Posted: 2/04/08

Inmates at Mexican women’s
prison find escape in music

By Analiz González

Buckner International

MEXICO CITY— The windows at Santa Marta Prison face in, so the inmates can never look out to see the surrounding peeks, which rise around the prison at night like solid beacons of hope. All they ever see is gray—walls, floors, ceilings.

Delia Ramirez is 19, but could pass for 14. She was assaulted by a man who tried to rape her. So she killed him. Now she sits in prison with a khaki uniform, which means she’s still awaiting trial. She is a child among women.

“I am not a Christian,” Ramirez said. “I would like to be one. But I just can’t bring myself to believe in God. It’s hard to believe in anything good when everything is so unfair.”

Santa Marta Prison in Mexico City is surrounded by barbed wire. All of the prison's windows face inside, so inmates cannot see outside the walls.

Another prisoner said she is incarcerated for accidentally running over a child and killing him. No one can bail her out. Another said she stabbed her husband when she caught him sexually assaulting their child.

Not all of the women have stories like this. Some have been in and out of prison multiple times for theft or violence. But they all long for freedom. Their eyes fill with tears when they talk of the children they will never raise.

For many, they find their only escape in music classes taught by Jorge Quezada from Iglesia Bautista Horeb. And through those classes, some have found faith in Christ.

Quezada teaches the women rondallas, or traditional Mexican tunes. One of their favorite songs, their “anthem,” as Quezada calls it, tells the story of a repentant rebel who was never loved.

“But I would like to be like that child, like that man who is full of joy,” they sing. “And I would like to give everything in me, all in exchange for that friendship and to sing, and to smile and forget all of my anger, and to laugh, and to live and to give only love.”

One of the inmates wrote a letter of thanks to visitors from Buckner International and Iglesia Bautista Horeb.

“The important thing,” she wrote, “is that we can express feelings though music and be able to share the loneliness that lives with us in this place. … We know that we are somewhat marginalized by society, but we know we have the company of an all-powerful God.”

Posted: 1/29/08

Atlanta meeting may prompt
real change, some Baptists insist

By Hannah Elliott

Associated Baptist Press

ATLANTA (ABP)—The Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant meeting will feature some big-name guests—Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Tony Campolo and John Grisham, to name a few. But after the star-studded dust settles, what will emerge from the convocation?

Some say it’s too soon to tell what exactly will come of the gathering, scheduled Jan. 30-Feb. 1 in Atlanta. Organizers hope it will improve Baptists’ image and unite them in a new wave of social activism. Others wonder whether it will lead denominational bodies to work closer together or urge grassroots entities to band together—or both.

David Goatley, president of the North American Baptist Fellowship, an umbrella group for regional and national Baptist bodies, says he’s optimistic about the event’s lasting effects. Baptists have never before attempted a collaborative effort on this scale, he noted—especially between historically Anglo and African-Americans organizations. “Whatever the results, it’ll be worth the experiment,” Goatley said.

Political controversy

Detractors say the experiment is more of a political rally than anything else. With Clinton, Carter and other prominent Democrats featured during an election year, some Baptist conservatives have claimed the event is aimed at improving the Democratic Party’s image among Baptists.

It didn’t help that the event’s most prominent Republican speaker, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, cancelled after Carter was quoted as sharply criticizing President Bush. Huckabee said he withdrew so he would not appear to approve of “what could be a political, rather than spiritual agenda,” he told the Florida Baptist Witness, a newspaper affiliated with the conservative Florida Baptist Convention.

Organizers say any political overtones are unintentional.

“My feeling is that we’re taking the best people we know, the people in the trenches … and trying to connect that up and let that flow,” said Jimmy Allen, a former Southern Baptist Convention president. “And then our task is to find out what we have and to keep it moving.”

Indeed, Republican Senators Lindsay Graham (S.C.) and Charles Grassley (Iowa) will speak during the event, which is the brainchild of Carter and Bill Underwood, president of the Baptist-affiliated Mercer University.

Diana Garland, dean of Baylor University’s School of Social Work, likened the meeting to a family reunion “after a very long hiatus.” It will help Baptists understand their heritage and claim an identity on both a grassroots and a denominational level, she said—and the beautiful part is that it’s “not a denominationally organized meeting.”

Making connections

“It’s not just about making connections, it’s about finding people” who share the same vision and goals,” said Garland, who will speak in a session on breaking the cycle of poverty. “This event is asking, ‘Where are we going as Baptists?’”

To hear event organizer Allen tell it, it’s too soon to tell where exactly they’ll end up.

“It’s hard to project” the outcome, he said. “If you look at the list of people we’ve got, you’re talking about the folks who are on the front lines (of ministry). We think a great momentum is going to flow out of that. We don’t know where it’s going to go, but we’re building on it.”

According to Allen, leaders have invited experts in fields like theology, law and politics so that they’ll disseminate best practices and network with their Baptist colleagues.

“The process is built for maximum participation … something that can evolve after the meeting is over,” he said. “We’ve got the best group I’ve ever seen. I’m just awed at the number of people who have in-depth experience in the areas in which they’re involved.”

Richard Munoz, director of the Immigration Service and Aid Center, is one such person. He’s scheduled to speak in a special session called “Welcoming the Stranger,” in which he plans teach church leaders what they can and cannot do legally to minister to immigrants, he said.

Munoz’s organization helps churches deal with several immigration-related issues. In an election year, he noted, the subject comes up a lot.

“You know, immigration is not just a border-state thing; it’s across the country,” said Munoz, who has already talked with other immigration experts who will attend the event. “We are very excited that (the event’s organizers) had a call for speakers because we can kind of share our ministry that we are doing in Texas, and hopefully that gets transplanted to the other states.”

Politically charged issues

But the fact that the meeting will deal with politically charged issues like immigration indicates to some that its agenda is being driven by moderate and progressive Baptists. Garland said she has sensed some internal conflict and confusion in churches that want to send delegates to the meeting but that are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention —the large and conservative Baptist body that is not officially participating in the event. Many of the event’s organizers were moderates who have left the SBC since conservatives solidified their control over the denomination in the 1990s.

But Garland said no matter what Baptists may think about a certain issue, poverty is one cause around which they can unite.

