Posted: 3/12/04

CBF begins partnership to aid Haitians

By Bob Perkins Jr.

CBF Communications

ATLANTA–The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship will begin a partnership in Haiti to address the needs of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and one of the poorest in the world.

The initial $16,000 donation will be made with World Vision, a Christian organization and formal partner of the Fellowship committed to holistic development.

To endow a social services program for women and children at the Port-Au-Prince prison, $10,000 will be earmarked for pastoral care, legal fees and support for income-generating activities. The remaining amount will be used for cistern/well construction to serve several schools where children currently spend much of their days without access to water.

According to United Nations statistics, Haiti ranks 212th out of 238 countries on the human development chart and has among the lowest gross national product per capita figures in the world at $250, compared to the United States at nearly $27,000.

While there are some encouraging signs in the country, with 96 percent of the population considered to be Christian, and some church-related activity ongoing in the country, the Fellowship's involvement is intended to initiate long-term transformational development among the population that has been seriously neglected by the government.

"There has been a lot of church planting activity in Haiti in the past, but the poverty issues seem to have been overlooked, including basic human need issues such as clean water, access to health care and education for children," said David Harding, the CBF's director of emergency response. "Our partnership with World Vision will bring a more holistic approach to meeting the needs of the Haitian people."

Suffering from challenging social-economic problems stemming from a history of governmental instability and abuse, the Haitian people face both a lack of resources and health issues such as malaria, tuberculosis, malnutrition and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

According to World Vision, only 46 percent of the Haitian population has access to safe water, and only 25 percent can afford appropriate sanitary facilities. Haiti has the highest Western Hemisphere mortality rate for children under five (125 per 1,000), and maternal mortality rate at delivery is estimated at 520 per 100,000 live births. Haiti has only 1.1 doctors, 1.2 nurses and 0.4 dentists per 10,000 inhabitants.

Compounding these infrastructure concerns is the highest national HIV/AIDS infection rate in Latin America and the Caribbean. Approximately 239,000 people are living with HIV, and each year, more than 4,000 newborns are infected by the virus. Nearly 155,000 children are orphaned by AIDS.

Harding said several Fellowship churches have been doing work in Haiti.

"There are churches with their own sense of missions work that are doing some wonderful things," Harding said. "We want to help connect others to this joint effort and build a lasting CBF relationship with our Haitian friends."

The CBF and World Vision have developed a list of volunteer opportunities in agriculture, computer technology, education, healthcare, infrastructure and social work. These assignments can be as short as two to three days or as long as six months. For more information, contact the CBF volunteer office at (877) 856-9288.

Posted: 3/12/04

House vote critical of China's human rights record

WASHINGTON (BP)—The U.S. House of Representatives and a bipartisan criticize China's human rights commission have called on the Bush administration to promote a resolution at a United Nations conference insisting China halt its violations of human rights.

The House voted 402-2 for a resolution urging the U.S. representative at the upcoming U.N. Commission on Human Rights to lead an effort to adopt a measure calling on China to meet the international community's standards on human rights.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom endorsed the House's call for the resolution.

"The overwhelming vote by Congress is important because the administration has yet to declare whether it will offer a China resolution at Geneva," USCIRF Chairman Michael Young said in a written release.

"While U.S.-Chinese relations are advancing in other important areas, our dialogue on human rights is stagnant, and they have yet to demonstrate a willingness to abide by international human rights norms."

H.R. 530 also called on the Beijing government to end religious persecution, halt forced abortion and sterilization in all provinces, stop the coerced return of refugees to North Korea and grant religious freedom to all citizens.

Among other requests, the House also urged the Chinese government to permit unrestricted visits to the country by the USCIRF and other international groups.

The USCIRF's plans to send a delegation to China were thwarted twice in the last year by Beijing-invoked limitations on its trip the panel found unacceptable.

The only House members voting against the resolution March 3 were Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Jim McDermott (D-Wash).

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights is meeting March 15 to April 23 in Geneva, Switzerland.

China is among six countries designated by the State Department as "countries of particular concern" in regard to religious liberty and human rights violations. Chinese policy requires churches to register with the government. China's repressive practices, which have included arrest, imprisonment and torture, have affected not only Protestants but also Catholics, Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists and the Falun Gong sect.

The USCIRF makes reports and policy recommendations to Congress and the White House. The president and congressional leaders appoint the nine members who serve as commissioners.

