Updated: 4/27/07

Baptist schools prepare
‘in case the unthinkable occurs’

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

BELTON—Police cars and fire engines lined the streets on the north side of the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor campus. Paramedics carried students on stretchers and loaded them into ambulances. But it was just a drill—an emergency response exercise planned long before an armed rampage occurred two days earlier at Virginia Tech.

Bell County’s emergency planning committee had scheduled the drill—a simulated hazardous-materials spill on the railroad tracks adjacent to the UMHB campus—months earlier, university spokesperson Carol Woodward said.

UMHB emergency response personnel confer during emergency preparedness drill.

The exercise was part on an ongoing program of training and preparation designed to test the response capabilities of first-responders, Woodward explained.

Last summer, the university provided a training site for about 70 law officers as they dealt with a simulated hostage situation in a women’s dormitory, she added.

University officials considered canceling the drill in light of the Virginia Tech tragedy, but they decided to proceed and concentrate on letting students, parents and people in the surrounding community know that it was not a real emergency.

The school notified students through chapel announcements, e-mail, notices in the college newspaper and posters displayed on campus. They also used radio, television and newspapers in the area to inform non-students about the exercise.

More than 30 students participated in the simulation, role-playing the parts of people exposed to hazardous chemicals. Emergency personnel treated students who feigned breathing difficulties, hosed down people for chemical exposure and took them through a decontamination process before rushing them by ambulance to a local hospital.

University officials met during the drill to review emergency procedures, and after the event, they talked about ways to improve their procedures.

“The greatest challenge is getting the word out to our students, as well as parents,” Woodward said. “We believe the best way to communicate quickly and effectively with students on campus is through their cell phones.”

Haz-mat suits would protect responders against toxic materials.

The school has a database of cell phone numbers for students, as well as home phone numbers for their parents, and university officials are exploring a system that will allow a message to be transmitted simultaneously to a large batch of numbers, she noted.

While few—if any—other Baptist schools held emergency response drills in the days immediately following the Virginia Tech shooting, most reported they had in place plans for dealing with a variety of emergency situations, and those plans are subject to regular review.

President Bill Underwood of Mercer University in Macon, Ga., and Atlanta, noted he met immediately after the Virginia Tech shooting to initiate a complete review of his school’s emergency response plan.

“I have asked that we validate and improve the plan in order to ensure that we are doing everything possible to prevent, and if necessary, effectively respond to campus emergencies,” he said.

Mercer is implementing a wireless cell-phone-based system to provide instant emergency information to students, augmenting the school’s existing Internet, e-mail and call-in communications systems, he added.

Baylor University officials asked themselves, “How prepared are we for such an occurrence?” President John Lilley noted in a message widely circulated to Baylor’s varied constituencies.

Firemen don haz-mat suits during emergency drill at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor.

“While preventing some an attack with 100 percent certainty is impossible, I want to reassure you that we do have systems in place to respond to emergencies on campus and to minimize harm to our students, staff and faculty,” Lilley said.

“It is impossible to predict when such tragedies will happen, but we are making our best effort to be prepared in case the unthinkable occurs.”

Baylor employs 24 trained and commissioned police officers who conduct crisis simulation training exercises, and the school operates under general rules about closing the campus and has established protocols for handing specific kinds of emergencies, he noted.

The university’s crisis management team—composed of staff and administrators—also conducts crisis simulation drills, and the group was slated to meet to review the Virginia Tech situation to “review our plans for handling such a situation in light of this recent experience,” he said.

“We have an emergency public address system in all residence halls and some academic buildings to communicate public safety information, as necessary,” Lilley added. Baylor also recently installed a dual e-mail and voice-mail emergency notification system.

Even smaller schools, such as East Texas Baptist University in Marshall, have the ability to send emergency e-mail messages to students, faculty and staff in the event of emergencies, ETBU President Bob Riley said.

“If a crisis occurs, you will receive information with directions and actions to take,” he wrote in an e-mail to students soon after the Virginia Tech shooting. “Although unofficial, we know that individual cell phones and text messaging will alert many who have not read an e-mail message.”

Samford University in Birmingham, Ala., had just announced plans for campus safety restructuring, already in process for several weeks, just as news from Virginia Tech began to unfold.

“The plan is to focus on service and security,” said Richard Franklin, Samford’s dean of students. “The new structure and function enhances communications with students, faculty and staff.”

Samford President Andrew Westmoreland stressed his school had taken, and would continue to take, every reasonable step to provide for the safety of students and others on campus.

“I acknowledge that, within a free society, there are limits to our ability to control for every circumstance,” Westmoreland said. “However, we will seek to learn from this horrible tragedy and to enhance the security of the campus.”

Underwood at Mercer struck a similar chord. “In the free and open society that we enjoy, there are clearly some risks associated with those freedoms,” he said. “Our challenge is to reduce that risk as much as possible. Our highest priority is, and always will be, the safety of our students, faculty and staff.”