“Yes, we’ve been shooting at one another for years,” she said. “And instead here is a time when a time when we’re saying, ‘How many Baptists of different stripes and spots can we gather together to talk about what Jesus called us to do, which is to bind up the broken-hearted and set captives free and seek social justice and respond to issues of global poverty?’”

Munoz, too, said the often-partisan nature of his particular expertise—immigration— shouldn’t have a bearing on the event as a whole.

“You can minister to folks whatever your stance is on immigration. We can all agree that we can be a good citizen like it says in Romans 13—to be the presence of Christ,” he said. “Really, if you think of it in terms of ministry, these (immigrants) are going to be the people you’re around. So whatever your stance is on immigration, whatever you think should be done, that’s for the politicians to decide.”

Diversity adds quality

Leo Thorne, associate general secretary of American Baptist Churches USA, said the diversity of political opinion actually adds quality to the discussion.

“It doesn’t make any difference what decision you make or action you take, there are always people who use their freedoms to express disagreement. That’s rich; that’s energizing. That’s wonderful that we can have a diversity of opinions of issues,” he said. “The bottom line is that the event is going to happen. There are thousands of people coming from all over, from (many) countries. That in itself is a testament to the fact that something is happening, something good. If there are those who disagree, that is OK with me.”

One of the biggest questions for the 10,000-plus expected attendees is whether the event will promote a grassroots surge of action among Baptist groups—or foster renewed dedication of denominational bodies to social-justice programs.

Capitalizing on what's learned

Thorne said he suspects denominational leaders will provide the structure and impetus for Baptists to capitalize on what they learn in Atlanta.

“The grassroots work will happen, there’s no doubt about that,” he said. “But there needs to be structure, and the denomination provides that.

“With the North American Baptist Fellowship, there is a structure in place already to take what is the outcome of the New Baptist Covenant and run with it. We don’t have to invent something to carry it forward. The denominational leaders are committed.”

Goatley, who is executive secretary of the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Society, a historically African-American Baptist group, has taken a more deliberate approach. He is using denominational promotion to trigger grassroots activism. He has compiled a document outlining opportunities for action for three groups—Baptist “communities” or denominational groups, Baptist congregations, and individual households.

'Summer of Jubilee'

Called “The Summer of Jubilee,” the effort encompasses seven weeks of service for Baptists in June and July. It urges Baptist communities to work with immigrants along the Mexican-U.S. border and help people still struggling after Hurricane Katrina. It urges Baptist churches to adopt the causes of at-risk kids and the elderly. Individual families will spend the time planting trees, cleaning streams and woodlands, and changing household lights to energy-efficient lighting.

“The long-term possibilities are ultimately dependent upon the openness and discernment of various Baptist believers to align ourselves with new opportunities of service inspired by the Holy Spirit,” Goatley said in an e-mail. “We had sought not to prescribe explicit action steps. We are creating space and a place for Baptists to find new sisters and brothers with whom they can explore new service opportunities.”

Goatley said denomination heads will record the efforts through Internet reporting and networking. Celebration organizers will also record and assess social work done after the January event. Allen said volunteers in Atlanta will attend every breakout session and record dialogue, contact information, areas of interest and skills of the people who attend. The information then will be entered into a resource database for later use.

Communication crucial

Communication before, during and after the event will be crucial, organizers say. They plan to erect event-related websites, send follow-up newsletters and even stream video of conferences for people who can’t attend. They hope the push to make the conference as accessible as possible will draw Baptists closer in unity, Thorne said.

“One of the things that is really critical is this emphasis on unity,” he said. “We’re not going to do everything the same way, but we can be united in spirit. We can be united in the cross. We can be united in mission.”

Posted: 1/30/08

Unity the focus of New Baptist
Covenant gathering, organizers insist

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

ATLANTA—If a spirit of unity prevails at the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant, organizers of the historic interracial meeting said they will consider the gathering a success.

And participants in the event will remain focused on the biblical mandate to show compassion and care for the needy, not become distracted by partisan politics “if we can prevent it,” former President Jimmy Carter added.

Event co-chairs Carter and Mercer University President Bill Underwood joined other members of the meeting’s steering committee in responding to reporters’ questions prior to the opening session at Atlanta’s Georgia World Congress Center.

Carter noted he and his wife, Rosalynn, had observed in their international travels how divisions within Christianity have been one of the faith’s greatest hindrances. And, he added, Baptists are perhaps known more than any other Christian group for their own internal divisions.

Perhaps the New Baptist Covenant—an informal alliance of more than 30 racially, geographically and theologically diverse Baptist groups throughout North America claiming more than 20 million members—can set an example for the church at large, Carter noted.

“If we can do it, maybe other Christians can do it as well,” he said.

A year of planning

The Atlanta meeting grew out of a year of planning and was scheduled to follow a joint meeting of the four largest historically African-American Baptist groups in the United States.

Representatives from the National Baptist Convention, USA; the National Baptist Convention of America; the Progressive National Baptist Convention and the National Missionary Baptist Convention of America had scheduled a joint mid-winter meeting for Atlanta, and the New Baptist Covenant celebration piggybacked on that meeting.

Many of the other Baptist groups joining in the celebration are predominantly comprised of Anglo or Hispanic members. The celebration’s most obvious diversity became evident as multicultural crowds filled the hallways of the meeting venue.

• See latest photos and the latest video clips from the New Baptist Covenant Meeting. (And go here to see our complete coverage of the event).

Underwood quoted Martin Luther King’s famous dream that “one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.”

“It is fitting that today, on these red hills of Georgia, Baptists have come together and taken a step forward in the long journey to achieve Dr. King’s dream,” Underwood said.

SBC leaders absent

While the three-day celebration’s program includes representatives from a wide range of Baptist groups in North America, leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention—the nation’s largest Baptist denomination—were noticeably absent.

The SBC withdrew from the Baptist World Alliance and its regional affiliate, the North American Baptist Fellowship, several years ago. Most participating bodies in the New Baptist Covenant event belong to fellowship, and organizers planned their efforts around its membership.

Some SBC leaders—including current convention president Frank Page—have criticized the covenant celebration. But Carter noted he has developed “a wonderful relationship” with Page, a pastor in South Carolina. Carter said he plans to report to Page about the Atlanta event in the near future with a hope that Southern Baptists will want to cooperate on the initiatives that emerge from the event.