President Bush appointed Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, to the panel in 2001. Land's second one-year term will expire in May.

Posted: 3/12/04

Court rules Catholic Charities must cover
contraceptives as part of health benefits

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (ABP)—The California Supreme Court has ruled a Catholic social-service agency must provide contraceptives as part of its prescription-drug benefit for employees, raising alarms among some religious-liberty watchers.

By a 6-1 vote, the court ruled the Sacramento branch of Catholic Charities must comply with a state law requiring employers to include contraceptive benefits if they provide prescription drug coverage.

The justices ruled Catholic Charities does not qualify for a religious exemption to the law because, essentially, the organization is not religious enough.

The Roman Catholic Church—with which Catholic Charities groups across the country are affiliated—officially opposes all forms of artificial contraception.

At issue in the case was a provision the state's legislature included when the law passed in 1999. It exempts churches and other religious groups from the law if contraception violates the organization's religious beliefs.

However, the exemption is narrowly crafted. It allows exceptions only if a group:

Has as its main purpose "the inculcation of religious values."

"Primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of "the organization."

"Serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the entity."

Is classified like a congregation or denomination under tax codes.

Catholic Charities meets none of those requirements. The court noted the group both hires and provides services to people of many faiths other than Catholicism, and it does not include overt religious instruction or evangelism as part of its service programs.

Attorneys for the charity argued the state exemption discriminated against the Catholic Church—even though the church originally supported its inclusion in the bill—because it defined what sorts of groups qualified as "religious" too narrowly. Catholic social teaching, they contended, requires that Catholics provide food, clothing and other benefits to the needy with no religious strings attached.

But the court's majority appealed to previous federal court decisions—including a controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1990—in saying that the state was within its rights to force Catholic Charities to comply because the law treated it equally with secular entities.

"The law treats some Catholic organizations more favorably than all other employers by exempting them; non-exempt Catholic organizations are treated the same as all other employers," said Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, writing for the majority.

Werdegar also quoted a state legislator's comments from debate on the law's passage: "The intention of the religious exemption in both these bills is an intention to provide for exemption for what is religious activity. The more secular the activity gets, the less religiously based it is, and the more we believe that they should be required to cover prescription drug benefits for contraception."

However, the justices did say the third requirement for an organization to qualify for the religious exemption—that it must serve primarily those of its own religion—is "problematic."

"To imagine a legitimate purpose for such a requirement is difficult," Werdegar wrote. "Reading the provision literally, a hypothetical soup kitchen run entirely by the ministers of a church, which inculcates religious values to those who come to eat…would lose its claim to an exemption from the (requirement) if it chose to serve the hungry without discrimination instead of serving co-religionists only. The legislature may wish to address this problem."

In a separate opinion concurring with the majority, Justice Joyce Kennard raised a concern about another of the state's criteria for qualifying as a religious organization.

"I have serious doubts that the First Amendment, as construed by the United States Supreme Court, allows California to limit its religious-employer exemption to religious entities that have as their purpose the inculcation of religious values," Kennard wrote, noting that some religious organizations "like Catholic Charities … are organized for the purpose of feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, and providing shelter to the homeless."

The lone objector to the court's judgment in the case was Justice Janice Rogers Brown. In a lengthy dissenting opinion, she said the state was overstepping its bounds with regard to religion in the case.

Brown said the majority's opinion begs this question: "May the government determine what parts of bona fide religious organizations are religious and what parts are secular? And, in particular, may the government make such distinctions in order to infringe the religious freedom of that portion of the organization the government characterizes as secular?"

Rogers continued, "A substantial amount of federal case law supports Catholic Charities' claim that the legislature's attempt to draw distinctions between the religious and secular activities of a single religious entity is an impermissible government entanglement in religion. I am inclined to agree."

Posted: 3/12/04

New Iraqi constitution would guarantee broad human rights

By Robert Marus

ABP Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (ABP)—Iraq has a new interim constitution that offers high levels of protection for religious freedom, but one of its provisions still gives pause to some human-rights watchdogs.

After a delay due to last-minute objections by some of its Shia Muslim members, the Iraqi Governing Council signed the document March 8.

The new Transitional Administrative Law is supposed to provide a legal framework for the country between this summer—when American military leaders are scheduled to turn over authority to Iraqis—and the time Iraqis ratify a permanent constitution.

