BRIEFS: Hymnal contents released

Posted: 3/20/08

BRIEFS: Hymnal contents released

New hymnal contents revealed. Titles of 674 hymns and worship songs included in the new Baptist Hymnal have been released by its publisher, LifeWay Christian Resources. “There is a good mix of hymns, worship music and praise choruses,” said Mike Harland, director of LifeWay Worship. “About 300 of these songs are new ones to our hymnal. Of these 300, about 200 have been published in other hymnals and about 100 are brand-new hymns and songs that haven’t been published in any hymnal before.” The full list of the songs is available at www.lifewayworship.com.

Schools’ group picks leader. The International Association of Baptist Colleges and Universities has elected Michael Arrington, provost of Carson-Newman College, as executive director. Arrington, 62, succeeds Thomas Corts, who in September was named by President Bush to coordinate education initiatives for the United States Agency for International Development. Arrington will retire as provost at Carson-Newman effective at the close of the academic year.

SBC preschool/children’s registration opens. Registration is open for families planning to enroll their children in June 8-11 preschool childcare or the children’s conference in conjunction with the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Indianapolis, Ind. For all information regarding registration, visit www.sbc.net and click on “2008 SBC Annual Meeting” then “Children/Students.”

Ouachita dean nominated for CBF post. Hal Bass, a dean at Ouachita Baptist University, has been nominated for moderator-elect for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Bass is a native of Corpus Christi who graduated from Baylor University and Vanderbilt University. He teaches political science and is dean of the school of social sciences at Ouachita. North Carolina pastor Jack Glasglow is the current moderator-elect. He will assume the office of moderator on June 20 at the conclusion of the CBF General Assembly in Memphis, Tenn. Harriet Harral of Fort Worth is the fellowship’s current moderator, and she will become chair of the nominating committee after the general assembly.




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Theologian urges greater sensitivity to suicide

Posted: 3/20/08

Theologian urges greater sensitivity to suicide

By Greg Garrison

Religion News Service

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS)—Churches can be a major factor in preventing suicide if they are willing to learn about the problem and reach out with compassion, said a theologian who specializes in pastoral care related to suicide.

“People who attend church have a lower suicide rate than people who don’t,” said Loren Townsend, a professor of pastoral ministry at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and author of Pastoral Care in Suicide. “Churches provide caring relationships that can help protect people from suicide.”

About 32,000 suicides occur each year in the country, a rate of about 11 per 100,000 people, according to the Suicide Prevention Action Network.

“Oftentimes times it’s a relational breakdown,” Townsend said. “They’re isolated in the world. Church relationships can provide a buffer for that.”

In the early Christian church, some ardent believers threw themselves off cliffs to demonstrate their devotion, Townsend said. The problem became so acute Augustine addressed the issue, equating self-killing and murder.

Later, theologian Thomas Aquinas wrote that since suicide victims could not ask for forgiveness, it was an unforgivable sin, Townsend said. “In our cultural thinking, there’s still an idea that it’s an unforgivable sin,” he said.

While churches have turned to a more compassionate view as more has become known about mental illness, there remain wrong stereotypes about suicide, Townsend said.

“There’s an idea Christians don’t do that,” Townsend said. “Christians are as vulnerable to mental health problems as anybody. Suicide almost always is a result of intense pain that doesn’t go away.”






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Is Religious Right dead or part of new center?

Posted: 3/20/08

Is Religious Right dead
or part of new center?

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

WASHINGTON (ABP)—Reports the Religious Right’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, according to Tony Perkins and Harry Jackson.

But Jim Wallis, Samuel Rodriguez, David Gushee and other leaders and authors argue that the Religious Right, while not dead, is certainly suffering from a failure to thrive.

Both sides may be right.

Perkins and Jackson, both prominent Religious Right leaders, hosted a Washington discussion on their new book, Personal Faith, Public Policy. In the text, they argue the movement known as the Religious Right is not dead or dying but actually is expanding—despite recent media stories noting a new generation of evangelicals is increasingly weary of the culture-war rhetoric that is the movement’s hallmark.

“I feel amazingly well; I don’t feel like I’m cracking up or I’m dying,” said Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. “These headlines, like the paper that they’re written on, are recycled.”

Perkins and Jackson—a Washington-area pastor and key African-American supporter of President Bush in his successful 2000 and 2004 election campaigns—note in the book that the “liberal media” has at least twice in the past pronounced the Religious Right dead. The first was in 1989 after the death of the Moral Majority. The second was in the late 1990s after Congress failed in its impeachment efforts and the Christian Coalition’s influence began to wane.

Jackson said the fact that many younger evangelical leaders seem as concerned with global poverty and the environment as with abortion rights or sexuality simply shows the Religious Right is evolving. “Our movement is not dead; it’s maturing,” he claimed.

But Wallis and other Christian leaders say that, inasmuch as a broad evangelical political movement exists and is maturing, it is maturing beyond the causes and structures of the Religious Right.

“I am not one of those who say the Religious Right is dead or gone,” Wallis, head of the Sojourners/Call to Renewal anti-poverty movement, said during the discussion. “What I have said is what has felt like a monologue is over, and a dialogue has begun.”

The mainstream media finally is beginning to realize that not all self-described evangelicals are socially or economically conservative, white or obsessed with legalized abortion, gay rights and government endorsements of Christianity, Wallis said.

“I am pro-life as well. The question is: How does a consistent life-ethic apply? How deep and wide does it go?” he said. “To me, it includes the 33,000 children who will die today as a consequence of poverty and disease.”

