Posted: 8/8/03

Baylor chaplains honor volunteer for service

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

DALLAS–Baylor University Medical Center chaplains honored a volunteer for completing the Baptist General Convention of Texas Hands-On Ministry training classes with praise and a certificate.

A group of about 20 chaplains gave a rousing round of applause as Chaplain Mike Mullender presented volunteer chaplain Dan Steerman with the certificate.

Steerman, who has volunteered for almost a year at the hospital, is an exemplary worker, Mullender said.

“Dan's the kind of guy who wants to help everyone,” said Mullender, a BGCT-endorsed chaplain. “He wants to please everyone. He is the perfect volunteer.”

Steerman credits the Hands-On courses, a 42-hour BGCT program that teaches the basics of the ministry, with helping him in the work. In addition to learning useful lessons, the courses inspired Steerman to continue the ministry.

“They were so interesting,” said Steerman, who works for the city of Dallas. “The speakers really brought the information and presented it in such a way that you wanted to do the work.”

God worked to enable him to attend the classes, said Steerman, who attends New World United Methodist Church in Garland. A friend invited him to take the training. His discipleship class voted to move their meetings from Thursday to Tuesday to allow him to get trained.

Steerman gets nervous before knocking on each door, he said. He is not sure how they are going to react to his presence, and several people have asked him to leave them alone.

But he compares it to playing golf. A person may make many bad shots, but one good shot motivates people to keep going. The same is true with chaplaincy, Steerman said. When he connects with people and meets spiritual needs, he feels he is doing God's work.

The chaplaincy skills he learned in the Hands-On courses have helped Steerman visit homebound people through a ministry in his church. This is a common result of the training, said Mullender, a speaker at the classes.

The classes have helped expand chaplaincy beyond the walls of the hospital, a need that has become increasingly in demand, according to Mullender.

“It helps to give a real solid base for training hospital and home visits,” he said. “Hands-On Ministry has been a way to enhance our volunteers. It's really helped.”

For more information about Hands-On Ministry, contact Reba Gram at (888) 311-3900 or rgram@bgct.org.

Posted: 8/8/03

Education journal studies Baptist governance

By John Pierce

Baptists Today

Tension that sometimes leads to separation between Baptist-related colleges and state Baptist conventions was the focus of a July 4 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The writer looked to Georgia and Missouri for the latest examples to support her notion that colleges and conventions are increasingly at odds over trustee control and academic freedom.

“More than a dozen colleges have either split entirely with their state conventions, by creating self-perpetuating boards of trustees, or significantly limited the convention's power over the trustee-election process,” Beth McMurtrie reported.

Shorter College, which legally separated from the Georgia Baptist Convention after overt efforts by convention leaders to influence composition of the trustee board, received the most ink. The liberal-arts school in Rome, Ga., is still entangled with the convention over frozen funds.

Shorter President Ed Schrader, a geologist and Baptist layman, told the Chronicle he was unaware of “Georgia Baptist politics” until pastor Mike Everson began questioning him about issues such as homosexuality, biblical literalism and the revised Baptist Faith & Message statement.

Schrader told the Chronicle he could tell Everson was not pleased with the president's responses although he “didn't say much and scowled a lot.”

Everson said he concluded from the meeting that Schrader “was not conservative in his values, and that the school would not be.”

Everson told the Chronicle that Schrader misrepresented their informal meeting. “The president has no character and is just a habitual liar,” he charged.

Everson said he questioned Schrader from the role of a pastor who recommends colleges to his members, not as a convention leader. However, the Douglasville, Ga., pastor chaired the GBC nominating committee that reported a slate of trustees for Shorter in November 2002 that contained none of the names suggested by the current college board. Shorter officials claimed that action to be unprecedented.

Shorter trustees responded by severing ties with the convention. Their reorganization to a new legal entity with self-perpetuating trustees was upheld by an April court decision.