The new document pronounces Islam the nation's official religion but names it as merely "a source" of law. It also provides broad protections for Western-style freedoms, including freedom of conscience and religious belief and practice.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom released a statement March 8 praising the law's protections for freedom of conscience and other human rights but also sounding a note of caution.

"The commission notes that there was a substantial expansion in the articulation of rights from a narrow right of groups to worship in the draft … to the guarantee to every person freedom of thought, conscience, belief and practice in the final version," the statement said. "This emphasis on individual freedom is unique for the region."

The statement went on to note the commissioners are "concerned, however, by language in the Transitional Administrative Law requiring that legislation not be contrary to the 'universally agreed-upon tenets of Islam.' This provision could be used by judges to abridge the internationally recognized human rights of political and social reformers, those voicing criticism of prevailing policies, religious minorities, women or others."

The statement warned that similar provisions in Afghan and Pakistani governing documents have been abused by judges in those countries, who have used the legal leeway they provided to interpret laws in a theocratic manner.

Iraq had an essentially secular government under Hussein's rule, and Christians and other religious minorities enjoyed a higher degree of religious freedom than in many other majority-Muslim nations.

However, the country's Shia Muslim majority often was brutally repressed by Hussein's government, most of whose leaders were of Sunni Muslim heritage. Now freed from the rule of Hussein's Ba'ath Party, many Shiite clerics have moved to solidify their political power, stoking the fears of international religious-freedom advocates that Iraq may become a theocracy.

Other religious-liberty watchdogs have warned about such difficulties with securing religious freedom in the new Iraq.

"If Islam is the official religion of the state, … or if Islam is the source for secular laws, as some propose, the religious freedom of minorities could be seriously circumscribed," said Bishop John Ricard, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' International Policy Committee, prior to the release of the Transitional Administrative Law in its final form.

Posted: 3/07/04

CYBERCOLUMN:
Snow flakes falling

By John Duncan

I'm sitting here under the old oak tree, thinking of snow. Just a couple of weeks ago, snow covered this old oak tree in Granbury. Three inches of snow made Granbury postcard pretty, if there is such a thing.

In the North Carolina mountains, where my family history plunges deep roots in the soil, blizzard conditions dumped snow like loads of white sand on the earth. Roads closed. The rush to Wal-Mart to stock up on groceries before the snowstorm hit was unbelievable. The icy conditions meant that a few folk could not escape their mountain homes for a few days.

A couple of days ago, I woke up on a chilly Sunday morning in Cambridge, England to snow falling like cotton balls from the sky. The glistening snowflakes tumbled form the sky at hurling speed like meteor showers against a dark sky. The snow in Cambridge rushed to the earth fast and furiously and beautifully blanketed the common areas and the towering buildings where schools like King's College stand. The ground, the buildings and the snow painted the Cambridge morning white like a big wedding cake ready for the celebration.

I love it when God paints the world and brushes his finger stroke of beauty on the earth. I love it when God paints the earth white with his grandeur. I love it when God paints the heart white in a world so often black with terror, violence, sadness, sorrow, sickness and sin.

I have not yet seen the movie "The Passion of the Christ," but I hear the buzz. While in Cambridge, I checked CNN news and its website, and the movie was all the rage in America. At teatime at the Tyndale House Biblical Research Center, the chaps in Cambridge talked about the movie's theme, its brutality ("the worst film for brutality ever made," as one theologian stated), and the chance to see it when it arrives for showing at a local theater. I looked on a movie website, and the movie arrives in Cambridge at the end of

March.

My teenage daughter watched the movie minus popcorn and a soft drink. "The Passion" is not a popcorn-and-soft drink kind of movie. Maybe that's what's wrong with the world. We have a popcorn-and-soft drink mentality when we ought to cherish Christ's passion. Enough of that sermon.

Anyway, my daughter talked to me on the phone about "The Passion." She explained that the movie had lots of blood, but that the flashback scenes were really good. "I won't give too much of the movie away. You'll have to see it for yourself," she observed. I guess she did not think that after all these years as a preacher I probably knew the plot line to Christ's passion. I cannot wait to see the movie.

She talked about "The Passion," I listened and talked about the beautiful, wintry snow that painted Cambridge like a picture-perfect post card.