Carter expressed his desire that the New Baptist Covenant meeting would maintain an “all-inclusive” posture and “non-critical” tone—and that it steer clear of partisan politics.

Some critics had charged the event—which not only features Carter but also former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore—was designed to give Democrats an edge with Baptists in an election year.

Two Republicans withdrew

Of the three prominent Republicans who initially agreed to participate in the event—presidential hopeful and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley—two ended up withdrawing.

Huckabee pulled out in May, after Carter was quoted as calling President Bush’s administration “the worst in history” in terms of the way it has affected America’s image around the world.

Graham withdrew shortly before the event, citing his duties in stumping for his Senate colleague John McCain’s presidential bid. Organizers said his speaking slot would be filled by another prominent Republican, former Texas senator Phil Gramm.

Carter said he was “not frustrated” by the organizers’ inability to attract more high-profile Republicans as program personalities. He expressed confidence that, if journalists polled celebration participants about their party affiliations, they probably would find them about equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.

Posted: 1/31/08

Baptist unity takes center stage
as New Covenant meeting opens

By Marv Knox & Greg Warner

Baptist Standard & Associated Baptist Press

ATLANTA—Baptist unity took center stage during the opening night of the New Baptist Covenant convocation in Atlanta Jan. 30.

About 10,000 African-American, Anglo, Asian-American and Hispanic Baptists gathered at the urging of former President Jimmy Carter and Mercer University President Bill Underwood.

• See latest photos and the latest video clips from the New Baptist Covenant Meeting. (And go here to see our complete coverage of the event).

They represented about 30 Baptist conventions and organizations, all affiliated with the North American Baptist Fellowship, the regional affiliate of the Baptist World Alliance.

“This is the most momentous event of my religious life,” said an emotional Carter, who at 84 has been a Baptist since he was a child. “For the first time in more than 160 years, we are convening a major gathering of Baptists throughout an entire continent, without any threat to our unity caused by differences of our race or politics or geography or the legalistic interpretation of Scripture.”

Gathering fulfills King prophecy

The convocation—the first trans-racial gathering of its kind since North American Baptists split over slavery in 1845—fulfilled the prophecy of Martin Luther King Jr., Underwood told the crowd.

“Forty-five years ago, a native son of Atlanta, a Baptist pastor, shared with all of us his dream: One day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners would be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” Underwood said to sustained applause.

“Today, here on those red hills of Georgia, Baptists have come together to take a step in the long and difficult journey toward achieving Dr. King’s great dream. After generations of putting up walls between us—separation, division by geography, by theology, but most of all division by race—a new day is dawning.

“Today, in this place, Baptists gather from the North and the South; from Canada, Mexico, the United States and around the world; white, black and brown; conservative, moderate and progressive. Today, we all sit down together at the table of Christian brotherhood and sisterhood.

“Today, we celebrate a new day. We celebrate a new way. We celebrate a new Baptist covenant—united together to present an authentic and genuine Baptist voice; united in traditional Baptist values, including sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ … united in honoring the commandment of our Lord and Savior, to honor our commitment to love others as God has loved us, and we will do something about it.”

Leaders of most of the participating groups first affirmed the New Baptist Covenant in April 2006. The covenant focuses on Baptist unity by fulfilling the mandate Jesus announced in his first sermon—preaching good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom and recovery of sight to the blind, releasing the oppressed and proclaiming “the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Invitation for all to join

That year “is perhaps long overdue,” Carter said in a keynote address, in which he focused most of his remarks on the cause of unity. Opening wide the door of fellowship, he invited all Baptist Christians into the New Baptist Covenant movement.

Jimmy Carter at the podium.

He implored the diverse Baptists gathered in the Georgia World Congress Center to make unity the distinctive element of their gathering.

“There will be no criticism of others—let me say again—no criticism of others or exclusion of any Christians who would seek to join this cause,” he said.

“Animosity is like a cancer in the body of Christ,” declared Carter, who tried unsuccessfully a decade ago to convince feuding Southern Baptist factions to bury the ecclesiastical hatchet.

Bickering among Christians has produced a “negative image” in the public mindset, an image opposed to “the gentle and loving image of the one we profess to worship,” Carter said.

That was not true of the first-century Christians, who grew from a meager 1,000 adherents to become the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, he said. “That expansion could not have been possible if the members of the early church were as divided as we Christians are today.”

Divisions "debilitated" church

“I’m not minimizing the importance of the controversies” among Christians and Baptists, said Carter, pointing out many denominations are likewise divided. But the issues that drive Christians into factions are not nearly as important as the things on which there is widespread agreement, he said.

He cited a laundry list of issues that have divided Baptists—the role of women in ministry and marriage, varying accounts of creation, legalized abortion, civil rights for gays, separation of church and state, and the death penalty. Those issues have debilitated the Christian church, he said, yet they are no more important than the early church’s dispute over circumcision.

On the other hand, he continued, two issues that foster unanimity among Christians are salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and the need to put aside differences for the sake of unity.

When faced with both sorts of issues, Carter said, “we should remember their relative importance.”

Peace with justice

William Shaw, president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, one of four prominent African-American Baptist conventions, preached on the evening theme: “Baptist Unity in Seeking Peace with Justice.”

“This night and these days, we do a bold and glorious thing: We attempt to express the oneness which was our Lord’s desire for his people,” declared Shaw, pastor of White Rock Baptist Church in Philadelphia. That oneness centers on fulfilling Jesus’ “radical mission,” Shaw said.

Jesus wasn’t satisfied to merely bring relief to the persecuted and victimized, he explained, noting Jesus “concretized” his mission by seeking to reverse the structures and situations that caused oppression.

The heart of that quest is establishing justice and uprooting injustice, Shaw noted.

“Justice itself is rooted in the reality of the incarnation, in the reality of creation,” he explained. “For when God made mankind, he made us male and female—in his image. To do injustice to anybody is to do injustice to the reality of God, because we are in his image, and his image is not to be demeaned.”

Seeking to change society

That calls Baptists to seek change in society, he added.

“You can’t embrace the mission of Jesus and not encounter the reality of injustice.