College officials said the move was necessary to protect Shorter's accreditation. They cited an accreditation review team report asking them to demonstrate that trustees were independent and not under “undue pressure” from outside sources.

GBC Executive Director Bob White claimed the convention never sought control of Shorter's board and compared the separation to having a prize treasure stolen.

Current Shorter trustee Chairman Gary Eubanks, an attorney from Marietta, Ga., described a different agenda. “The convention really wants Bible colleges,” he told the Chronicle. “They don't want liberal-arts colleges.”

The Missouri Baptist Convention, now under fundamentalist control, has seen five of its entities including Missouri Baptist College create self-perpetuating boards to avoid takeovers similar to what has occurred at Southern Baptist Convention seminaries and agencies over the past two decades.

Like Shorter, courts likely will decide the future relationships between Missouri Baptist College and the state convention.

The Chronicle article also noted tensions between Missouri Baptists and William Jewell College in Liberty, Mo., over concerns about homosexuality and other issues.

Posted: 8/8/03

House amendments called
political grandstanding

By Hannah Lodwick

Associated Baptist Press

WASHINGTON (ABP)–The U.S. House of Representatives has approved two amendments to a spending bill that are intended to protect the Ten Commandments and Pledge of Allegiance.

While the amendments were celebrated by sponsor Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., other lawmakers predicted they will have no practical effect.

One of Hostettler's amendments prohibits U.S. marshals from removing a two-ton monument of the Ten Commandments from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court building. The amendment passed 260-161.

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore placed the monument in the courthouse. A federal judge later ordered the monument removed, although the case has been appealed to the Supreme Court.

Hostettler said he does not trust the high court to do the right thing.

“The framers of the Constitution never intended for the fickle sentiments of as few as five people in black robes, unelected and unaccountable to the people, to have the power to make such fundamental decisions for society,” Hostettler said during House debate.

“That power was crafted and reserved for the legislature. We do not have to put our faith in the faint possibility that some day five people in black robes will wake up and see that they have usurped the authority to legislate and will constrain themselves from straying from their constitutional boundaries.”

House members also approved Hostettler's amendment to prohibit the use of federal funds to enforce a ruling by the 9th Circuit of Appeals that said California's school children cannot say the Pledge of Allegiance because it includes the words “under God.” The vote on the amendment passed 307-119.

Both amendments were part of the Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary Spending Bill adopted this summer. To take effect, the amendments must be added to the Senate version of the bill and signed by President Bush.

Even then, the amendments won't carry the weight of law. While federal funds cannot be used to enforce the lower courts' rulings, legal scholars pointed out, the rulings are still in effect and can be enforced by local and state authorities.

Posted: 8/8/03

Commission magazine remembered for influence

By Craig Bird

Associated Baptist Press

RICHMOND, Va. (ABP)–The Commission no longer goes to the ends of the earth–at least not the printed Southern Baptist version. What that means for Southern Baptists' efforts to carry out the Great Commission remains to be seen.

Citing a $10 million budget shortfall, the SBC International Mission Board in June cut 37 jobs and suspended publication of its 250,000-circulation magazine, The Commission.

Projected annual savings include $800,000 in printing and postage costs, in addition to an undisclosed amount for the salaries and benefits of terminated staff members.

The IMB's communications staff, which was responsible for the 65-year-old magazine, bore the brunt of the layoffs. By one count, 14 employees from the department were terminated, including several with more than 30 years of IMB experience. An on-line edition of The Commission will continue. Research repeatedly showed The Commission played a significant role in raising money for the IMB, recruiting career missionaries and informing church leaders about missions.

The Commission “has as her most lasting legacy the untold thousands of Christians who found their concern for missions heightened by what they found in her pages,” said longtime Editor Leland Webb, now retired. “Because of TC, many advocates of missions bowed their heads in prayer and reached into pocket or purse to give extra dollars.”

The Commission also “earned a hearing for the gospel and missions in the editorial offices of some major publications whose staffs respected quality wherever they saw it,” Webb said.

Former IMB photographer Charles Ledford was a new Christian when he applied for a job with National Geographic. “They didn't have any openings but encouraged me to contact The Commission, since it was doing great things visually,” said Ledford, who last year was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in photography for his work for USA Weekend.

The Commission was a training ground for many talented photographers, designers and writers, such as Pulitzer-nominated Joanna Pinneo, who left the mission board to become a photographer for U.S. News & World Report.

“These artisans, all the while maintaining professional quality in their work, kept as their primary goal to portray the rich and varied story of missions with honesty and passion,” said Webb, who retired in 1995 after 30 years with the publication, including the last 15 as editor.

The high cost of the glossy color publication always attracted the attention of budget cutters, Webb admitted, but until now the “value received” was judged to justify the expense.

According to Webb's research, 46 percent of career missionaries surveyed between 1986 and 1993 said the magazine played a part in their decision to seek missionary service. A 1993 report noted the IMB had received more than $10.5 million in trusts, wills or other types of gifts from contacts first made through The Commission.

Carolyn Weatherford Crumpler, executive director of the Southern Baptist Convention Woman's Missionary Union from 1974 to 1989, was one of the regular readers.

“Losing The Commission is almost like losing a family member,” she said. “I remember reading it even as a young person in my home church. … The stories from the fields, along with the pictures, brought missions home to me.”

Several terminated employees declined to discuss the IMB's decision on the record. The severance agreements signed by the former employees reportedly limit what they can say about the IMB and the magazine's demise.

IMB spokesman Mark Kelly told Associated Press, “Nothing has been said about whether the (print) magazine might resume publication.” The final regular issue of the magazine will be distributed in August.

The November issue, which supports the SBC annual mission offering, also will be produced, though possibly in a new format, according to IMB sources.

The move does not affect the IMB's overseas correspondent system, which employs journalists and photographers as career missionaries stationed overseas, Kelly said. The correspondents were frequent writers for the magazine. But Kelly noted, “We still have the on-line version as well as many other channels of communicating with Southern Baptists.”

The Commission “was not afraid to compete with the big boys from the secular world of journalism,” Webb recalled. The magazine frequently garnered national awards alongside National Geographic, Newsweek and Life. Staffers credit graphic designer Dan Beatty's “phenomenal talent” as the creative force behind the accomplishments.

In the annual Pictures of the Year International competition, The Commission was awarded first place in the national magazine category in 1986. First-place honors were earned in 1988 for best use of photography by a magazine and best editing of a feature story. Other national awards for photography followed in 1989, 1990 and 2001.

Former career missionary Kathy Wade, whose position as managing editor was cut, expressed more concern for the fate of the magazine than for her job. The demise of The Commission gives her pause, Wade said, “because I know the impact (the magazine) has had on individual lives, individual ministries and individual decisions to be stronger believers in Christ.”

“It's not just 56 pages of stories and photographs winning all types of journalism awards,” added Wade. “It's been a testament of how God is continually working through his people.”

Posted: 8/8/03

Astronomers pinpoint Crucifixion time

LONDON (RNS)–Two Romanian astronomers claim to have pinpointed the exact time and date of the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Internet news service Ananova has reported.

According to Liviu Mircea and Tiberiu Oproiu of the Astronomic Observatory Institute in Cluj, Romania, Jesus died at 3 p.m. on Friday, April 3, 33 A.D.

According to their reading of the New Testament data, Jesus was crucified on the day after the first night with a full moon after the vernal equinox. If the Crucifixion took place some time between the years 26 and 35, this could mean either Friday, April 7, 30, or Friday, April 3, 33. But it was only in the latter year that records show a solar eclipse as having occurred in Jerusalem, matching what it recorded in Mark 15:33–“And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.”

The two astronomers also timed the Resurrection as having occurred precisely at 4 a.m. the following Sunday, April 5.

Although by biblical accounts, Jesus would have been 33 when crucified, many biblical scholars believe the current Gregorian calendar pegged the year of Jesus' birth incorrectly in setting a starting point for the year Anno Domini. By their reckoning, Jesus would have been born between 3 B.C. and 5 B.C.

Posted: 8/8/03

Is 'The Da Vinci Code' as accurate as it claims?

By Nancy Haught

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)–What's the secret to “The Da Vinci Code,” the novel by Dan Brown that's been smiling down from fiction best-seller lists since it debuted in April?

No, it's not the inside joke behind the Mona Lisa's languid smile or the redhead seated on the right hand of Jesus in the “Last Supper.” It's the note Brown tacks onto the first of his 454 printed pages under the cut-and-dried title “Fact.”

“All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate,” Brown writes.

OK, so what does all this cloak-and-dagger detail mean? Is the Christian church based on a lie? Does a secret society, once led by Leonardo da Vinci, protect the truth? Are tourists tramping all over it right now?

If these are among your questions, you've probably read the book, a real page-turner about Harvard University “symbologist” Robert Langdon and his hair-raising encounter with the Holy Grail. It's hovered near the top of the New York Times best-seller list for 15 weeks. Columbia Pictures has bought the movie rights, hoping some actor will do for symbology what Harrison Ford did for archaeology.

But back to the question at hand. What does this “accurate” description add up to? How much of “The Da Vinci Code” is true, and how much is a good story? And what difference does it make?

“It touches on enough strands of popular speculation and mythology that readers will think of it as more factual than it is,” says Charles Lippy, a history of religion professor and an expert on popular culture who says he enjoyed the book but never forgot it was a novel. Other readers may be more gullible.

Combine that, Brown's authoritative tone and some readers' penchant for conspiracy theories, and it may be that “The Da Vinci Code” could use a little cracking. Without giving too much away, here's a quick reader's guide to some key concepts:

First, there really is a phi. A character in “The Da Vinci Code” pronounces it “fee,” but James Schombert, an astronomer who also teaches the philosophy of science at the University of Oregon, knows it as the “golden ratio,” 1.618.

Schombert describes the number as a visual equivalent of music, a proportion that is pleasing to the eye. A painting, one of Leonardo's for example, painted along those lines may be divided into rectangles with the same proportions, and each will be balanced.

It's the same ratio behind the interlocking compartments of the shell of a nautilus and the relationship between parts of the human body, say the distance from one's shoulder to his fingertips, divided by the distance from his elbow to his fingertips.

Schombert sees the golden ratio as evidence that “the universe is properly built,” but he and some other scientists stop short of seeing it as a calling card of divinity, either masculine or feminine.

What was the artist up to? Few painters have been reinterpreted as often as da Vinci, says Richard Turner, author of “Inventing Leonardo.” Every generation has held him dear for different reasons.

Joseph Manca, an art history professor at Rice University who teaches a course on da Vinci and has written about him, hasn't run across the theories that Brown's hero, Langdon, and his fictional colleague, Leigh Teabing, trot out in “The Da Vinci Code.”

The “Mona Lisa” may be an encrypted ode to nature, Manca says, but the description of her as the epitome of androgyny isn't exactly the “inside joke” Langdon describes.

Manca also quibbles a bit with Langdon and Teabing's interpretations of the artist's “Last Supper.” The “disembodied” hand that grasps a dagger is clearly St. Peter's, Manca says. The disciple holds the weapon to foreshadow his attack on a Roman guard later that night. The redhead at the dinner table is John the Beloved, Manca says. He was the youngest of Jesus' disciples and is usually depicted as cleanshaven.

How close were Jesus and Mary Magdalene? Close, says Lippy of the University of Tennessee, but just how close they were is anybody's guess and not a new wrinkle in popular fiction, he says. “Remember 'The Last Temptation of Christ'?” But the “evidence” that Teabing insists exists is inconclusive, at best, Lippy says.

There is a Gospel according to Philip–with a passage like the one Brown quotes–among the books that didn't make it into the New Testament canon. But it's tough to blame that on Constantine, who didn't become a Christian until he was on his deathbed, Lippy says. The official collection, or canon, took years to develop, and to ascribe what made it and what didn't to any one person is an oversimplification, he adds.

The legend that Mary Magdalene ended her life in France has been around at least since the Crusades, says Lippy, who last summer stood over what some believe are her bones, which lie in a small church in Vezelay.

And there was a Priory of Sion, with connections to the Knights Templar, but Grail experts are divided over whether the secret group persisted into the current century and whether the documents that listed its grand masters are real or a hoax.

“The Da Vinci Code” is fun to read, but its pages hold little “real evidence,” Lippy says. “There is nothing that corroborates all this, other than almost a wish to have these things be so.”

It was just enough to send Lippy to the library, enough to make him wish he'd written the story instead. “There's a glimmer here, a glimmer there and then he adds the 'Mona Lisa,'” Lippy says. “Who is she smiling at? We readers just pounce on stuff like that.”

Posted: 8/8/03

Dead Sea Scroll exhibit
coming to Dallas next month

By Samuel Smith

Southwestern Seminary

FORT WORTH (BP)–Place the solid black fragment of lamb's skin under an infrared light, and the words revealed in 2,200-year-old Hebrew script are astounding.

The fragmentary passage from the Book of Isaiah found near the Dead Sea community of Qumran reads in part, “Your dead shall live again; their corpses will arise.”

Faculty, staff and students at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary got a rare glimpse of the Dead Sea Scroll fragment and other rare biblical manuscripts during a private exhibition in mid-July on the seminary's Fort Worth campus.

The full exhibit, “From the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Forbidden Book,” will open in early September and run through Nov. 16 at the Biblical Arts Center in Dallas. The exhibit aims to help those who have been touched by the Bible in English understand the struggles that made the freedom to own and read God's word possible.

“The exhibition is about the entire history of Scripture and how we got our Bible in America,” said Lee Biondi, a Los Angeles antiquities dealer who put the exhibit together.

That history begins with the Dead Sea Scrolls. The exhibit will feature fragments from the ancient texts of Genesis and Isaiah discovered near Qumran, as well as fragments from Leviticus and Exodus from a third-century copy of the Old Testament in Greek, the Septuagint.

Other highlights will include fragments from the earliest surviving papyrus manuscripts of the Gospel of John and the Apostle Paul's letter to the Colossians, both of which are owned by private collectors.

The papyrus and Dead Sea fragments alone are worth the trip to see the exhibit, Biondi said. “You would have to travel to museums all over the world to see as broad a cross-section of the history of Scripture which we will have on display.”

Bibles and fragments from the Latin manuscript tradition dating to the fourth century also will be included among the ancient treasures in the Dallas exhibit.

Latin became the dominant language in the study of the Bible for more than a millennium because the Catholic Church forbade the translation of Scripture into the language of the common people.

The exhibit includes a Bible in English from 1410, which belonged to British martyr Richard Hunne, who was convicted of heresy and burned at the stake by authorities for believing that the Bible should be accessible in English. It also includes Erasmus' printed 1522 Greek and Latin text, which became the basis for Bible translations in the language of common people throughout the Reformation.

From Erasmus' text, scholars produced the Geneva Bible in 1560 that became the Bible the Puritans brought to America. The exhibit includes a copy of the Geneva Bible and its successor, a first edition of the King James Version of 1611.

James, of course, owned the copyright to the text. Thus, printing the Bible in America during colonial times was illegal. The Bible was then called the “Forbidden Book.”

Being the rebels that they were, however, Congress commissioned Robert Aitken to print the Bible in 1782, even before the United States signed the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the Revolutionary War. The Aitken Bible today is rarer than the Gutenberg Bible, and one will be on display with the rest of the collection.

Advance tickets for the exhibit may be purchased online at www.deadseaexhibit.com. Tickets are $19 for adults and $12 for children. Groups of 20 or more receive a $2 discount off the adult ticket price.

Posted: 8/8/03

DOWN HOME:
To recycle or not, that's a question

Here's a question–straight from the home of teenagers–I've never seen Miss Manners tackle:

Is it OK to “recycle” toilet paper thrown into the trees on your front lawn?

This subject came up at our house recently, when some friends of Molly, our 16-year-old, TP'd our yard.

Michael and Mitchell possess better arms than the girls who typically sneak down our street in the dead of night to hurl rolls of toilet paper onto our pear and oak trees. The guys not only managed to drape white ribbons over the outside branches, but they also fired the rolls into the center of the trees, far away from easy reach at the top of our 10-foot step-ladder.

The trees have grown pretty tall–at least by new-subdivision-Texas standards–in the past eight years. And since I'm 46 years old and have no desire to break my back, I've quit reaching for the most extreme strands. If it ever rains again, the TP will wash out.

Fortunately, however, Michael and Mitchell had more cents than sense when they visited our yard. Girls apparently are raised to be more cost-conscious than boys, because they always use the cheapest single-ply toilet paper imaginable. You'd think you'd have to visit a Third World country to buy TP that cheap.

But the boys armed themselves with a highly advertised name-brand premium decorative material. It's sold on the basis of its absorbency, but I can tell you it will take a tuggin' and keep on draggin'. If I could reach a loose end, I could pull most of it out of the tree.

The bonus, however, developed as I worked the trees and discovered at least a dozen partial rolls, some nearly complete, wedged up in the branches. I gently pulled them down, tore off any damaged sheets, and stacked them by the front door.

“What are you doing with those?” my wife, Joanna, asked as I walked in the house, my arms piled with nearly new TP rolls.

“Recycling them,” I replied. “These are high-grade rolls. It'd be a sin to just throw them all away.”

Jo was busy with something in the kitchen, so I didn't hang around to hear whether or not she approved my idea.

Later, however, I heard my name, taken not quite in vain, but nearly abused: “Marv, what have you done?” Jo called from the guest bathroom. I arrived a second later to find her staring at five partial rolls of TP stacked in the basket where we keep such stuff.

She informed me that, while the Lord wants us to to be good stewards of all creation, and that includes recycling all things recyclable, it is verily inhospitable to offer formerly treed TP to guests in one's abode.

You may ask if she allowed me to save my stash for the master bathroom. That is, um, a personal question I'm not allowed to answer.

Posted: 8/8/03

Government and clergy promote drug education

WASHINGTON (RNS)–Bush administration officials and clergy from a variety of faiths have announced a new partnership to encourage houses of worship to be more involved in preventing substance abuse among youth.

“The best thing in the world is to have more of them not start” using drugs, said John Walters, the White House drug czar. “This is a very important step because of the influence of faith in many young people's lives.”

Walters' Office of National Drug Control Policy has produced several new resources, including a prevention guide for youth leaders in faith communities called “Pathways to Prevention: Guiding Youth to Wise Decisions,” and a smaller brochure offering suggestions for how faith leaders can prevent drug and alcohol abuse.

The 91-page prevention guide urges clergy to address substance abuse in sermons and includes tips for group interaction such as role-playing activities on how to deal with peer pressure. The resources, which also have been endorsed by Catholic and evangelical groups, are available online at www.TheAntiDrug.com/ Faith/Resources.html.

“This tool kit, I think, is going to be a lifesaver for a lot of churches that don't know how to talk to kids about this subject but want to,” said Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives.

Posted: 8/8/03

Bluegrass colors a world
of musical joy for Bowie family

By Jo Gray

Special to the Standard

BOWIE–Bluegrass weaves a thread of love through the Duffin family of Bowie.

The five members of First Baptist Church comprise the Duffin Family Bluegrass Band, a professional avocation that recently took them to the stage of Dollywood Theme Park in Tennessee.

Chuck and Faith Duffin formed the band with their children–Jennifer, 18, Nathan, 14, and Lindsey, 10. They have played together as a family about three years.

“We feel, Chuck and I both, that this is a ministry,” Faith Duffin said. “People tell us they can see God's hand on our lives when we're performing.”

She also said she believes God has blessed the family in a special way.

“We have a lot of joy in each other and as a family,” she explained. “The thing about playing as a band is we're all dependent on each other. We have all learned that.”

Chuck and Faith Duffin met while playing in a high school orchestra and married weeks before she graduated. While he already had an interest in bluegrass music, she did not.

“I was strictly classical at the time,” she explained. “In fact, the first bluegrass festival we attended in Hugo, Okla., I stayed in the camper.”

Playing with a bluegrass band was living a childhood dream for Duffin, however. “I had wanted to play a banjo since I was 11 years old and saw one being played on 'Hee Haw,'” he said.

In time, the children announced they, too, wanted to play instruments. Nathan chose the banjo; Jennifer selected the bass fiddle; and Lindsey decided on the fiddle. Within a few weeks, they had mastered the instruments well enough to join their parents in performing.

As the performance group grew from two to five, the Duffin Family Bluegrass Band was formed. But that meant time away from school and weekends on the road.

Mrs. Duffin began home-schooling the children, and Duffin changed jobs to allow evenings and weekends with the family.

The family has made three recordings and two videos. A fourth recording is to be released soon. On it, an original gospel song written by Jennifer is featured, as well as an instrumental original by Lindsey. Titled “Favorites,” the newest release will include only gospel selections.

During the summer, the family carries a demanding schedule of performances. Duffin said he has toyed with the idea of going on the road full time but doesn't want to put pressure on the children to perform.

“Right now it's fun,” he said. “I don't want the kids to feel they have to perform. Doing it for fun instead of having to is different.”

Not all the group's performances are done for monetary rewards. A recent performance at First Baptist Church of Bowie was done out of love for the church family and to celebrate the baptisms of Nathan and Lindsey.

The Duffins also have performed at First Baptist Church of Montague, where Mrs. Duffin's mother is music director.

An Oct. 5 performance is planned at Lakeridge Baptist Church in Lubbock.

For more information about the family and to hear a sample of their music, visit their website at www.duffinfamilybluegrass.com.

Posted: 8/8/03

EDITORIAL:
Speak biblically, clearly, lovingly about homosexuality

Homosexuality has leaped out of the closet and landed in America's living rooms.

This summer, significant issues revolving around homosexuality have grabbed headlines in national media. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Texas' sodomy law unconstitutional, President Bush affirmed legal restriction against homosexual marriage and the Episcopal Church confirmed the election of its first openly gay bishop.

Many Americans–especially traditional Christians–find discussion of homosexuality embarrassing. It's like when parents talk about sex and their children want to put their fingers in their ears and chant, “Too much information; too much information …” until somebody changes the subject. But nobody's going to change this subject; not this time. Homosexuality is a fact of life in America, whether it's the orientation of the newest Episcopal bishop, the subject of constitutional amendments or a theme of seemingly every-other TV program.

So, what's a Christian to do?

Baptists and other people of biblical faith begin with Scripture. The Bible is clear: Homosexual practice is sinful. From the early pages of the Old Testament, God commands: “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable” (Leviticus 18:22). Similar condemnation of homosexual acts can be found in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul includes “homosexual offenders” among the “wicked (who) will not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9). He also insists “men (who) committed indecent acts with other men” are among those who received “due penalty for their perversion” (Romans 1:27).

Some advocates of homosexual practice try to interpret the Bible to their advantage. For example, they say the men of Sodom (Genesis 19) were guilty of “inhospitality.” Homosexual rape is rather inhospitable. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness. Elsewhere, the Bible unequivocally condemns homosexual activity. (See Leviticus 18:22, 20:13; Deuteronomy 23:18; Romans 1:27, 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10.)