This talk about "The Passion of the Christ" and snow leads me to one thing: I hope the movie has one snow scene in it, like a post card from Granbury or Cambridge blanketed by snow, or a mountain covered with rolling white flakes piled high and looking like a snowman, or snow glittering a building to look like a wedding cake in Cambridge.

Why? Because for all the passion is, as Easter soon approaches, it is the snow of the Christ of the cross falling on hearts and glittering them with grace and washing them as white as snow. Like falling snow by this old oak tree, Christ's brings child-like wonder of happiness and joy. Like snow flakes falling, Christ's snow changes the landscape of the mountain of the heart and soul, decorating it anew. Like snow flakes tumbling, Christ's snow gives cause for celebration, like eating a piece of wedding cake amid the laughter and cheerfulness of two hearts uniting in marriage.

I hear Isaiah's(1:18) plea for snow: "Cone, now, let us reason together," says the Lord: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Isaiah's words tumble on my heart like snow falling like cotton balls, and I pen these words. May snowflakes fall on your heart:

*Snow flakes falling

Gently falling

Falling Gently

From heaven above.

*Snow flakes falling

Softly falling

Falling softly

On earth below.

*Snow flakes falling

Quietly falling

Falling quietly

On my heart today.

*Snow flakes tumbling

Humbly falling

Falling humbly

On my soul in a fresh way.

*Snow flakes falling

Gently falling

Falling gently

To wash my sins away.

*Snow flakes falling

Softly falling

Falling softly

To bring the joy of life.

*Snow flakes falling

Quietly falling

Falling quietly

To usher peace without strife.

*Snow flakes falling

Humbly falling

Falling humbly

"Come let us reason," the voice of God does know.

*Snow flakes falling

Gently falling

Falling gently

"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow."

*Snow flakes.

Falling

Falling

Falling

Falling

Falling

Falling

Above

Below

Today

In a fresh way

To wash my sins away

To bring life

To end strife

"Come let us reason,"

That's what God says,

"Though your sins be as scarlet,

They shall be as white as snow;

Though they be red like crimson,

They shall be as wool."

*Snow flakes falling

Falling

Falling

>From heaven above.

*Snow flakes packing

Packing

Packing

The earth below.

Like wool and cotton balls,

*Snow falls

Pure white

In sight

On me.

*Snow flakes falling, falling, falling on you and me.

John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines

Posted: 3/11/04

COMMENTARY:
Atonement and “The Passion”

By Reagan White

Show business has always liked the logic of making a fortune by standing convention on its head. But sometimes, it’s the logic that gets upended.

Recent investments by Rosie O’Donnell and Mel Gibson are a case in point. O’Donnell bet $10 million on a Broadway musical about Boy George called “Taboo” and lost every nickel. Mel Gibson put down $30 million on a movie about Jesus’ crucifixion, voiced the dialogue entirely in Aramaic and Latin, and quadrupled his money in less than a week.

Jay Leno said “The Passion of the Christ” has done so well, “there’s now talk of turning it into a book.”

Others have been less sanguine about Gibson’s Thunderdome treatment of show business logic. A frequent accusation is that he is trading in anti-Semitism. If this were true, audiences should be emerging from the movie fizzing with hatred for Jews. They aren’t, and not just because Gibson expunged the Bible’s “his blood be on us, and on our children.”

It’s because the real theological epicenter of this movie is the Atonement, and his unmistakable stance on the issue has smoked out Gibson’s true adversaries—post-Christian theologians. Just as C.S. Lewis predicted, more than a few of them have put God in the dock—that is, on trial—for offering his Son for our sins.

As for opposition to the movie on the basis of show business rules, perhaps the most interesting charge laid against Gibson’s film has been leveled by A.O. Scott, who wrote in The New York Times that Gibson was unable “to think beyond the conventional logic of movie narrative.” While most movies end by avenging earlier episodes of violence against innocence, Scott contends “The Passion of the Christ” incites the audience to demand justice, and then ends without providing it. The resulting “inconclusiveness” is “Mr. Gibson’s most serious artistic failure,” Scott wrote.

Indeed, in Gibson’s movie, after Jesus is taken down from the cross, anyone in the audience who expects cosmic-level payback is left hanging. Yes, there is a resurrection—its portrayal has been described as “poetically economic”—but a glimpse of Jesus revived hardly scratches the surface of what justice would seem to demand after seeing him tortured to death. Accordingly, the question may fairly be raised: Is “The Passion of the Christ” an unfinished movie?