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

Updated: 4/27/07

RA boys deliver missions by the ton to Mexico

By George Henson

Staff Writer

GRAHAM—Maps of the Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys decorate the walls where Hunter Dooley meets for Royal Ambassadors. If someday a map chronicles Hunter’s missionary travels, it will have to start with the trip he took as a 7-year-old from North Texas to an orphanage in Mexico.

He was among eight RA boys and nine adults who collected, transported and delivered 9,000 pounds of food to feed Mexican orphans. About two dozen boys helped prepare for the trek by keeping First Baptist Church in Graham informed of the need and helping load the trailer, but the smaller number made the trip.

“The need in these orphanages along the border is just incredible, and I don’t think people realize how great the need is,” said Jerry Blake, the church’s minister of music and media. He also has directed the church’s missions work along the Rio Grande the last 14 years.

Blake’s history of working in area brought him a call asking if the church would put together a project to help feed children living in orphanages near Piedras Negras, Mexico. Blake took the challenge to the church’s missions committee and Royal Ambassador leaders who formulated the plan. The plan excited the RA boys, who were thrilled at the prospect of being able to help other children.

The RAs presented their Missions by the Ton project to the church, and the congregation enabled the boys to take 9,000 pounds of rice, beans and powdered milk—3,000 pounds of each in 50-pound sacks.

After buying the food, $1,800 remained that was used to buy diapers and other supplies needed by the orphanages, Blake said.

The project was “a little overwhelming when it was first presented to us, but we got it nailed down,” said Royal Ambassador Director Scott Vanarsdall. “The boys didn’t really understand what we were going to be doing at first, but everybody pitched in—not just the eight who went to Mexico, but all the boys.”

After the food was bought, the boys loaded it on a trailer. Even boys who stayed behind in Graham turned out for the early morning venture into missions.

After it was loaded, the boys and their leaders made the seven-hour trip to Cornerstone Children’s Ranch in Quemado, where food was stored until the orphanages could send someone to the U.S. side of the Rio Grande to collect it.

“We couldn’t take the food across to the orphanages,” Marty Auth, a first-year Royal Ambassador leader, explained. “We had to leave it in the states and let the Mexican people come across and get it.”

But before it was accessible to the orphanages, the staples had to be unloaded— a task again reserved for the boys.

“We intentionally had the boys load and unload the food,” Blake said. “We could have had it drop-shipped, but we wanted them to put their hands on it—to have that memory of doing missions. The kids did all the work.”

Jim Perryman, a father of one of the boys and an adult member of the team, agreed. “It would have been much easier to raise the money and ship it down, but the kids wouldn’t have gotten the same meaning from it.”

The Graham group was told that if the orphanages were given all they needed, the 9,000 pounds would last about two weeks. But since the storehouse had to be sure all the area orphanages got something, it would probably last about a month.

The boys also took a foray into Mexico to visit Casa Hogar and several other orphanages around Piedras Negras.

“They saw first-hand what these people go through every day,” Auth said. “You can tell these people are hungry. Not just in the orphanages, but as we drove through the villages, the kids and even the adults came out to beg for food.”

The boys saw images that will stay with them for some time, he said. “They saw how these people lived. They saw the poverty—the shacks with no electricity, running water or sanitation made of cardboard, tin or whatever they can find.”

While the North American Free Trade Agreement has been a boon to some Mexican families, it has also destroyed others, Blake said. “NAFTA brought factory jobs, and men moved their families to the north. But following the money, drug dealers also followed. Now many of those fathers are in prison or dead, leaving their children either in orphanages or with their mothers living in cardboard houses.”

Although he has seen it many times, Blake said the plight of the people in Mexico always affects him.

“I’ve been going down there twice a year for 14 years, and I leave my heart down there every time,” he said.

“The people there just don’t have any hope of things getting any better. They know just across the river is the land of opportunity. Here if you work hard, things get better for you and your family. If you work hard in Mexico, you don’t succeed, you just sweat more.” The boys also noticed the desperation of the orphans and people they passed. Hunter Dooley particularly was struck by what the people had to live in, as was 9-year-old Clayton Hawkins.

“They made their houses out of chicken wire or whatever they could find,” Clayton said.

Thomas Hernandez gave his football to some of the boys in one of the orphanages. “The kids in the orphanages, they have a place to live, but not much else,” the fifth grader explained. “I knew they wouldn’t have much to play with, so I gave them my football.”

It was the hunger that stayed with 8-year-old Garrett Gatlin. “It was sad that people would run after us to ask for food,” he recalled.

That kind of experiential learning was missing from Blake’s mission education as a boy.

“I grew up in RAs learning about missions, but I never had the hands-on experiences until much later,” Blake said.

Images from a mission trip to the orphanages of Mexico may keep these youngsters aware of the need for ministry all their lives, their leaders hope, and may make the maps of their missionary journeys even more complex and numerous than the Apostle Paul’s.

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

Updated: 4/27/07

Face death with grace
and watchfulness, ethicist urges

By Marv Knox

Editor

ABILENE—Christians must not abandon people who are dying on the doorstep of medicine, ethicist Allen Verhey pleaded.

Instead, the church should engage in “watchfulness” with the seriously ill and dying, Verhey stressed in the Maston Christian Ethics Lectures at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Seminary in Abilene.

To treat the dying with the grace they should receive, Christians must reverse common practice and also bridge chasms between sick people, medicine and faith, said Verhey, professor of Christian ethics at Duke University’s divinity school in Durham, N.C.

“In our culture, dying has become a medical matter, and care for the dying has been assigned to those who are skilled in medicine,” acknowledged Verhey, who has spent more than three decades studying bioethics.

“Modern medicine, moreover, seems thoroughly and deliberately ‘religionless.’ … The practices of piety—and indeed ‘God’—seem to have been pushed to the margins of medical care, retreating more and more as the knowledge and power of medicine advance more and more.”

But those practices, particularly Scripture reading and prayer, should move back to the center of care for the terminally ill, he urged.

Reading Scripture with the ill and dying is important, because Scripture helps Christians remember their past and their context, Verhey said. Scripture is “the story that gives a Christian identity and Christian folk a community.”

Scripture aids and comforts in part because it “acknowledges our mortality” and “our lives evidently end in death,” he said.

“Death makes its power felt in serious or chronic illness and in severe pain, when the body is experienced not only as ‘us,’ but also as ‘the enemy,’” he said. “It makes its power felt in the weakness that robs the sick of the capacity to exercise control of themselves and of their world.”

And although medicine’s resistence to death sometimes is heroic, death inevitably “makes its power felt in a hospital,” Verhey observed.

“Death makes its power felt when the sick or dying are removed and separated from those with whom they share a common life. It makes its power felt when their environment is inhospitable to family and friends. …

“It makes its power felt when the fear of being abandoned is not met by the presence of others who care. And the silence of death makes its power felt in lonely dumbness, when community and communication have failed.”

This power “can push people to the margins of life,” he said. People who are “well” often feel vulnerable and uncomfortable in front of sickness, so they relegate the ill to hospitals, where they are out of sight—and thought.

But since Christians believe physical death is not final, they should face death and tend to the dying with watchfulness, Verhey urged.

Watchfulness is a biblical concept, he said, noting it is “heroic discipleship” in the Gospel of Mark, “patient endurance” in the Revelation, a “call to care for those who are pressed down and crushed by hurt and harm” in the Gospel of Matthew, and an invitation “to rejoice—and to grieve—in hope” in the writings of the Apostle Paul.

“If life and its flourishing are not the greatest goods, neither are death and suffering the ultimate evils,” he insisted, explaining how Christian watchfulness produces twin virtues—courage and patience.

“Death and suffering and the threats of death are not as strong as the promise of God. One need not use all of one’s resources against them. One need only act with integrity in the face of them.”

Terminally ill Christian patients can be compared to martyrs, who bore witness to their faith, even as they faced death, he added.

“Many Christian patients still display the same comfort and the same courage,” he said. “They still bear witness to their hope by their readiness to die but not to kill. They display their comfort and their courage by refusing both offers of assisted suicide and offers of treatment that may prolong their days but only render those days—or months or years—less apt for their tasks of reconciliation with enemies or fellowship with friends or just plain fun with the family.

“Heroic discipleship and its courage liberate patients from the tyrannies of survival or ease.”

Watchfulness forms patience and courage in Christians, Verhey said.

“It forms in Christian community a readiness both to ‘rejoice in hope’ (Romans 12:12) and to mourn, to grieve in hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Watchfulness, like Jesus, still blesses ‘those who mourn,’ blesses those aching visionaries who long for God’s future and who weep because it is not yet, still sadly, not yet.”

Watchfulness follows the lead of the Christians commended by Jesus in the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, Verhey said. These people received Christ’s praise because they fed the hungry, gave water to the thirsty, welcomed strangers, visited prisoners and took care of the sick.

“That parable is eloquent testimony that watchfulness takes the shape of care,” he noted. “And it is an elegant reminder to caregivers that the presence of God is mediated to them through their patients, (and) the sick—in their very weakness and vulnerability, in their hurt and loneliness—represent Christ to the caregiver.”

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

Posted: 4/27/07

Baptist Briefs

Southern Baptists fall short of baptism goal. Southern Baptists failed to meet their goal of baptizing 1 million people in 2006, according to statistics reported by Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated churches. Baptisms for 2006 instead declined by 1.89 percent—364,826 in 2006 versus 371,850 in 2005. The SBC baptism thrust was launched by immediate past-President Bobby Welch at the outset of his two years in office in June 2004.

International Baptists discuss local-church autonomy. Sixty seven Baptist theologians, leaders and pastors from around the world gathered at a Baptist World Alliance symposium at the German Baptist Seminary in Elstal, Berlin, to talk about the theology of the church—particularly issues of local-church autonomy. Participants examined the relationship of the local church to the larger Baptist community of associations, national conventions and unions, regional fellowships and the Baptist World Alliance. At the end of the symposium, participants issued a statement concluding, “For Baptists, the local church is wholly church but not the whole church.”

CBF offers church-starter ‘boot camp’ at Truett. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s New Church Starts Boot Camp will be held July 29-Aug. 3 at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary in Waco. The annual event offers individuals interested in starting churches opportunities for networking, learning about practical resources and assessing their ministerial gifts and calling. American Baptist Churches USA and the Baptist General Convention of Texas also are sponsoring the event. Featured speakers include Tom Johnson, American Baptist new-church planting coordinator; Andre Punch, BGCT congregational strategists director; and Charles Higgs, BGCT director of western-heritage ministries.

Don’t mess with Texas seminary, Patterson suggests. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson suggested an attack like the Virginia Tech shooting wouldn’t happen at his school because students would overwhelm an attacker—even if they died trying. Patterson told students in an April 18 chapel sermon that if a shooter attacked classes at the Fort Worth school, he was “counting on” male students to respond. “See, all you had to do was have six or eight rush him right at that time, and 32 people wouldn’t have died,” Patterson said. “Now folks, let’s make up our minds. I know we live in America where nobody gets involved in anybody else’s situation. That shall not be the rule here. Does everybody understand? You say, ‘Well, I may be shot.’ Well, yeah, you may. Are you saved? You’re going to heaven. You know, it’s better than earth.”

Palestinian Bible Society building bombed. A bomb severely damaged the Palestinian Bible Society building in Gaza City. The building, located in the city center, housed the Teacher’s Bookshop, Gaza’s only Christian bookstore, according to the Baptist World Alliance. The building also includes a library and a community development center. It is the base for one of the largest relief agencies in the Gaza Strip. Hanna Massad, pastor of Gaza Baptist Church, said the massive explosion occurred around 2 a.m., April 15, causing damage much worse than that caused by a previous explosion, which happened a year ago. His wife, Suhad, directs the Bible Society’s Gaza ministry.

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

Posted: 4/27/07

Disaster relief volunteers prepare
for the worst, hope for the best

By Barbara Bedrick

Texas Baptist Communications

ALLAS—Gary Smith missed Hurricane Andrew. He was returning by plane from a mission trip to Kosovo when it hit. But he hasn’t missed many severe storms in the past 15 years.

Smith has responded to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and tsunamis since he began as a volunteer for Texas Baptist Men 15 years ago. In 2004, he became director of TBM Disaster Relief ministries.

Gary Smith

At the forefront of disaster response, Smith has seen first-hand the damage left by hurricanes such as Charlie, Ivan, Katrina and Rita. One of the worst seasons, he remembers, was when four hurricanes hit Florida in 2004.

But it was a tropical storm that hit the Texas coast in 2001 that stands out in his memory.  

“Even though Allison never really became classified as a hurricane, she came ashore quickly and jumped on Houston,” Smith recalled. “The medical community and the hospitals were flooded. We set up in parking lots.”

Tropical Storm Allison became the most costly tropical storm in U.S. history. There were 24 fatalities and more than $5 billion in damage to the two worst hit areas of the country—southeast Texas and southern Louisiana, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.

With so much hurricane experience, Smith didn’t seem worried recently when hurricane experts predicted a “very active” 2007 hurricane season.

“We don’t take extra precautions based on predictions,” Smith explained. “We do the best we can and respond accordingly.”

Hurricane expert William Gray of Colorado State University recently predicted five major hurricanes for 2007, and NOAA experts forecast four to six major hurricanes this year.

Texas Baptist Men volunteers stir up gallons of chili to feed Gulf Coast victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Two months before the hurricane season begins, Gray—who has studied tropical weather more than 40 years—predicted a 74 percent chance a hurricane will hit the U.S. coast in 2007.

The prediction is “virtually identical” to the one Gray issued in 2006, which turned out to be quieter than he had forecast, according to Associated Press reports.

“We prepare for the worst,” Smith said. “But we hope for the best.”

Predictions don’t determine how disaster relief preparations are made. Measures are constantly under way to ensure strike teams, feeding and shower units and volunteers are in place.

“We have identified a strike team that can go out within 24 hours notice to get the unit up and running,” Smith added. “Then volunteers come in to replace them within three or four days.”

TBM has 13 emergency food service units that can provide more than 100,000 meals a day. With the exception of the state unit, each food-service unit is owned and operated by a Baptist association, church or region, Smith noted.

“If some type of catastrophe occurred, disaster relief units could go out and respond quickly,” Smith said.

Volunteers staffing each unit try to have at least a three-day supply of food on hand, primarily canned goods. Plans are to provide a shower unit for each feeding unit.

Preparations also are made to ensure equipment is serviced, batteries are charged, tires are aired up, chainsaws are maintained and sharpened, and other tools and volunteer teams are ready to go.

TBM currently has 6,500 trained volunteers, but there is a growing need for more. When a disaster hits, Smith points out that the Retiree Builders ministry team cannot always leave the projects they are working on.

“We’re looking for more volunteers to participate in a new reconstruction recovery team unit which would go in after clean-out teams remove floodwater damage and sanitize,” Smith stressed. “We’re hoping to connect with some Baptists who will take up this ministry effort and restore damaged homes.”

A disability special needs disaster response team also is being developed. This team would work to “send people from the coast that are unable to evacuate themselves to San Antonio to be sheltered and fed by a dedicated feeding unit capable of providing 15,000 to 20,000 meals a day,” Smith noted.

Volunteers interested in helping TBM disaster relief ministries first participate in a “yellow cap” orientation with a spiritual emphasis. Each volunteer is designated a “yellow cap” until given other responsibilities as supervisor or manager.

To prepare for disaster relief efforts, volunteers are urged to attend specialty training workshops which include chainsaw, clean-out, child care, blue tarp (a roofing team), feeding and shower. Specialty training also is offered for point men, security and ham radio operators.

In 2005, the group’s volunteers provided disaster relief for victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which combined with Dennis and Wilma made the costliest hurricane season on record, according to news reports.

Hurricane season in the Atlantic runs June 1 through Nov. 30 while the season starts May 15 in the Pacific.

For more information about disaster relief ministries, contact Texas Baptist Men at (214) 828-5350 or e-mail Gary Smith at Wharvester@tx.rr.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: 4/27/07

DOWN HOME:
Remember Margie with love & laughter

Thank the Lord, Elijah Peter and Fluretta Ledora Berry decided 14 children were not enough. Who knows how an Oklahoma dryland farm family evaluated the pros and cons of delivering another child into the world—one more mouth to feed/one more hand to harvest crops? Whatever their calculations, on April 3, 1924, the 15th of 16 Berry babies sprang into this world.

I like to imagine little Margie’s first cry sounded like laughter—laughter that echoed from her lungs and through the ears of family and friends for more than eight decades.

If you view the old Berry Clan portrait, you’ll see a hard-working farm family. Look closely at the adults’ faces, and you’ll recognize long hours in the sun, droughts and prairie fires, blizzards and hailstorms, the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. But study the face of the mop-headed girl tucked underneath her daddy’s left arm, and you’ll see a sparkle in little Margie’s eye.

That sparkle gleams in postwar pictures of a young woman in downtown Fort Worth, as well as a newlywed snuggled close to her skinny husband, a mother laughing with her daughters, a grandmother playing with her grandkids, and even later, an elderly woman snuggled next to her husband of many decades.

Look at her face; you can hear her laughter.

By the time I met her, she long since had married Jim Jarchow and raised three darling daughters, Julia, Janis and Joanna. Years of marriage and child-rearing only sharpened her wit and honed that laughter.

In fact, I remember laughing with her the day we met. Margie and her sister Georgia drove down to Abilene to visit Joanna, and they let me join them for pizza. But with Margie around, a meal always was only a pretense for stories and laughter. She told me this coed I dated had descended from a famous American icon—the woman who helped John Wilkes Boothe escape after shooting Abraham Lincoln.

Despite such disreputable lineage, I fell in love with Joanna and also with her mother. So, by the time I married Jo, I already felt like a son to Jim and Margie.

She kept us laughing through the years—when she deemed her fabulous meals “not fittin’” and when we sat around that same table playing cards. For her, card-playing provided an excuse to tell funny stories. And laugh.

More than I ever enjoyed laughing with her, I loved watching her make our daughters laugh. Lindsay and Molly always thought their Nanny was one of the funniest people they ever met.

Margie last laughed with the girls when we visited her Easter weekend, just days before age and illness caused her laughter to cease.

Margie Jarchow died April 19, after 83 years filled with fun, family and faith. We who love her grieve our loss, celebrate her release from pain and thank God for her life. And her laughter.

–Marv Knox

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

Posted: 4/27/07

EDITORIAL:
Let’s do something about immigration

Immigration ranks near the top of the list of great moral issues. If it were easy, somebody would have “fixed” it by now. But no matter how you look at it—either concern for the status quo or care for humanity—you see a challenge that needs to be resolved.

An editorial can’t do justice to the complexity of immigration. So, consider this a discussion-starter to accompany the package of articles on immigration in this paper. Let’s structure our thinking in three categories.

Problems

Immigration problems and the passion they stir swirl around three items:

• Security. Since 9-11, America has known it is insecure from terrorism and external catastrophe. Through the intervening years, many Americans have pointed to our porous borders as a source of that insecurity. So, many people want to shut the borders to keep us safe. To some degree, that is understandable. But folks who want to fence out Latin American workers to protect us from Islamic extremists make a huge leap of logic.

• Legality. Most laws, including those that regulate immigration, were made for solid reasons. Society has a vested interest in upholding laws. However, a one-dimensional interpretation that would deport every immigrant whose status is illegal for any reason is insufficient at best and certainly counter-productive.

• Economics. This issue cuts both ways. Some citizens want to regulate immigration to protect “American jobs.” But people in the Southwest who pay attention see two problems with that reasoning. Many immigrants come here to take jobs other residents don’t want. And significant portions of the Southwestern economy, particularly agribusiness, depend upon immigrant labor.

Principles

However they resolve the particular issues, people of faith should affirm at least three biblical principles:

• Care. Over and over, Scripture admonishes us to care for the alien. These Bible passages have not gotten dusty with age. The Old Testament’s admonitions to care for the stranger and Jesus’ call to minister to “the least of these” find abundant illustration among immigrants. Christians should serve immigrants, whatever their status.

• Family. “Family values” has become a political catchphrase. If you’re paying close attention, you see most immigrant workers put the political speechwriters to shame. They embody “family values” as they labor long and hard in demanding and often dangerous jobs so they can send most of their earnings back home to care for their families.

• Nation versus kingdom. Many Americans who are most agitated over immigration talk about “American interests.” And reasonable people understand the importance of national sovereignty and security. But biblically speaking, that’s a moot point. The kingdom of God transcends borders, and God loves all people equally, no matter what flag they wave.

Solutions

Obviously, solutions are difficult and will be hard to come by. But we can focus on three actions that will make a significant difference:

• Reform. As articles elsewhere in this paper note, no reform package is perfect. But giving up is not an option. Congress should start with some version of the STRIVE Act. At least it’s a start and will positively impact thousands of lives.

• Foreign aid. One way to solve the U.S. immigration crisis is by addressing the economic and political crises that drive good people away from their homelands. If we can help them secure freedom and some level of prosperity in their homes, they won’t have incentive to leave for America.

• Ministry. No matter where they came from and how they got here, all people are made in God’s image and deserve care, comfort and love from God’s people. We will determine our legacy by how we minister to them.

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

Posted: 4/27/07

Faith Digest

Court dismisses suit against Boy Scouts. A federal appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union that challenged the U.S. Department of Defense’s support of the Boy Scouts of America and their national Jamboree. In 1999, the ACLU filed suit claiming the “Boy Scouts’ policy requiring religious oaths” violated the separation of church and state. The ACLU objected to the the Boy Scouts holding their national Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia every four years because the Scout Oath begins: “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country.” A lower court had ruled a 1972 law that allowed the Defense Department to support the Scouts was unconstitutional because it advanced religion on government property, but the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that ruling.

Only one Brit in 10 attends church. A survey by a British charity indicates more than half of Britain’s adults claim to be Christian, but only one in 10 regularly attends weekly church services. Tearfund, a Christian relief and development charity, said its poll of 7,000 men and women over age 16 suggests Christianity remains the dominant faith in Britain, with 53 percent—26.2 million—of the adult population adhering to its beliefs. But those figures from 2006 also represent a sharp decline from the last British census, in 2001, when nearly three-quarters of adults identified themselves as Christian. The poll indicates only 7.6 million adults in a nation of more than 60 million people go to church each month, and only one in 10 attends each week. Two-thirds of the people polled said the only times they had gone to church were for weddings, baptisms and funerals.

Evangelical leader named to religious freedom panel. Former National Association of Evangelicals President Don Argue has been appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Argue is expected to start the position May 15, replacing Roman Catholic Bishop Ricardo Ramirez of Las Cruces, N.M. Argue is president of Northwest University in Kirkland, Wash., a school affiliated with the Assemblies of God. In 1996, he was appointed to serve on President Clinton’s Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom, which led to establishment of the commission. In 1998, Clinton chose Argue to be part of an official delegation of U.S. religious leaders to China. Argue was president of the National Association of Evangelicals from 1995 to 1998, when he resigned to take the university position.

Fingerprint scanner a tool of Antichrist, school employee believes. A public school employee in St. John the Baptist Parish, La., was suspended for refusing to use a biometric time clock that scans fingerprints, claiming the process violates his religious beliefs. Joe Cook, director of the Louisiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, urged the school board to allow Herman Clayton, a school system electrician and Baptist minister, to continue signing in and out of work, as he did for several months before being suspended without pay in February. Clayton objected to the fingerprint scanning system based on his belief in end-times prophecy. The St. John school district implemented the $75,000 fingerprint identification system last fall. Employees use it to clock in and out of work by placing a finger in front of a small scanner that recognizes key points on each employee’s finger.

‘Fundamentalist’ safety drill at school raises hackles. A public safety drill at a New Jersey school caught the ire of several conservative Christian groups and pastors around the country who charged local police and school officials with anti-Christian bias. The groups demanded formal apologies because mock gunmen in the drill at Burlington Township High School were marked as members of a “right-wing fundamentalist group,” the “New Crusaders,” who were intent on avenging the punishment given to a fictional student for praying before class. Walt Corter, who designed the exercise as public safety director for the Burlington police, said future drills will include only generic descriptions of the assailants. In a prepared statement, the Burlington Township School District insisted: “Any perceived insensitivities to our religious community as a result of the emergency exercise scenario are regrettable. It was certainly not the intent to portray any group in a negative manner.”

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

Posted: 4/27/07

Documentary on the power
of forgiveness cites Amish example

By Mary Warner

Religion News Service

ARRISBURG, Pa. (RNS)— Filmmaker Martin Doblmeier, who set out to explore the nature of forgiveness, was almost finished when the news broke about the Amish school shooting in West Nickel Mines, Pa., last October.

He went to Lancaster County to film a segment on what happened after a gunman invaded the school and killed five girls and then himself. He found an Amish delegation that went to the gunman’s widow to show support and forgiveness.

“We were convinced we could not make the film without the Amish,” Doblmeier said.

Their example is one of the segments featured in The Power of Forgiveness, to be aired next fall on PBS. The director—who made an acclaimed 2006 documentary on German pastor-theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer—said his latest topic engages all faith groups and the wider culture.

“People feel as though we’ve become an angry culture,” he said. “We are a nation at war. We are a litigious society. You can feel it in the movies we make, in the news at night.”

The documentary presents religious teachers with spiritual arguments for forgiveness and psychologists with utilitarian ones—about the beneficial effect on blood pressure, for example.

Research on forgiveness has exploded in recent years amid generous funding ear-marked for the topic. The Templeton Foundation and the Fetzer Institute have been eager to fund forgiveness studies, noted Donald Kraybill, who studies the Amish and appears in the documentary.

“I think what was so shocking to people was that the Amish forgave so quickly,” said Kraybill, a sociologist at Elizabethtown College. “Most psychologists would say forgiveness is a journey, but here were these people six hours after the shooting, walking over to say, ‘We forgive.’”

The collective nature of Amish forgiveness also was intriguing, Doblmeier said. With the strong support of the community, bereft parents “didn’t have to act out of anger,” he said.

Doblmeier hopes to study collective forgiveness more thoroughly before his documentary is completed—perhaps by visiting South Africa and its struggle to overcome the legacy of apartheid.

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

Posted: 4/27/07

Giuliani leads among evangelicals,
Clinton leads among Catholics

By Philip Turner

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Presidential hopefuls Rudolph Giuliani and Sen. Hillary Clinton hold early leads among key religious voting blocs in the race to win their party nominations, a national survey revealed.

The survey by the Pew Research Center shows religious voters leaning toward more recognizable candidates in the early stages of the race, said John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Giuliani, a Republican, leads Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., among white evangelical Republican-leaning voters, 27 percent to 23 percent. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was third (7 percent) even though he hasn’t announced his candidacy. The GOP’s fundraising leader, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, was fourth (6 percent) among this key group of Republican voters.

White evangelicals gave 78 percent of their votes to President Bush in 2004 and 72 percent to Republican congressional candidates in 2006.

White non-Hispanic Catholics are showing early support for Giuliani among those who lean Republican, at 37 percent. McCain is second (23 percent) among these voters, who went 56 percent in favor of Bush in the 2004 election. Gingrich and Romney are tied at 9 percent each.

Clinton leads among white Catholics who lean Democratic, with 33 percent of their support. According to exit polls, 50 percent of white Catholics voted for Democrats in the 2006 mid-term elections—a slight shift away from the GOP in the 2004 presidential results.

Former Vice President Al Gore, who has said he isn’t running for president, is second (22 percent), followed closely by 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards (21 percent). Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is fourth (12 percent).

The impact of campaign funds is about to be felt, likely shifting future poll numbers, Green said, adding that the $25 million raised by Obama and the $23 million by Romney so far this year will give them boosts.

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

Posted: 4/27/07

Anti-immigrant rhetoric
nothing new, historians say

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

If American Protestants today have trouble knowing how to accept and assimilate a new wave of immigrants, they at least can take comfort in knowing their forebears wrestled with similar issues.

“Americans have always struggled with immigrants. Non-conformist immigrants like Quakers and Baptists were exiled and sent back to England or the Caribbean by the colonial religious establishment,” church historian Bill Leonard noted. “Roger Williams (who founded the first Baptist church in the colonies) was an unacceptable immigrant.”

A “terrible animosity” fueled by anti-Catholic prejudice often characterized the response of the dominant Protestant culture in the United States toward a later influx of Irish, Italian and eastern European immigrants, said Leonard, dean of the Wake Forest University Divinity School.

Protestants often stereotyped Irish Catholics, in particular, as “lazy, clannish people who went to mass on Sunday morning and drank beer all Sunday afternoon,” he noted. The resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan coincided with the growth of the immigrant population in the United States, Leonard added.

“We must not forget that the KKK was not simply anti-black; it was also anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish and made a lot out of their immigrant status,” he said.

But anti-Catholic sentiment was not confined to the radical fringe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, historian Barry Hankins added.

“You didn’t have to be in a Klan meeting to hear anti-Catholic rhetoric. In polite Protestant circles—whether evangelical or liberal—anti-Catholic statements were viewed as acceptable and aboveboard,” said Hankins, professor of history and church-state studies at Baylor University.

To a large degree, Baptists and other Protestants sometimes disguised their anti-Catholicism by couching it in arguments regarding the separation of church and state, Leonard maintained.

“You could make a case that Baptists in the South in the early 20th century gave greater attention to separation of church and state language and issues because they feared the numbers of Catholic immigrants and their desire to have state funds for parochial schools,” he said.

Like those earlier waves of immigrants, the current influx of Hispanics from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America includes large numbers of Catholics. But today, resistance to immigrants seems to stem less from their religious background and more from issues of language and economics.