He came not with actions of charity. He came to change. … Justice says we need to change the structures of victimization.”

Shaw warned the crowd not to settle for faulty imitations of change, or justice.

“Jesus came for reversal,” he charged. “Calm without justice is an illusion of peace. It is disguised oppression.”

Citing a litany of such “disguised oppression,” he noted recent violence and massacres in Kenya, “imbalance of power” in the Middle East, isolating Native Americans on reservations, and both slavery and segregation in the United States.

“There is no peace without justice; there is no morality without justice,” he declared.

In fact, morality can masquerade as justice and actually become a “tool of injustice,” he said. “If it is right—and it is—that children who are conceived should be brought to life, should children who are born have the right to life like everybody else? … If there is no right to life, the right to be born is a tool of injustice.”

Unfortunately, “there is a strong will within us not to change,” Shaw observed

“God loved us so much and wanted change for us so much, he came from heaven to earth … for change,” he said.

But American Christians resist change by claiming racial, religious, national and economic superiority, he noted. The effect of the resistance is rejection of Jesus and closer identification with the people who sought to kill him than Jesus himself, he added.

Fortunately, Jesus “does not reject his rejectors, and this is our hope now,” he said. “Look how many times we have rejected his authenticity. But this one who has been rejected comes again and again to us with his work and his mission in the world.”

The convocation has brought Baptists to a “new moment,” insisted David Goatley, president of the North American Baptist Fellowship.

"Name our failures"

“The New Baptist Covenant is a public witness to our common commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ in word and deed,” said Goatley, executive secretary of the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention.

Participants came to Atlanta “not to endorse things as they are, but to name … our failures to live up to the will of Christ,” he said, noting the event also provides an opportunity “to explore networking and collaboration for ministries … particularly for persons who are marginalized.”

“Welcome to something that has never happened before,” Goatley added. “Never before have Baptists on this scale sought to cross the boundaries we choose to live behind—ethnicity, ideology, theology. Never before have Baptists on this scale sought to explore ministries of this impact. Never before have Baptists on this scale come together for cooperation and collaboration for missional ministry impact.

“We are at the threshold of great possibilities, and we’re glad you’re here.”

Posted: 1/30/08

Campolo asks Baptists,
“Which Jesus should we preach?”

By Jim White and Robert Dilday

Virginia Religious Herald

ATLANTA—Author Tony Campolo challenged Baptists from across North America to examine which Jesus they preach—the one who incarnates American values or the one who incarnates God.

Campolo, professor emeritus at Eastern University near Philadelphia, and children’s advocate Marian Wright Edleman headlined a Jan. 31 morning plenary session at the New Baptist Covenant convocation. The session explored the devastating effects of poverty in America and around the world.

“We’ve got to get our values straightened out,” Campolo said.

Drawing on the church’s tendency to preach the Jesus that conforms to its priorities, he said: “We’re supposed to preach Jesus. There’s no question about that. The question is, which Jesus should we preach?”

Referring to a comment attributed to George Bernard Shaw, he said, “God created us in his image and we decided to return the favor.”

“It seems to me that all across America people have created a Christ very different from the one in the Bible. He’s a cultural deity. … As I go across the country, the Jesus I hear most comes across as a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, middle-class American. And the Jesus of Scripture is different.”

Jesus pronounced his priorities in Luke 4, beginning with preaching good news to the poor, Campolo noted.

“Do you think Jesus meant what he said, or do you think he was kidding?” he asked.

Confronting the sin of materialism and America’s consumer culture, Campolo asked, “What kind of car would Jesus drive?”

Jesus would not drive an $80,000 car while 30,000 children a day die in quiet despair and many older people have to choose between medicine and food, he said.

• See latest photos and the latest video clips from the New Baptist Covenant Meeting. (And go here to see our complete coverage of the event).

“There is nothing wrong with making a million dollars. I wish you all would make a million dollars. There is nothing wrong with making it, but there is something wrong with keeping it,” he said. “My Bible tells me in 1 John 3:17, ‘If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need but shuts off his compassion from him—how can God’s love reside in him?’ ”

Neither did churches escape Campolo’s focus. Pointing to the expansive and expensive facilities churches build for themselves, he wondered aloud how church members could be challenged to give sacrificially when their own churches often model self-centered consumerism.

“We’ve got to challenge young people because we are losing them. We have not lost them because we are making Christianity too difficult for them but because we are making it too easy for them,” he said. “They want their lives to count. They want their lives to matter.”

Turning his attention to older Baptists, he asked: “So many of you are retired, so what do you do with your time? Go out and play golf? … You have time and money to spend. You can spend it on something that really counts.”

Playing to the enthusiastic response of the crowd, he shouted, “Rise up, you suckers, and go out and do the work of Jesus!”

Edleman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, said about 13 million children in America live in poverty—5.6 million of them in extreme poverty.

“The great German Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer … believed that the test of the morality of a society is how it treats its children,” she said. “Our nation flunks Bonhoeffer’s test every hour of every day.”

Statistics bear that out, she maintained:

• Every 36 seconds a child is born into poverty.

• Every 41 seconds, a baby is born without health insurance, “though we lead the world in health technology.” About 9.4 million children are uninsured and 85 percent of those live in working families, she said.

• Almost eight children a day are killed by a firearm. Since 1979, more than 101,000 children have died of gunfire—twice the American battle casualties in the Vietnam War.

• Every 75 seconds a baby is born to a teen mother. “We could fill up the city of Atlanta every year with children having children,” Edleman said.

• Every 19 minutes a baby dies in the first year of life.

• Millions of children start school unprepared for what they are to face and every nine seconds, a child drops out of school. “This, folks, is a disaster.”

“We lead the world among industrialized countries in military technology, in military exports, in gross domestic product, in the number of millionaires and billionaires, and in defense expenditures,” Edleman said.

“But we stand 20th among our 15-year-old science scores, 24th and last in child poverty rates among industrialized nations, 24th in low birth weight, 22nd in infant mortality, 25th in 15-year-old math scores and last in protecting children against gun violence. What would we be saying today if we thought we came out of the Olympics 20th and 21st and last? Why can’t we get our voices and acts together and make sure we are proud to be one in protecting our children?”

Poverty makes an impact on every race and family type in America, Edleman said. But poor minority children are disproportionately at risk, and the results are devastating.

“I want to raise a loud gong of alarm today about America’s cradle-to-prison pipeline crisis,” she warned. If the cycle is not broken, “we’re going to see racial and social progress go backwards, and we cannot do that on our watch. An unlevel playing field from birth contributes to too many poor children of color being sucked into a cradle-to-prison pipeline that you and I must name and change.”

The most dangerous place to grow up in America is “at that intersection of poverty and race,” she said.

“A black boy born in 2001 has a one in three chance of going to prison during his lifetime, a Latino boy a one in six chance, and one in three 20- to 29-year-olds—our fathers—are under correctional institution supervision or control.”

Some 580,000 black males and 250,000 Latino males are serving sentences in state or federal prisons, Edleman said, while fewer than 40,000 black males and 30,000 Latino males earn bachelor’s degrees each year.

The impact of poverty has left most 4th graders—86 percent of black ones, 83 of Latino and 58 percent of white—unable to read at grade level.

“Folks, if you can’t read in this globalizing economy, you are sentenced to social death,” she warned. “I cannot understand how we can break the genetic code and send a spaceship to Mars and a man to the moon and we can’t figure out how to teach our children to read by fourth grade. What is wrong with us?”

These statistics add up to a national catastrophe, she warned. “They are not acts of God,” said Edleman. “They are our choices as citizens and as a nation. We created them; we can and must change them.”

Churches—“which ought to be the locomotive, and not the caboose, in speaking up for children”—can do two things, said Edleman, daughter of a Baptist minister.

First, adults must confront and stop their hypocrisy. “Adults are what is wrong with our children—parents letting children raise themselves or be raised by television or the Internet, children being shaped by peers and gangs instead of responsible parents and grandparents or anchor institutions like the church, children roaming the streets because no one is at home, adults making promises we don’t keep and preaching what we don’t practice, telling children to be honest while lying and telling children not to be violent while marketing and glorifying violence and tolerating gun-saturated war zones across the land. … Children need the integrity of your lived example of being a Christian.”

The sheer number of faith groups in the country could make a dramatic impact, she said. “There are 342,730 houses of worship of all faiths in America,” she said. “Of those, 330,000-plus are Christian churches with more than 156 million members. Over 77,000 of those are Baptist with over 34 million members. Imagine the impact on children’s wellbeing and on the cradle-to-prison pipeline if each church adopted one at-risk family or got one child a permanent adopted family.”

Second, churches need to rediscover their prophetic voices, she said. “Justice is what we’re called to provide.”

“Dr. [Martin Luther] King said that a nation which continued to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death,” she said. Last year American armed forces spent $600 billion a year on arms.

“We’ve got to figure out how to do a better job of finding a better balance between protecting children from the terrors within and protecting them from the enemies without.”

Posted: 1/31/08

‘Incarnation’ is key for Baptists
engaging policy, speakers stress

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

ATLANTA (ABP)—Christians should become involved in transforming public policy, a diverse group of Baptists heard Jan. 31, because Christ first set the example by transforming the world and bidding Christians to follow.

“God believed in incarnation so much that he hasn’t given up on it yet,” said Suzii Paynter, director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Christian Life Commission. “It didn’t end with Jesus. It continues.”

Paynter and two other Baptists engaged in social advocacy spoke in Atlanta on the subject of faith and public policy at one of a host of breakout sessions during the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant meeting Jan. 31.

Paynter, New Jersey pastor Buster Soaries and Canadian Baptist activist Lois Mitchell told listeners that understanding the proper relationship between the church and public policy can be complex, but that policy engagement is a natural outgrowth of Christian discipleship and ministry.

“We are not called to reform secular society or secular culture; rather, through Christ … we have the assurance” of self-reformation, said Mitchell, who works for Canadian Baptist Ministries’ Sharing Way program. “Transformation is not our agenda but the consequence of our obedience.”

• See latest photos and the latest video clips from the New Baptist Covenant Meeting. (And go here to see our complete coverage of the event).

Mitchell said that Christ’s followers are called to aid the downtrodden, which lends itself to influencing public policy.

However, she warned, “When we try to change the world using the ways of the world, we will always fail.”

Soaries noted that temptation. The pastor of First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, N.J., served from 1999 to 2003 as secretary of state under former New Jersey governor Christine Whitman.

Of the reactions after the news was announced, “On the one hand was the group of people who thought I would use my office to make the entire state of New Jersey Baptist,” he said, while the other half “thought I had abandoned by faith by taking office.”

But his experience engaging in public policy grew out of his church’s ministries, he noted. “Prophetic witness emerges from priestly endeavor,” Soaries said. “Our impact on public policy should be an outgrowth of our concern for people.”

For instance, his church became involved in financial counseling after he discovered that many of its own members were drowning in consumer debt.

“We discovered at First Baptist that one of the greatest threats to the economic stability of our church family … was the use and abuse of credit cards,” Soaries said. The church developed a ministry devoted to debt counseling and teaching budgeting and other good financial habits for households.

“In the process of doing that work, we discovered that the policies of our state allowed car salesmen, for instance, to charge up to 35 percent interest,” he said “Our involvement with policies in New Jersey that would regulate the amount of interest that lenders would charge … was a natural outgrowth.”

Paynter noted that her congregation —First Baptist Church in Austin—is beginning to see similar concern grow out of ministry. For 37 years, she noted,groups from the church have been taking humanitarian mission trips to poverty-stricken colonias along the Texas/Mexico border.

“Should we go to that same neighborhood for 30 years and never ask, ‘Why don’t they have running water?’” she said.

Posted: 1/31/08

Individual, church response
crucial to alleviating poverty

By Carla Wynn Davis

CBF Communications

ATLANTA—Breaking the cycle of poverty begins with taking seriously the Bible, people in need and the church’s call to respond. And speakers reminded participants at a Baptist gathering that addressing poverty isn’t optional for Christians and churches who are serious about following Christ.

These ideas, along with motives and models for alleviating poverty, were explored by panelists Jan. 31 during the “Breaking Cycles of Poverty” special interest session at the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant in Atlanta.

“I have begun to wonder whether we can follow Jesus without addressing poverty,” said Tom Prevost, who works with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s rural poverty initiative in 20 of the poorest U.S. counties. “I’m not even sure it is possible.”

Citing the example of Jesus and the biblical mandate to care for the poor, panelists urged individual and church responses to poverty.

Individuals can help alleviate poverty by working in impoverished neighborhoods, by forming relationships with impoverished people or by urging elected public representatives to support legislation that reduces poverty, Prevost said. Individuals can also motivate their churches to act on behalf of poor people.

“Responding [to poverty] is something at the very heart of what it means to be a congregation,” said Diana Garland, dean of Baylor University’s School of Social Work. “It’s the responsibility of every Christian. There’s nobody who is exempt. We’re all called to respond to the needs of our neighbors. We’re never exempt.”

The importance of addressing poverty and social justice must be preached and taught in churches, Garland said. It must engage all members of the congregation, whether they assemble baskets of food at Christmas or form a relationship with someone struggling to financially survive.

“Those one-time Christmas baskets are a great place to begin, but it’s not the end. It’s just the beginning,” Garland said. “Encourage the move from charity to justice. Start with those one-time events and move to the longer term … move to justice.”

While difficult, the move from charity to justice is possible, said Christopher Gray of FCS Community Ministries in Atlanta. Gray’s ministry began with a long-term commitment to a neighborhood troubled with crime, drugs and prostitution. One way the ministry restores dignity and promotes self-sufficiency is by selling clothes at an affordable rate instead doing giveaways.

The ministry also has about 15 people living in the neighborhood to incite change from the inside out.

“We try not to minister from arm’s length but rather live and serve among those who are challenged,” Gray said.

In this ministry and other poverty reduction efforts, taking risks is the norm, and failure is common, Gray said, but a long-term, undaunted commitment to holistic ministry is necessary to transform communities and lives.

“You have to think long haul and determined,” Prevost said. “These are not quick fixes.”

Change is slow because poverty is so complex and far reaching. Often what slows individuals and churches from responding is feeling powerless and hopeless to make a change, Garland said. But the success stories from FCS Community Ministries and others are a glimmer of hope to the change one person or church can make.

“We cannot bring in the kingdom of God, but we can point to it with our action and our lives,” Garland said. “We can do our best to make the way straight so … God can come in.”

“It’s not beyond the capability of [the people in] this room to make an incredible difference,” Prevost said. “We’re the ones who are supposed to be carrying our candles and rushing to the darkness.”

Posted: 1/31/08

Christians called to tear down walls,
not build them, South Texas pastor says

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

ATLANTA—Christ came to tear down walls that divide people, a South Texas pastor told Baptists at a prophetic preaching conference. So, he asked, can Christians find any real security in a fence built along an “imaginary line” to separate two nations?

“Jesus didn’t come to build walls. He didn’t come to build fences. He came to tear them down,” said Ellis Orozco, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in McAllen.

Orozco participated in an afternoon session on prophetic preaching during the celebration of a New Baptist Covenant in Atlanta, Jan. 31, offering a biblical response to illegal immigration.

“I live on the border,” Orozco said. “But then again, who doesn’t live on the border these days? The border keeps moving. We don’t cross the border anymore. The border crosses us.”

While they speak of a fence as a way of securing the nation’s borders, the unspoken reason many people support the building of a barrier along the United States’ southern border is because they fear “the browning of America,” he said.

For generations of poor males in Mexico, answering “the call to head north” to help support their families has become a rite of passage, Orozco said. Desperation drives them across the border, he insisted.

“We always call 1-800-MEXICO when we need more poor people to do work we don’t want to do,” he said. “Who do you think is rebuilding New Orleans? For that matter, who do you think is going to build the fence?”

The Spirit of Christ compels Christians to look at the immigration situation differently, Orozco insisted.

“Jesus comes to us in the eyes of the stranger,” he said.

Walls and fences alienate and separate people, dividing them into “us and them, in and out,” he said. But Jesus alone possesses power to do the impossible and “make the two one,” Orozco said.

Undocumented Mexican immigrants “are not the enemy who have come to take from us,” he insisted. “They are the neighbor who has come to help and to be helped.”

Some may quote an American poet who said, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Orozco offered a rejoinder to that assertion: “I know Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is a good friend of mine. And Robert Frost is no Jesus Christ.”

American treatment of Mexican workers and reaction to immigration from Mexico has caused “a loss of moral authority in the global community,” he asserted. Every nation has the right to secure its borders from attack, but walls do not contribute to peace or promote security, Orozco said.

“As long as there are walls, there will never be peace,” he said.

Posted: 2/01/08

Silence, shame and stigma—
the unholy trinity of AIDS

Tony W. Cartledge

Baptists Today

ATLANTA—Churches must recognize the spread of HIV/AIDS as a justice issue and overcome pervasive stigmas about the disease if they are to live out the gospel in their communities, panelists told Baptists in Atlanta.

The issue is plagued by “an unholy trinity of silence, shame and stigma,” said Raphael Warnock, pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Warnock was among the panelists who participated in a special interest session on “The HIV/AIDS Pandemic” during the New Baptist Covenant celebration Jan. 31.

Warnock said HIV/AIDS—once considered a disease of gay white men—affects a disproportionate number of both men and women of color. African-Americans make up 12 percent of America’s population, but they account for more than 50 percent of people newly diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, he said.

AIDS has become the leading cause of death among black women age 25 to 44, he said. But “as the epidemic has swung to people of color, the money has not followed the epidemic,” Warnock added.

The response would be different if there was a proportional increase among white women, he asserted.

The spread of AIDS is “inextricably connected to America’s growing prison-industrial complex,” Warnock said. With more than two million people in prison, most for nonviolent offenses, many men are leaving prison after participating in homosexual encounters, then returning to the general population to infect their wives and girlfriends, he said.

D. L. Jackson, pastor of Liberty Baptist Church in Chicago, said HIV/AIDS also has begun making inroads among senior adults, many of whom are uninformed and don’t think they are at risk.

Carla Nelson, education facilitator for Canadian Baptist Ministries, said churches should respond to the AIDS pandemic by simply “being the church”—accepting others and reaching out to them as Christ did.

“We must end the isolation and turn the stigma around,” she said, speaking of a Rwandan pastor on the outskirts of Kigali who led his congregation to make it a matter of pride to be tested for HIV and to sponsor “guardian groups” to care for those who suffer from the disease.

Malcom Marler, who has worked since 1994 as a chaplain in an AIDS clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, went beyond seeing HIV/AIDS as a needed field of ministry.

“I believe HIV/AIDS is not only a calling for the church to respond to in practical and caring ways,” he said. “This disease offers the opportunity for the renewal of the church” because getting to know people with HIV/AIDS can remind the church “what grace is all about.”

“If we’re going to find Jesus, we’d better go find people with HIV,” Marler said. “If we get it right on grace, everything else will fall into place.”

Participants talked about practical means by which churches can minister to those who suffer from HIV/AIDS. Church leaders need to take the lead in getting tested, the panelists said, as a way to encourage others who need the testing but might be afraid to get it.

“Ministers have to set the example,” said Warnock. “Deacons and trustees and people who’ve been married for 60 years—if they all go, then people at risk can get lost in the movement.”

Jackson described a residence facility his church founded for persons and families affected by AIDS. Called “Vision House,” the ministry provides housing at reduced cost, a wholesome environment and counseling services, he said.

All four speakers emphasized the importance of education, and not just in special seminars. Nelson cited a Ugandan study showing that children who do not attend school are three times more likely to contract AIDS by their early twenties than children who are educated.

Warnock said being informed is essential. “We need to educate our children and not be afraid to talk about sex in church,” he said.

Marler echoed his thought, “We’ve always had a hard time talking about sex or drugs in the church, but we need to talk about the people we are called to be with, to rediscover where Jesus already is.”

People need to know that they don’t have to be afraid of people with HIV, Marler said. They need to know “you can’t get it from sitting beside them, hugging them, being baptized in the same water with them, or taking communion together” he said.
When people are well informed, they don’t have to suffer from “AFRAIDS,” he said— “A Fear Related to AIDS.”

Posted: 2/01/08

Baptists called to combat
ignorance about religious liberty

By Jeff Huett

Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty

ATLANTA—In an increasingly pluralistic culture, ensuring religious freedom for all requires more education about religion, further understanding about the proper relationship between church and state, and an emphasis on the historic Baptist principle of religious liberty, said a panel at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration.

Cheryl Townsend-Gilkes, professor of Sociology and African-American Studies at Colby College in Waterville, Me., suggested that the very definition of religious liberty in America “fosters and sustains tremendous religious and cultural diversity.” However, she warned, “the tremendous religious and cultural diversity sometimes challenges our commitment to the separation of church and state.”

Bolstering the commitment will require combating ignorance about religion in America, she said, even to the point of creating a class taught in colleges and universities called “religion appreciation.” She said the course should be taught much like a music appreciation course, where students are required to listen to a symphony, all the while learning to recognize individual instruments.

Brent Walker, a constitutional law expert and executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, agreed that the “time-honored” principles of religious liberty and church-state separation are threatened today, made worse by a pervasive belief that religious disputes should be settled by the majority.

“The bill of rights is, by definition, counter-majoritarian, Walker said.

“America is one of the most religious and most religiously diverse nations on the face of the earth,” he said. “But despite our religious passion and pluralism, we have been able to avoid the religious conflicts and wars that have punctuated history and plague much of the world today.”

Walker put forth what he called the golden rule for church-state separation: “I must not insist that government promote my religion if I don’t want government to promote somebody else’s religion, and I should not permit government to harm someone else’s religion if I don’t want religion to harm my religion.”

Cynthia Holmes, a St. Louis attorney and former moderator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, warned that the future of the historic Baptist principle of church-state separation hinges on our treatment of the principle today.

“We can’t guarantee that our kids will be free to practice their religion if we deny that freedom to any other group,” she said.

“As Baptists, we must champion the historic Baptist position on religious liberty. … As Baptists, we must understand that freedom to exercise religion does not mean our freedom to impose our religion on everyone else by government favoritism.” Holmes said.

Panelists were quick to point out that the proper relationship between church and state does not divorce religion from the public square.

“Church-state separation does not keep religious voices from influencing public policy or acknowledging our religious heritage in the public square,” Walker said. “But it does mean the government should not be able to pass laws or take official action that has the primary effect of advancing or prohibiting religion.

“The best thing government can do for religion is to leave it alone,” he said. “Neither should do the work of the other.”

Holmes echoed Walker’s sentiments on the rightful place of religion the public square, but suggested the problem occurs when Christians believe that their position is “the” Christian position.

Walker added that the work of the 71-year-old Baptist Joint Committee in extending and defending religious liberty for all is a prototype for the kind of “Baptist togetherness” espoused by the New Baptist Covenant. The BJC is comprised of 15 Baptist bodies, including American Baptist Churches USA, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, National Baptist Convention of America, Inc., and Progressive National Baptist Convention, each partnering organizations in the New Baptist Covenant.

Posted: 2/01/08

North American Baptist plan
to work together on disaster relief

By Steve DeVane

Biblical Recorder

ATLANTA—The 30 Baptist organizations in the North American Baptist Fellowship plan to form a network to coordinate disaster relief efforts.

Terry Raines, disaster relief coordinator for the Baptist General Association of Virginia, announced the initiative Jan. 31. He made the announcement during a special interest session on responding to natural disasters that was part of the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant.

The Baptist groups in the fellowship, one of the six regional affiliates of the Baptist World Alliance, are meeting this week with the theme “Unity in Christ.”

Organizers met two weeks ago to discuss the formation of the network, and sketch an outline for the network, Raines said. Two representatives from each of the 30 groups will be invited to the next meeting on the effort, he said.

The network will give Baptists a way to help and a way to seek help during disasters, Raines said. During the workshop, panelists discussed how their organizations reach out to people during emergencies.

Millard Fuller, who founded Habitat for Humanity and now heads the Fuller Center for Housing, said people who respond to disasters often give away their help, which is appropriate in when the situation is desperate.

“There are so many other situations where there’s a much better way to do it,” he said.

The Bible teaches it is better to give than receive, and Fuller suggested that those who receive help should be given a way to give back.

Fuller held a small wooden box he called a “greater blessing box.” He said his group asks those who are helped if they’d like to give back. If they agree, the organization asks how long it would take them to repay for the help. If they say five years, the group put 60 envelopes in the box and asks them to send a contribution each month to the Fuller Center. The money is used to help other people, Fuller said.

“We don’t give them a legal obligation,” he said. “We give them a box and the opportunity to pay the money back.”

Fuller urged other groups to adopt similar practices, saying the idea is not copyrighted.
“When the people you help are able, you can give them the opportunity for the greater blessing by giving back,” he said.

Samuel Tolbert, the pastor of Greater Saint Mary Missionary Baptist Church in Lake Charles, La., and general secretary of the National Baptist Convention of America, talked about disaster relief efforts since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the region.

The National Baptist Convention of America and the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Society formed “resurrection centers to help people rise again” in several cities. The centers include a social services worker, a mental health worker, a pastor and programs for children. The facilities have helped about 15,000 families, Tolbert said. The group also gives people Bibles.

“Many people coming to the centers had not been to church in years,” he said.

Gordon King, the director of The Sharing Way for Canadian Baptist Ministries in Ontario, Canada, focused on hunger. He said poverty and famine are related, noting that about 2.8 billion people in the world live on less than $2 a day.

“The number of hungry people in the world will increase significantly in the coming decade,” he said.

While many people in the world are hungry, many Americans are overweight or obese. King suggested a distinctive vision of relief efforts based on justice, compassion and faith.

“This is a vision of the church that requires us to act the gospel and not just proclaim it,” he said.

Baptists cannot count on governments to stop hunger, King said. Even so, he said he believes the hunger crisis can be averted.

“I think this lack of government commitment creates a place where Baptists can respond,” he said.

Posted: 2/01/08

Gore Urges New Covenant Baptists
to Take Up Mantle of Creation Care

Bob Allen

Baptist Center for Ethics

ATLANTA—Former Vice President Al Gore challenged 2,500 fellow Baptists at a Thursday luncheon with prophetic zeal to take up the mantle of reversing global warming.

Speaking to a luncheon crowd at this week’s New Baptist Covenant Celebration, Gore recalled words of an old Sunday school teacher who taught the purpose of life is to glorify God.

“If we heap contempt on God’s creation, that is inconsistent with glorifying God,” he said.

Most of Gore’s speech was an adaptation of the slide show that was basis for his Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, presenting evidence an impending climate crisis if governments do not act to reduce greenhouse emissions. Along with new data, the customized presentation featured new slides peppered with Bible passages to “put it in the context of my own faith as a Baptist.”

“The evidence is there,” he said. “The signal is on the mountain. The trumpet has blown. The scientists are screaming from the rooftops. The ice is melting. The land is parched. The seas are rising. The storms are getting stronger. Why do we not judge what is right?”

Gore expressed hope that creation care would become a major initiative of a new coalition of Baptists across North America united around issues like justice and concern for the poor.

“I think that there is a distinct possibility that one of the messages coming out of this gathering and this new covenant is creation care—that we who are Baptists of like mind and attempting in our lives to the best of our abilities to glorify God, are not going to countenance the continued heaping of contempt on God’s creation,” he said.

Gore joked about losing the controversial 2000 presidential campaign, but insisted the environment is neither a Democratic nor Republican issue.

“This is not a political issue,” he said. “It is a moral issue. It is an ethical issue. It is a spiritual issue.”

• See latest photos and the latest video clips from the New Baptist Covenant Meeting. (And go here to see our complete coverage of the event).

America has the power to do something about global warming, but what is lacking is the political will, Gore insisted.

“Don’t tell me we can’t solve this climate crisis,” he said. “With one week’s worth of the money spent on the war in Iraq, we’d be well down the road.”

Politicians in Washington will get serious about addressing the issue when public opinion reaches a tipping point and demands it, Gore said.

“Come let us reason together,” he challenged Baptists, “and tell one another the truth, inconvenient though it may be, about the crisis, including the opportunity that we now face.”

“The ancient prophet laid the choice before the people,” he said: “Life or death, blessings or curses. Therefore choose life so both thou and thy seed may live.”

Gore recounted numerous large challenges that Americans have overcome in the past, from the Declaration of Independence to the “greatest generation” during World War II.

“We have to take a different perspective on this crisis,” he said, “because never in the past has all human civilization been at risk.” That perspective, he said, is the one taught in the Scripture, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have set in place, Lord what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?”

“This is our home,” Gore said of planet Earth. “We will make our stand here. It is at risk.”

“It is not ours,” he continued. “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.”

“We have everything we need to do the right thing to save its grace and beauty for our children and their children,” he said, “everything, that is, with the possible exception of political will.

“But ladies and gentlemen, as Americans we know that political will is a renewable resource.”

Gore said he was disappointed that some Baptists have tried to undermine his message of stewardship of natural resources.

“Too many spokespersons—who don’t really speak for me but who claim to—have said global warming’s not real, this is just a myth and etcetera,” he said. “When did people of faith get so locked into an ideological coalition that they’ve got to go along with the wealthiest and most powerful—-who don’t want to see change of a kind that’s aimed at helping the people and protecting God’s green earth?”

Mercer University President Bill Underwood, an organizer of the New Baptist Covenant Celebration, thanked Gore for a “prophetic voice” on global warming, which he described as “the great moral crisis of our age.”

Former President Jimmy Carter stepped to the microphone to announced, “We’re going to be considering what to do as a result of this New Baptist Covenant meeting.”

“How many of you think we should join Al Gore in being one of the strongest voices on earth?” Carter asked to resounding applause. “Does anyone disagree? OK, now you see that was a unanimous vote. Thank you very much.”

Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center of Ethics, introduced Gore with a plaque honoring him as 2007 Baptist of the Year and a symbolic Bible with a green cover.

“The Bible is God’s green book,” Parham said. “The green Bible gives us the responsibility to guard the garden. The green Bible calls us to love our neighbors. And my friends the only way we can love our neighbors across time is to leave them a decent place to live.”

Parham said he hoped Gore would carry his green Bible with him in his travels. “I think that with this green Bible and good science he will awaken and activate goodwill Baptists to become active in caring for the earth,” he said.