After all, the New Testament tells us of many things that happened after the crucifixion and resurrection. It’s safe to assume Gibson is aware of them. Shouldn’t we expect a more satisfying conclusion from the star of “Lethal Weapon” and “Braveheart”?

Actually, this is where one might expect more of a writer reviewing a major motion picture for The New York Times. Scott accuses Gibson of failing to think beyond the logic of the conventional Hollywood ending, and then notes specifically how Gibson’s film is unconventional. Nevertheless, a defender of traditional Christianity can hardly pretend that such quibbling constitutes a response to Scott’s indictment.

By refusing to use the resurrection as a counterbalance to the horrors of the crucifixion, Gibson has left the moviegoer in a predicament familiar to Christians everywhere: “In medias res”—Waiting for the other shoe to drop. The omission of any cinematic climax adroitly highlights this fact: The story of God’s business with humanity did not end at Golgotha.

Yes, atonement was made for the sins of the world. Yes, Jesus was vindicated on Easter morning. But the legions of angels who stood by ready to intervene at the crucifixion still await the command to commence judgment on what the ancient prophets said will be “the great and terrible Day of the Lord.”

Horace—no stranger to the logic of drama—advised a budding epic poet not to feel compelled to begin at the beginning of a story, but to start right at a decisive point in its middle instead. He coined “in medias res” to express this idea. Gibson’s drama does something even more unconventional; it reaches its end, makes the audience realize that the final act is still to come, and—to top it off—assures them they are inescapably involved.

It’s a drama that breaches the walls between story and reality and leaves each viewer aware of their part to play in the impending final act. Could there be room in show business for a new kind of logic?

Reagan White Jr. is a member of First Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, and a graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Posted: 2/10/04

CYBERCOLUMN:
God & fishermen

By John Duncan

I’m sitting here under the old oak tree, wondering about fishing. Christ loved fishermen.

Last fall, I went fishing in Central Texas on a private pond. The heat of the fall reigned over me and the other fishermen. We ate peanut butter crackers and drank bottled water chilled over ice. The teacher, knowing I seldom fished, instructed me on the ways of baiting the fish and setting the hook.

My teacher placed a rubber worm with glitter on the j-shaped hook and told me to cast my hook upon the waters. The old preacher from Ecclesiastes once wisely instructed his students, “Cast your bread upon the waters and after many days it will come back.” I was casting my hook on the waters in hopes of a fish coming back.

I threw out a fishing line while the sun beat upon my forehead. “Set the hook,” kept scrolling through my mind like a message at the bottom of a television screen.

I carefully viewed the surrounding scenery—a rock ledge, a floating tire, seaweed, an upside-down aluminum boat on the sandy shore, a tree waving in the light breeze, a cooler and net in the boat, and fish swimming at the surface of the clear water.

Then it happened. A nibble on the hook sent the line off in a direction opposite the boat.

“Set the hook,” scrolled through my brain again.

I jerked the fishing pole—and low and behold, I caught a fish—a gulping fish with jagged teeth and scales and razor-blade fins and speckled skin and a j-shaped hook in the top of his mouth.

My fishing escapade set me to wondering about Jesus’ love for fishermen. He called Peter, Andrew, James and John from their fishing nets. They lived as the sons of Zebedee, fishermen by trade, passionate about gulping fish with jagged teeth and scales and razor-blade fins and speckled skin with meat inside. “Follow me,” Jesus invited.

“And they immediately left the ship and their father and followed him” (Matthew 4:22). As they followed Jesus, they became sons of God and so-called sons of thunder. Their faith rattled the earth.

We strung a heavy load of fish that day on the pond. I gloried in the prize of a catch and took digital pictures to prove it. I smelled like fish for the rest of the day.

I find myself thinking about Jesus and the fishermen. He sets the hook in the heart. He glories in fishermen like a prize. He receives them just as they are—stinky fish smell and all. He bids them, “Come, follow me!”

And in the simplicity of his bidding, many follow. After all, the simplicity of following Jesus brings joy like catching a string of fish.

As Henri Nouwen says, “The loud, boisterous noises of the world make us deaf to the soft, gentle and loving voice of God.”

And so here I am under the old oak tree, wondering. On a pond in Central Texas while setting a hook and catching a fish, I blocked the noise of the world out to be reminded of the soft, gentle, and loving voice of God: “Come, follow me!” Will you?

John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines