege of being a part of this unselfish, sacrificial, Jesus kind of ministry.

Texas Baptists can praise the Lord for the wonderful people who work there with such love and devotion. My deep appreciation goes to Baptist Child & Family Services, which has worked to make this dream possible, and to all of the churches and individuals who have helped make the vision real.

We are loved.

Charles Wade is executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board.

News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Baptist churches, in Texas, the BGCT, the nation and around the world.