“One hundred to 150 years ago, it was assumed that one would want to learn English and, in fact, would have to learn English to become assimilated as an American,” Hankins said. But the United States today—particularly in the southwest—has moved toward a bilingual society, both Hankins and Leonard noted.

Roman Catholic attitudes toward immigrants have varied across the years, Leonard noted.

“Generally, Catholic churches have been welcoming places, as have synagogues,” he said. However, with the shortage of priests in the Roman Catholic Church now, some parishes are struggling to assimilate new Spanish-speaking members, and they are unsure how to respond to the growing number of Pentecostal and charismatic Hispanic immigrants, Leonard said.

Regardless of their feelings about immigration as a political issue, Baptists frequently have viewed various waves of immigrants as opportunities for evangelism, both Leonard and Hankins noted.

Baptists generally have been successful in starting churches for distinctive ethnic and language groups, he said. Their track record at assimilating immigrants into established churches has not always been as exemplary.

Click to view pdf of history timeline of legal immigration to the United States. (Graphic by Andre Malok/Newhouse News Service)

“It’s hard to live out biblical principles. Therein lies the struggle,” said Jon Singletary, director of the Center for Family and Community Ministries at Baylor University.

Baptists believe the Bible, and the Scriptures mandate love for neighbors and command God’s people to “welcome the stranger among us,” Singletary said.

But when the stranger speaks a different language and comes from an unfamiliar culture, fear of the unknown presents a barrier to ministry—a barrier that becomes greater when many immigrants lack legal documentation, he acknowledged.

Even so, Singletary remains optimistic. Working with the Baptist General Convention of Texas Immigration Services Network, he has seen churches in the Waco area begin to seek ways to “walk alongside people, including the strangers among us.”

Tihara Vargas, a graduate student in Baylor University’s School of Social Work and Truett Theological Seminary, works with the network to help dispel stereotypes about undocumented workers and encourage churches to see their responsibility to immigrants—regardless of their legal status.

“We try to help people get the documentation they need to come under the protection of the law and into compliance with the law,” she said.

She points to Jesus’ parable about the Good Samaritan as motivation for ministry.

“If Jesus were telling the story today, he’d probably talk about a migrant Mexican worker instead of a Samaritan,” Vargas 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: 4/27/07

How can churches legally
minister to illegal immigrants?

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

hen the doorbell rings at many churches, a person in need may be standing in the doorway seeking some food, clothes, counseling or encouragement.

If that individual is an undocumented immigrant, his presence presents legal and ethical issues many congregations do not know how to address, said Krista Gregory, consultant with the Baptist Immigration Services Network, started by the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

The network aims to educate church leaders about immigration matters and train Baptists to start church-based immigration centers that would help address people’s citizenship status issues.

“Baptist Immigration Services Network was created to assist churches in providing compassionate, legal and timely ministry to documented and undocumented immigrants of all nationalities,” she said. 

“In doing so, we often talk with pastors and church members who struggle with their understanding of Christ’s calling to minister to the least of these and their questions about changing immigration law.” 

Encounters with undocumented immigrants happen more often and in more places than people realize, Gregory said. While she receives calls from along the Texas-Mexico border and in major Texas cities, she also has heard from Baptists in New York, California, Georgia, Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas who have questions about ministering to undocumented residents.

“People need to understand the law, but they don’t need to be so scared of the law to not provide adequate ministry,” she said.

Ministers must use some common sense in their ministry. Transporting an undocumented immigrant a long distance away from the border may be prosecutable. Employing an undocumented resident is illegal. Churches must ask about citizenship status of each person they hire.

Also, it is illegal for a church to house undocumented workers in the sanctuary or parsonage.

Ministry to undocumented residents is permissible. A church can give undocumented residents food and clothes and can allow them to be full members of the congregation. A congregation is not required to report undocumented residents. If a minister knows an individual is an undocumented resident, he or she still can minister to that person.

The best advice is the simplest, Gregory said: Don’t ask people about their citizenship status. There’s no need. Since ministers don’t ask every person they help about their citizenship status, there’s no compelling reason why they should when they serve a particular ethnic group.

“If a neighbor wants to go to church, you’re going to take them to church,” she said. “You’re not going to ask immigration status.”

In some situations, churches feel they have to choose between performing ministry they feel God is calling them to do and the law. Some congregations have decided to break the law. Others keep it. The choice is theirs, Gregory said.

Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago is one congregation that felt it needed to break the law. The church has housed undocumented immigrant Elvira Arellano and her 8-year-old U.S citizen son eight months since she received a deportation order. Federal authorities have said they will apprehend her at a time and place of their choosing.

David Lazo, vice president of strategic partnerships for the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, understands why the Chicago church made the decision it did. Congregations are between “a rock and a hard place” when ministering to undocumented immigrants, he acknowledged.

Gregory encourages ministers and church leaders to become educated about immigration law by contacting the Baptist Immigration Services Network. The group can guide Baptists to experts across the country who can help people address citizenship issues and provide insight into what the law says about specific situations. Then, Baptists can make wise ministry choices. “Our churches and our pastors are going to be facing these kinds of ethical decisions.”

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