Jackson and Perkins, in their book and in the discussion, acknowledged that the Religious Right has, in some cases, been too closely identified with the Republican Party—and that both may have suffered a loss of confidence from evangelicals, as evidenced by the number who voted for Democrats in the 2006 mid-term congressional elections.

“I think we saw in 2006 there was some hesitancy to challenge the Republicans in their long train of scandals that derailed their majority,” Perkins said. “I know that I was criticized for speaking out against some of the Republicans, for instance, (disgraced Florida congressman) Mark Foley, because there was concern that if we spoke out against them we would lose our majority.”

Some questioners noted that the Republican Party, in turn, was poised to nominate a presidential candidate—Sen. John McCain of Arizona—who has had a contentious relationship with the Religious Right.

But Perkins said conservative Christians are still exerting influence in the party.

“I think the fact that we have a McCain candidacy shows that evangelicals are strong, and it’s not a Rudy Giuliani candidacy,” he claimed, noting the collapse of the moderate former New York mayor’s GOP campaign. “Clearly, the Big Apple values were seen as being totally inappropriate to the core of the Republican Party.”

The fact that Jackson and Perkins have written their book is itself vindication of the idea that evangelical politics is changing, said David Gushee, a Mercer University professor who has written a new book hailing the emergence of what he calls the “evangelical center.”

At a separate March 11 panel discussion on Gushee’s book, The Future of Faith in American Politics, Gushee said Jackson and Perkins are offering a “reformist vision” of the conservative evangelical political movement that seems to have a lot in common with what leaders like Wallis and others are saying.

“It looks like the evangelical center is indeed arriving and that many are converging toward that center,” Gushee said.

Rich Cizik, chief public-policy officer for the National Association of Evangelicals, said the emergence of new evangelical politics will change the “us-versus-them” tone with which many conservative Christians have addressed those who disagree.

“It’s moving, you see, from a zero-sum-game politics where someone else has to lose for us to win, to a common-good vision of politics,” he said.

Cizik should know. He has drawn repeated fire from the Religious Right’s old-guard leaders for his outspokenness and willingness not to toe the traditional conservative line on issues such as global warming and torture.

“In transactional politics, you exchange goods, services, votes or whatever in return. And the evangelicals were in effect saying to the leaders of the Religious Right, ‘We’ll give you our support’” in voting for a party that seemed to embrace the values they found important, Cizik said. But more moderate and liberal Christians, as well as non-Christians, fought back.

But, he continued, “Transformational politics is very, very different.”

The Religious Right might not be changing its tone altogether, though. For example, Perkins’ book assails those who support gay rights or strong church state-separation as “anti-Christian” and contends media and political elites continue to harbor anti-Christian biases.

Nonetheless, Perkins’ willingness to invite Wallis to appear on the same panel with him may itself be the sign of new cooperation with groups his movement has often vilified.

“We do have some common ground with Jim Wallis and others that approach some of the same issues, but we approach them different,” Perkins admitted.

“This is an example of a new dialogue,” Wallis said.






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IRS scrutiny of Obama’s denomination may signal political-speech crackdown

Posted: 3/20/08

IRS scrutiny of Obama’s denomination
may signal political-speech crackdown

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

WASHINGTON (ABP)—What is the IRS thinking?

That’s the question that many church-state experts asked themselves when news broke in late February about the Internal Revenue Service’s investigation of Sen. Barack Obama’s denomination.

By all accounts, this is the first time the IRS has investigated a denomination. The agency is scrutinizing a speech that Obama—an active member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for more than two decades—gave at a denominational meeting last year.

Officials of the United Church of Christ announced they were under federal investigation for potential violations of tax law. Federal law prevents most churches and other tax-exempt groups organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code from endorsing political candidates or parties.

But, after learning the details about the event, many experts in the area of political activity of churches have wondered why the IRS is investigating a denomination for a potential violation that is, at best, unclear. Some UCC supporters have even gone so far as to suggest the investigation may be politically motivated. The body is generally considered the most liberal major Protestant denomination in the United States.

Several church-state experts said they doubted the IRS would bow to political pressure in a church investigation. But the UCC case and other recent ones suggest the agency is cracking down on potential violations of the law during the 2008 campaign season.

“The one message that is clearest in this election cycle is that the IRS is taking its responsibility more seriously than ever to investigate this (or) any allegations of illegal political activity,” said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Lynn’s organization frequently files IRS complaints against churches and other religious organizations that appear to violate tax laws by involving themselves in partisan politics.

In a letter, IRS official Marsha Ramirez said “a reasonable belief exists” that the UCC violated the law with the Obama speech.

The agency’s concerns “are based on articles posted on several websites” that described Obama’s appearance at the denomination’s biennial General Synod meeting in Hartford, Conn., last summer, Ramirez continued. The senator—by then an announced Democratic candidate for president—spoke to about 10,000 church members, according to the denomination and news accounts.

But UCC officials said they took pains to ensure the speech was not perceived as a campaign event or an endorsement of the candidate.

Church officials invited Obama as a church member rather than in his capacity as a candidate and asked him to speak a year before he declared his intention to run for higher office, a UCC news release said. Obama was invited “as one of 60 diverse speakers representing the arts, media, academia, science, technology, business and government. Each was asked to reflect on the intersection of their faith and their respective vocations or fields of expertise.”

Prior to the speech, a church official told the crowd the appearance was not intended to be a campaign event and that campaign-related material and other forms of electioneering would not be allowed inside the event venue.

The IRS letter claimed that “40 Obama volunteers staffed campaign tables outside” the Hartford Civic Center, where the event was held. Church officials said they barred any campaigning inside the venue but could not prevent Obama’s campaign workers from setting up on the city street outside.

Obama’s speech, ironically, focused mainly on the proper intersection of faith and politics for Christians. At a few points in the oration, he lapsed into campaign-like language about policies he has advocated in the Senate—or would advocate in the White House—on moral issues such as health care. He also occasionally referred to his candidacy.

But, said a UCC attorney, the denomination shouldn’t be faulted for Obama’s occasional edging into campaign-like rhetoric.

“What the law requires is that the (tax-)exempt organization not engage in political activity,” said Don Clark, a Chicago lawyer who serves as the denomination’s national counsel. “The IRS has interpreted the law … that compliance would require restrictions not only on the behavior of the exempt organization, but on the behavior of the elected official. And so the issue that’s raised here is, if the organization controls its behavior, does everything that it can within its power, but the elected official does something … does the exempt organization, in effect, bear the brunt of the behavior of the elected official?”

The IRS conducts the vast majority of similar investigations into religious groups as responses to complaints filed with the agency’s regional field offices. The complaint that apparently spurred the IRS investigation, posted on a blog critical of the UCC’s leadership ( HYPERLINK "http://www.ucctruths.com" www.ucctruths.com), also mentions a denominational press release prior to the speech noting Obama was a presidential candidate who “has spoken often about his profession of faith, his membership in the socially progressive UCC and the need for Democrats to take seriously the concerns of religious Americans.”

But Lynn—who is an ordained minister in the UCC—said hanging the IRS case on that press release “is a pretty thin reed on which to base a claim that there’s something illegal being plotted when on the other side of the balance is just step after step to avoid this being given the appearance of a campaign appearance.”

Since the 2004 election, the IRS has conducted several prominent investigations of churches and leaders for political activity. In February, Wiley Drake of First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif., announced he was under investigation for using church letterhead and a church radio show to endorse Mike Huckabee for the GOP presidential nomination.

Two large churches—one liberal, one conservative—were investigated for sermons delivered from their pulpits just prior to the 2004 presidential election between President Bush and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry. Each sermon, critics said, while ostensibly about the candidates’ stances on certain moral issues, seemed calculated to recommend one over the other.

In the case of First Baptist Church of Springdale, Ark., the IRS dismissed the complaint Lynn’s organization had filed against it and its pastor, Ronnie Floyd.

But the agency extensively investigated All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Calif. In that case, the church’s former rector delivered a pre-election sermon that acknowledged both candidates were sincere Christians and that fellow believers could support either one in good conscience. However, the homily went on to denounce Bush’s Iraq war forcefully.

The agency closed the case against the congregation last fall. IRS officials told the church that, although the agency would impose no penalties on All Saints, it still believed the sermon had violated tax law.

All Saints’ legal tab for defending itself ran well into the six-figure range.

After the case closed, the church attempted to find out more about why it had been investigated. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, the congregation discovered coordination between the IRS and the Justice Department on the investigation at a stage that an attorney for All Saints described as “extraordinarily early” for an IRS probe.

“Normally, the Department of Justice becomes involved (in an IRS investigation) when a matter is headed to court,” said Marc Owens, a Washington-based tax attorney who represented the church.

But in All Saints’ case, “the coordination with the DOJ began virtually with the beginning of the examination phase,” Owens continued, referring to the second phase of an IRS inquiry. Judging from the documents they have received, the officials involved in coordinating between the agencies were career civil servants rather than political appointees, he said.

Lynn said such a consultation might have come up so early because of the sensitive legal nature of disputes between the government and churches.

“If I were a bureaucrat (for the IRS) and I found out that somebody was really fighting back and they were in any way discussing their free-speech rights, I’d be on the phone with the Justice Department sooner rather than later,” he said.

Nonetheless, he added, “it did strike me as unusual, but it may be unusual only because other people (under IRS investigation) haven’t filed those (freedom-of-information) requests” to find out more about their investigations.

Both Lynn and Owens said they doubted that such investigations are politically motivated.

“I resist the idea that there’s some kind of a crackdown or politicization of the Internal Revneue Service; I just don’t see any evidence of that,” Lynn said.

The Internal Revenue Service, which usually declines to discuss individual cases, did not respond to requests for comment from Associated Baptist Press. A Justice Department spokesman said his agency had no comment on the All Saints case.

Whatever the motivation for such aggressive investigations, Owens said, there are consequences for the churches under scrutiny.

“The issue there is whether there is some sort of attempt to chill (free) speech. And what we’re talking about is literally speech, and many times religious speech,” he said. “And the alacrity with which the IRS is moving is suggesting some sort of effort to head off further interactions.”




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Program offers stress relief for South Texas families

Posted: 3/20/08

Program offers stress relief
for South Texas families

By Haley Smith

Baptist Child & Family Services

DEL RIO—Most parents agree—raising a family can be tough. Doing it as a single mother or as the parent of a child veering out of control is even tougher.

Fortunately help is available in several southwest Texas communities through Baptist Child & Family Services programs. STAR—Services To At Risk youth—offers family counseling while Families For a Future concentrates on parenting courses and support groups. Both exist to help families communicate and create a violence-free lifestyle.

Weekend graduation retreats at Alto Frio encampment include final classes for parents and fun activities for children and youth who have completed family-enrichment programs sponsored by Baptist Child & Family Services.

“I am very thankful that the agency offers these wonderful programs in the area, especially considering the limited resources previously available in our small towns,” said Jerry Jimenez, probation officer for Ozona and Sonora.

Jimenez, who participated in Families for a Future with his wife and childen, continues to recommend the counseling and parenting courses to his struggling clients.

“There’s no roadmap to being a parent, but it helps greatly to have a support group that includes the entire family,” Jimenez explained. “It really helped my marriage and family to have a group to express frustration to and the chance to bounce ideas off of one another.”

STAR specifically services youth on a short-term basis through counseling and crisis intervention for families either mandated by the court system or for voluntary participants. The program teaches anger management and family communication through individual counseling sessions. Case managers even go into area schools to help encourage and monitor progress of the at risk youth.

“Our clients set goals through our programs. Our primary desire is to help them meet those goals through intervention and prevention,” said Raquel Frausto, program director of STAR and Families for a Future. “We are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week ready to respond when necessary.”

Families for a Future has a similar purpose, offering 12 sessions of parenting and youth workshops. Families participate as a unit, but parents, youth and children attend their own uniquely developed sessions.

Courses end with a weekend retreat and graduation ceremony celebrating the progress made over the three-month period.

Family fun days coordinated by the agency are offered throughout the year for participants in both programs.

The Garza family, who live in Sonora, had a successful experience with STAR in 2005, and they participated in the Families for a Future three times.

“The programs really helped us improve our communication and better our home,” Veronica Garza said. “I still refer back to our course booklet for wisdom in disciplining my boys.”

Garza first signed her family up for Families for a Future after a move. The family was in a new house, new city and new school. The boys needed someone to open up to other than Garza and her ex-husband. Garza was thankful BCFS even gave the boys’ father the opportunity to participate in the final retreat, although he could not attend the other sessions.

“We were very fortunate to find a program free of charge with a flexible schedule,” Garza said. “Originally, my boys did not want to go but ended up loving it and would take the classes again in a heartbeat.”

The second time around in the parenting courses, Garza met a woman who has become one of her best friends. The two continue to help hold each other accountable, attend Bible study, run errands together and take turns watching one another’s children.

“The program is beneficial to every family no matter their circumstance; we were thankful to find a program that reached out to our entire family,” Garza noted.






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BCFS gets first-time parents off to a Great Start

Posted: 3/20/08

Great Start equips families like the Cardonas with a free family education program to support the development of positive parenting skills. (Photo by Haley Smith/BCFS)

BCFS gets first-time
parents off to a Great Start

By Haley Smith

Baptist Child & Family Services

SAN ANTONIO—Baptist Child & Family Services seeks to equip first-time parents to get off to a “Great Start”—and reduce the risk of child abuse and neglect.

Great Start—a free family education program—uses home visitation to share parenting information.

“We really try to focus the program around self-growth, not just parenting, since we know you cannot grow in a parenting role until time is taken to work on self,” said Patricia Heredia, BCFS Great Start case manager.

Rosalie Cardona lost a daugher to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. She says Great Start helped her regain confidence in her parenting skills.

Rosalie and Lawrence Cardona, who signed up with the program in March 2007 and continue to take advantage of its services, recognize their positive progress can be accredited to that focus on nurturing self and then nurturing others.

After losing their first daughter to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, the Cardonas were very discouraged and anxious regarding their next parenting experience.

“Patricia, our case manager, really helped me with my confidence by coming to our home and working with me one on one. She encouraged me to get outside the house and helped me accomplish my goals, while helping my husband and me find time alone together,” Rosalie Cardona said.

“I think so many people are emotionally and physically beat down by parenthood, but are scared to reach out and ask for help,” her husband said. “Hearing the stories of others and knowing we’re not alone makes all the difference.”

Great Start works with five San Antonio hospitals, as well as with related fairs and events in the community, to identify parents who want to learn more about the program. In addition, hospital staff and other community agencies recommend the program to families they believe may benefit from the individual services provided by Great Start.

Referrals are then made to BCFS, Catholic Charities and the Family Service Association. BCFS targets first- time mothers who make up about 37 percent of those referrals. Of the mothers enrolling in the program, the agency has a 100 percent success rate of families remaining safe—defined as having no substantiated incident of abuse or neglect.

The Texas Department of Family & Protective Services and the United Way of San Antonio and Bexar County fund the program as a preventative service, meaning clients with open Child Protective Services cases cannot participate. Families with open CPS cases are referred to the Precious Minds, New Connections program, a parenting education program also offered through BCFS.

Great Start typically provides services to each family for about six months. During that time, surveys are used to identify family strengths and protective factors present in the home that prevent abuse. Surveys also assess parental attitudes, behaviors and knowledge. Results then are used to develop specific goals identified by the family to address gaps in knowledge and provide support.

The program uses the Nurturing Parenting Curriculum published by Family Development Resources to coach families in the values of love of life, respect for all living things, structure and discipline, as well as the value of laughter, humor and play.

“Case managers actively work to strengthen empathy in our participants,” said Donna Fleming, BCFS Great Start program director. “Through our services, we would like to help rekindle the joy in parenting.”

“I encourage case managers and clients within the program to remember that change is evolutionary,” Fleming said. “The program is not a magic pill; however, it is tool that can help parents move from being less to more nurturing.”

To find out more about the Great Start program, visit http://www.bcfs.net/GreatStart.




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Does the ‘evangelical center’ include moderate Baptists?

Posted: 3/20/08

Does the ‘evangelical center’
include moderate Baptists?

By Greg Warner

Associated Baptist Press

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (ABP)—If an “evangelical center” emerges from the current shake-up in American politics, will moderate Baptists be part of it? It depends on how comfortable moderate Baptists are with being considered “evangelicals” in the first place, some experts insist.

Moderate and progressive Baptists certainly share many beliefs and public-policy goals with the non-fundamentalist evangelicals making their presence felt on the public scene for the first time in three decades.

But Baptists aren’t technically evangelicals at all, many historians say. They come from a different theological and denominational lineage.

However, some theologians counter, if you look simply at what Baptists believe and how they practice their faith, they look very much like evangelicals.

That debate might make for interesting table conversation when moderate or progressive Baptists get together with kin from other denominational traditions. But then there’s that whole Religious Right thing. Its inflexible political agenda and conservative theology have turned off centrist Baptists and saddled evangelical centrists with a negative public image.

“Fundamentalists have hijacked the term ‘evangelical,’” lamented Baptist theologian Roger Olson, a Northern evangelical who moved to the Southern Baptist-dominated South a few years ago to teach.

A professor of theology at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary, Olson is more familiar with traditional evangelicalism than are the moderate Baptists with whom he associates in Waco.

Olson and others who embrace the “evangelical” label are trying hard to rehabilitate the definition to include non-fundamentalists. His latest book, How to Be Evangelical Without Being Conservative, is one attempt.

“If you define evangelicalism as core doctrinal beliefs, there’s no reason why Baptists would not be evangelicals,” agreed ethicist David Gushee, a Southern Baptist moderate who moves easily in the broader evangelical world. Baptists and evangelicals share beliefs in “the inspired Word of God, the importance of personal experience, living out their faith in every area of life, and the obligation to share their faith,” he said.

“Most moderate, former-SBC Christians are evangelical Christians, and most are evangelical centrists,” added Gushee, a professor of ethics at Mercer University. His recent book, The Future of Faith in American Politics, tracks the resurgence of the evangelical center as a significant political force.

Unlike Gushee, Olson prefers a definition of evangelicals based not on common doctrine but common Christian practices, which he describes as a “Jesus-centered piety.”

Seen in that light, Olson said, moderates in the South “are not as different as they think” from Northern evangelicals, who are far outnumbered in the North by Catholics, mainline Christians and those of other faiths.

Most historians date the evangelical movement to the early-and-mid-20th- century United States, when evangelicals offered an alternative to both mainline Protestant liberalism and reactionary fundamentalism. Baptists in America, who generally were not part of that struggle, grew out of European Anabaptist and British Baptist roots in the 16th century.

But Gushee contends the evangelical movement also has roots in an earlier era. “If you trace it back to the Protestant renewal movements all the way back to Luther, then I think Baptists are very much evangelicals,” he said.

“I have worked alongside evangelical Methodists, evangelical Pentecostals,” Gushee said. “They are brothers and sisters. There are distinctives about being Baptist, but there is also commonality with other Bible-believing Christians.”

But Gushee and Olson concede many moderate Baptists don’t want to be linked to evangelicals today because of the group’s perceived negative image. In recent decades, the popular definition of “evangelical” has become more akin to “social conservative”—particularly on the hot-button issues of abortion and gay rights.

Historian Bill Leonard, an expert on Baptist origins, said Baptists’ discomfort with evangelicalism predates the Religious Right.

“Moderate Baptists certainly have affinity with classic evangelicalism, but they have also been concerned about several aspects of the movement,” said Leonard, dean of the Wake Forest University Divinity School in North Carolina.

He also cited the movement’s penchant for a rationalistic approach to theology and its mostly regional appeal: “Some said evangelicalism was a ‘Northern phenomenon.’”

Likewise, moderates’ theological debates with Southern Baptist conservatives “often soured moderate Baptists toward identifying with any movement that seemed too doctrinaire,” Leonard said in an e-mail interview.

“On the other hand, there are indeed many moderate Baptists who are unashamedly evangelical in their approach to doctrine, faith and ethics, insisting that evangelicalism is the overarching movement that will unite Baptists around categories distinct from the old moderate-conservative debates that were present in the Southern Baptist Convention.”

The discomfort was also present on the other side of the fence, he said.

“Many traditional evangelicals, especially north of Baltimore, have been hesitant to include Baptists in the South in the evangelical camp, in part because (Southern Baptists) seemed less interested in classical theology and more concerned about popular, pietistic religion, and in part because (Northern evangelicals) did not fully understand the ethos of Southern Protestantism and its culture.”

On that point, Olson agreed.

“Minnesota and Texas are totally different,” he said. Even when they share many opinions and beliefs, evangelicals North and South “just don’t understand each other.”

“The takeover of the SBC is so unique, people in the North just shake their heads,” he said. “Until I got here, I couldn’t even comprehend that.”

“The great tragedy,” Gushee added about the SBC, “is a great denomination came under control of a party that required leadership to be aligned with the evangelical right.”

Gushee recently left a teaching position at Union University, a conservative Baptist school in Tennessee closely tied to the SBC, and found a more tolerant academic climate at Mercer University in Georgia.

The welcome he has received is “the same spirit that welcomed me” when he left Catholicism as a teenager and ventured into a Baptist church, he said. Gushee remains hopeful that one day “that natural diversity is allowed to surface again” among Southern Baptists.

He sees some “stirrings” indicating that is possible, but he added, “I’m just glad my future doesn’t depend on it.”








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RIGHT or WRONG: Membership for couple ‘living in sin’?

Posted: 3/14/08

RIGHT or WRONG:
Membership for couple 'living in sin'?

Our pastor recently presented a couple for membership in our church. He introduced them as having made professions of faith in Christ and as husband and wife, although they have different last names. One friend told me they had been living together for several years. The congregation voted them into membership, but surely we shouldn’t bring people into our congregation living in sin, should we?


Your concern for the standard of church membership reveals a respect for the witness of the body of Christ. Even so, it is probably true that more harm is done to the gospel by those who claim it from the inside than by those who attack it from the outside.

The struggle with which you and the church must contend is the identity and consequence of “living in sin.” Jesus addressed the situation of the woman “living in sin” by saying to her accusers, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7b). The attackers’ silence reveals that even the most pious would confess that we are an imperfect people. The Apostle Paul answered Jesus’ challenge by writing, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). If we are living at all, we are all “living in sin.” Yet the church has perfected the art of rock-throwing.

Before you go in search of a rock pile, perhaps you ought to reconsider what you heard. Your pastor identified these individuals as husband and wife. The different last names and a rumor seemingly sparked quick judgment, discounting your pastor’s assessment of their relationship and fanning the gossip flames. Blinded by our all-too-common penchant for hasty verdicts, we eagerly aim the rock of judgment.

Your condemnation could be based on nothing more than an unfounded presupposition toward the wife’s retention of her maiden name. Suppose your pastor is wrong and your friend is right; a need for some resolution remains. Surely, follow-up conversation by the pastor, outreach leaders, Sunday school leaders or deacons is initiated with any who join your church. There can be discussion raising the principle that your church cannot receive people who live in what appears to be an arrangement that counters New Testament principles regarding marriage. Quite possibly the new converts have no knowledge of this guideline. Ordinarily, explanation is received gracefully. Time is needed to patiently work with them in their life situation, to help them move toward a marital arrangement that is a more positive one to be projected to the congregation and the community.

At the least, you are discovering most churches need to be more deliberate in their treatment of new members, both in recruiting them and in follow-up as you assimilate them as smoothly as possible into the larger membership.

Allen Reasons, senior minister

Fifth Avenue Baptist Church

Huntington, W. Va.


Right or Wrong? is sponsored by the T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Hardin-Simmons University's Logsdon School of Theology. Send your questions about how to apply your faith to btillman@hsutx.edu.





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Nabors resigns as BGCT chief financial officer

Posted: 3/13/08

Nabors resigns as BGCT chief financial officer

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

David Nabors

DALLAS—David Nabors has resigned as treasurer and chief financial officer of the Baptist General Convention of Texas effective April 15.

In a letter to BGCT Interim Executive Director Jan Daehnert, Nabors expressed gratitude for his time on the BGCT Executive Board staff.

“I cherish and thank the Lord for the six years I have been able to serve the Baptists of Texas in this calling,” he wrote.

“Many life-long friendships have been made during my tenure, and I especially appreciate the staff for their hard work and support. Our combined efforts have served the Lord in wonderful ways I never dreamed would be my privilege.”

Daehnert indicated Nabors’ resignation is the turning of a page in Texas Baptist history. In recent months, convention Chief Operating Officer Ron Gunter resigned and Executive Director Charles Wade retired. Randel Everett will begin as the convention’s Executive Director March 31.

Daehnert said he is working on plans for the transition period between Nabors and the next chief financial officer.

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




Prof claims he has found lost Ark of the Covenant

Posted: 3/14/08

Prof claims he has found lost Ark of the Covenant

By Brittani Hamm

Religion News Service

LONDON (RNS)—Brushing back a thick layer of dust, Tudor Parfitt revealed a distinctive interwoven pattern carved around the outside of the “terribly, terribly damaged” wooden artifact tucked away on the bottom shelf of a Zimbabwe warehouse.

Tudor Parfitt discovered this wooden drum, called a ngoma lungundu, in a Zimbabwe warehouse. Parfitt believes it is the Ark of the Covenant—or something like it—that was carried into Africa by the Lemba tribe. (RNS photos/Courtesy of Tudor Parfitt)

“The moment I saw it, I felt there was something weird about it,” said Parfitt, a professor of modern Jewish studies at the University of London’s School of African and Oriental Studies. “I wasn’t simply in the presence of a neutral object.”

Parfitt believes he has found the Ark of the Covenant—the legendary vessel that once housed the Ten Commandments—or at least something like it.

In his new book, The Lost Ark of the Covenant: Solving the 2,500 Year Old Mystery of the Fabled Biblical Ark, Parfitt describes how he found the artifact in a global trek that would have made Indiana Jones proud. He was shot at in Ethiopia, escaped capture by Islamist outlaws in Yemen and enlisted the help of a cannibalistic tribe in Papua New Guinea.

Parfitt’s 20-year hunt ended last year in Zimbabwe at the Harare Museum of Human Science, where he found his treasure in a dusty storeroom.

According to the Book of Exodus, the Ark of the Covenant—a gold-covered container carried on poles, topped with two golden cherubim facing each other—was crafted on orders from God given to Moses at Mount Sinai.

Tudor Parfitt, a professor of modern Jewish studies at the University of London, claims to have discovered the Ark of the Covenant—or something like it.

Parfitt, however, thinks it is unlikely a group of ex-slaves wandering in the desert had the means to create an object so elaborate. That’s why the piece he found, a carved wooden drum, seems more likely, he said.

“It’s not like anything that we encounter in our daily lives,” Parfitt said. “I think it was both a musical instrument that goes into battle and some kind of weapon using technology we don’t quite understand.”

Parfitt began to suspect the Ark of the Covenant was a drum in the late 1980s while studying an African tribe called the Lemba.

Using genetic testing, he was able to verify a piece of their oral tradition, that they descended from Israelites. At the time, his discovery was featured on 60 Minutes and the BBC.

Another idea central to the Lemba’s oral tradition was their sacred “ngoma lungundu,” a wooden drum the tribe’s Israelite priests brought with them from Jerusalem.

“At that time, I thought to connect (it) too close to the Ark of Covenant was too off-the-wall,” Parfitt said. “There wasn’t the remotest amount of evidence.”

But after studying the similarities, Parfitt concluded the ngoma and the Ark of the Covenant were one and the same. Both were the dwelling place of God, carried on poles, forbidden to touch the ground and connected with death, fire, smoke and noise.

Lemba tribal lore says the ngoma exploded and destroyed itself, an idea Parfitt used to explain why his relic was radiocarbon dated to A.D. 1350. Parfitt believes the remains of the original Ark of the Covenant spawned the ngoma—an ark-junior, so to speak.

“It presumably is the son of the original,” Parfitt said. “It had the same function. It was holy and had precious secrets kept inside, and it was also a weapon. Then it disappeared, and all that was left was the legend.”

Some biblical scholars and archaeologists are skeptical; Parfitt is not the first person to lay claim to the lost treasure.

“It may be that this tribe developed their own Ark of the Covenant, but it doesn’t quite line up with the Tabernacle,” the Israelites’ portable worship tent that housed the Ark, said Roy Bender, who gives tours of a full-sized model of the Tabernacle at the Mennonite Information Center in Lancaster, Pa.

Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeological Review, adds, “Many scholars regard his claims with a very jaundiced eye.”

The original ark disappeared after the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem in 586 B.C., and finding it has become the obsession of thousands of adventurers who understand its significance to Christians, Muslims and Jews alike.




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




Around the State

Posted: 3/14/08

Around the State

Wayland Baptist University will hold a preview weekend March 28-29 for prospective students. Participants will have an opportunity to attend classes and chapel and eat in the cafeteria. The afternoon features a variety of games, activities and campus tours. The evening feature is a concert by Hawk Nelson and Run Kid Run. Saturday also features a variety of activities. To register, call (800) 588-1928.

A senior adult camp will be held April 21-24 at Alto Frio Encampment in Leakey. Paul Powell will be the preacher, D.L. Lowery the Bible study teacher, and Dale Durham and Ginger McKay will lead the music. For more information or to make reservations, call (830) 232-5271.

Wayland Baptist University kicked off the spring semester with a preview of its upcoming centennial celebration as nearly 30 descendants attended a chapel service. One of those in attendance, Beulah McInnish, is founder James Wayland’s granddaughter and at 99 his oldest living relative. Bob Wayland, a grandson of the school’s founder, also presented the school with the double-barreled shotgun Wayland carried on his house calls as a doctor. The gun, which is more than 100 years old, will be on display at Wayland Museum of the Llano Estacado.

Faye Jarvis received the Howard Payne University Woman’s Club’s Yellow Rose Award for more than 60 years of service to the university. Her family connection to the university spans four generations, stretching back to its origins as Daniel Baker College. After the death of her first husband, she served for three years as a Mission Service Corps volunteer working as dorm director for Veda Hodge Hall, and was commonly known as the “First Lady of Veda.” While there, she met her second husband and later was the morning receptionist for the Mabee University Center. She continues as a volunteer in a variety of capacities. Danielle Parkinson, an elementary education major from Farmers Branch, received the Yellow Rose Scholarship.

The East Texas Baptist University School of Fine Arts recently paid tribute to long-time choral director James Moore by premiering an anthem commissioned in his honor. The ETBU Concert Choir performed “Prayer for Grace,” composed by Daniel Gawthrop, during its annual spring concert Feb. 21. Moore, who has served the school more than 14 years, received a framed copy of the score.

Anniversities

Crosspoint Fellowship Church in Abilene, fifth, Jan. 9. Jerry Hendrix is pastor.

Jim Manning, 15th, as pastor of First Church in Franklin, March 2.

Buddy Sipe, 15th, as pastor of Cottonwo0d Church in Lorena, March 14.

Jack Willoughby, 10th, as pastor of Calallen Church in Corpus Christi, March 16.

Odilon Rojas, 10th, as pastor of Iglesia Manantia de Vida in Whitesboro, March 17.

Bruce Prindle, fifth, as pastor of First Church in Midlothian, March 23.

First Church in Cotulla, 125th, March 30.

Wayne Shuffield, fifth, as pastor of Battetown Church in Cameron.

Bob Gregory, fifth, as pastor of Greenvine Church in Burton.

First Church in Weinert, 100th, April 5-6. The celebration will begin at 6 p.m. Saturday and continue at 10 a.m. Sunday. Past and present pastors and members will take part in the services. A video slideshow also will be shown. A church cookbook has been compiled and will be available for purchase. For more information, call (940) 673-8262. Dan Bullock is pastor.

University Park Church in San Antonio, 60th, April 12-13. Previous members are asked to contact the church at (210) 433-3203. Robert Canion is pastor.

Fairy Church in Hico, 125th, April 13. Jan Daehnert will be the guest speaker. A meal will follow the morning service. A 2 p.m. service will feature Richard Ray of First Church in Wink. Testimonies, special music and a rededication service will be included. For more information, call (254) 796-2720. Bob Ray is pastor.

First Church in Freer, 75th, April 19-20. The celebration will start at noon Saturday with a picnic. There will be a band and old-fashioned games to play or watch. Snow cones will be available all afternoon. At 4 p.m., a tent meeting will be held. Sunday services at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. will feature former pastors and members. A noon meal also will be served. For more information, call (361) 394-6005. Tim Walshe is pastor.

Carter Lyles, 10th, as pastor of Bethel Church in Clardy, April 20.

David Michael, 55th, in ministry, April 23. He has been pastor of Wynnewood Church in Dallas the past five years.

First Church in Carrizo Springs, 130th, April 26-27. Robert Krause is pastor.

First Church in Elmendorf, 100th, April 27. The celebration will begin with registration and coffee at 9 a.m. followed by Sunday school under the tent, worship and lunch. For more information, call (210) 635-8588. Joe Canales is pastor.

Retiring

Dale Turner, as pastor of Austin Street Church in Yoakum, March 30. He served his present church six years and has been in ministry 45 years. He previously served as associate pastor of Southcrest Church in Corpus Christi and was pastor of West Heights Church in Corpus Christi, First Church in Lolita, and Grace Church in Houston.

Events

Elm Grove Church in Waelder marked the 18th year of Pastor Hoyt Hunnicutt March 4.

Stephen Goacher, associate professor of music at Howard Payne University, will debut music from his latest instrumental album at First Church in Brownwood April 6 at 6:30 p.m. and at Crescent Heights Church in Abilene April 13 at 3 p.m.

The Heights Church in Richardson will hold a car and motor show April 12 from noon until 4 p.m. Among the classic and exotic cars to be on display will be a 1969 Camaro Rally Sport SS, a 1992 Porsche 968 Cabriolet and a 1999 Ferrari 550 Maranello. In addition, vintage military vehicles will be on display, and the Dallas Fire Museum will showcase antique fire equipment. The entry fee for cars, trucks and motorcycles to be displayed is $10 or 10 canned goods to benefit a local food bank. Registration will begin at 11:30 a.m. To preregister, call (972) 530-4000. The event is free. Gary Singleton is pastor.

Gaston Oaks Church in Dallas will hold a reunion April 26-27 for members of what was Gaston Avenue Church at the church’s prior location at Gaston and Haskell, now the site of Criswell College. Events include a dinner at 6 p.m. Saturday, preceded by a tour of the facilities. Dickie Dunn of the Baptist General Convention of Texas will be master of ceremonies at the dinner. The dinner will cost $15, and reservations must be made by March 29 at donnaww@verizon.net. Sunday morning’s 10:30 a.m. worship service will be preceded by coffee at 9:30 a.m. The worship service will include testimonies from past members and staff and a look at the future by Pastor Bruce Troy. Jerry Johnson, president of Criswell College, will issue a welcome. The reunion is being organized by youth group members from the 1950s and 1960s. Dick Baker will lead the singing and the choir. For more information, call (214) 343-7922.

The Women on Mission of Adamsville Church in Adamsville led an effort that saw children, teens and adults of the church create 298 Valentine cards that were taken to three nursing homes in Lampasas. Glynn Tyson is pastor.

First Church in Jacinto City has closed its library and has many volumes to be given away. For more information, call Edith Thompson at (713) 453-2118.

Michelle McClendon was the guest preacher at Second Church in Lubbock on Martha Stearns Marshall Day of Preaching, Feb. 3. Seventy churches in 14 states invited women to preach in their pulpits that day as a celebration of women in the pulpit and to educate congregations about women in ministry.

Revival

Parkview Church, Littlefield; March 23-26; evangelist, Rick Ingle; music, Paul and Christy Newberry; pastor, Roger Ashley.




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




Muslim leader decries American ‘bigotry’

Posted: 3/14/08

Muslim leader decries American ‘bigotry’

By Bruce Nolan

Religion News Service

NEW ORLEANS (RNS)—American culture’s view of American Muslims and Islam steadily is deteriorating under an onslaught of “bigotry” on cable news shows, newspaper op-ed pages and in the blogosphere, an Arab-American activist said.

Commentators and politicians have devoted hours of air time to misrepresenting Islam and fueling suspicion about American Muslims, said Hussein Ibish, founder of the Foundation for Arab-American Leadership in Washington, D.C.

Hussein Ibish

Ibish, formally trained as a literature scholar at the University of Massachusetts, works in public policy now.

Ibish appears as an occasional guest on cable talk shows to represent an Arab-American point of view. He has had at least a couple of sharp exchanges with Michelle Malkin of Fox News.

Since 9/11, he said, commentators such as Malkin, Ann Coulter, Charles Krauthammer, Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz have transferred old anti-Arab stereotypes to Islam, in a stream of “incredibly bigoted commentary” that would not have been tolerated before then.

In this context, Ibish said, the West sees Islam as bent on its destruction and American Muslims as suspected allies of terrorists. Thus, ethnic profiling becomes reasonable and forced internment or mandatory identification of Muslims becomes a potential remedy, he said. Ibish said he did not want to sound alarmist.

“This is still a great country to live in,” he said. But a growing climate of suspicion toward Muslims makes the situation steadily worse, he added. “There are people who want to make it impossible for the American Muslim community to engage in dialogue.”




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