Careful Bible study reveals God specifically condemns homosexual practice, but condemnation follows sin, not temptation to sin. This is why we must differentiate between homosexual activity and homosexuality. Can a person be a homosexual and not commit homosexual sin? Absolutely. A chaste person resists temptation and does not sin sexually, whether that person is tempted to commit fornication, adultery or a homosexual act.

Earnest Christians of good will debate whether homosexuals choose to be homosexual or have it thrust upon them by birth or traumatic circumstances. Some homosexuals, both practicing and non-practicing, testify they have not and would not choose their orientation. Others have adopted the lifestyle from among a rainbow of libidinous experiments. We will not resolve that debate.

However, the debate really is beside the point, because the Bible speaks to behavior, not desire or even inclination. And homosexual behavior is prohibited. Even if we grant that homosexual orientation is genetically derived, we must acknowledge that acting on those impulses is sinful, according to God's word. That means living within limits, whether or not those limits seem fair. Think of someone born blind or deaf. She would give anything to see, but she lives without light. He would give anything to hear, but he lives without sound. A homosexual may be willing to give almost anything to express himself or herself sexually, but the divine limitation within this inclination is chastity. Some homosexuals say this is unfair, that it prohibits them from being all God made them to be. Well, blindness and deafness are unfair, but they are limits within which people live, often for a lifetime.

When heterosexual Christians think about homosexuality, we often misconstrue God's wrath and righteousness. Because the practice seems repulsive and heinous to us, we hone in on how God must feel revulsion at the perversion of his created order. And it is true that God calls homosexual activity an abomination and detestable. More importantly, however, we must recognize God's response to all sin is indignation mixed with grief and alarm. Like a parent who responds swiftly and firmly when a toddler strays into the street, God reacts to our sin out of concern for how the sin itself harms us and impacts others. God hates our sin because God loves us.

And that brings us to Christians' response to homosexuals. Almost without fail, we speak of “hating the sin but loving the sinner,” and most homosexuals I've ever known don't buy it for a minute. For one, we say more than we realize when we speak of “hating” before “loving.” Moreover, most of the time, our actions are anything but loving. Of course, exhibiting love–an intense, intimate emotion–is awkward and difficult when we're talking about care for people whose actions run counter to our own inclinations. Still, the challenge for Christians in a world that seems to flaunt homosexual activity more day by day is to find ways we can be loving and caring to people who, after all, also are made in God's image.

That doesn't mean we forfeit our right to stand on principles of sexual morality. Christians do well to support the biblical and traditional definition of marriage–one woman and one man united faithfully for life. We also do well to say we will not endorse practicing homosexuals in positions of religious leadership. Since homosexual activity is sinful, we should not promote unrepentant sinners as leaders. And we do well to address the media, who seem to have an agenda for making homosexual practice normative in America; we do not agree, and we will not enrich those who promote and sponsor such an agenda.

But we also should heed the biblical teaching, cited by President Bush: “We're all sinners.” For 2,000 years, Christians have been advising others on how they can remove the splinters in their eyes while we're blinded by the logs in our own eyes. We need to remember our own sins are a stench in God's nostrils and, but for the grace of that same God, their sins might also be our own.

I've never been able to figure out why Christians seem to emphasize the heinous nature of sexual sin. Is it because we feel secure, that we will not succumb to those shortcomings? Or is it because we are frightened, and so we yell most loudly at that which scares us the most?

Homosexual sin is not the unpardonable sin, nor the only sin. We must speak with biblical and moral clarity. We also must endeavor mightily to speak with love.
–Marv Knox
E-mail the editor at marvknox@baptiststandard.com

Posted 8/8/03

CYBERCOLUMN:
The Gospel According to Seabiscuit

By Brett Younger

The Gospel According to Seabiscuit is playing to enthusiastic crowds. Laura Hillenbrand’s bestseller, "Seabiscuit: An American Legend," has my parents’ seal of approval—a seldom-awarded honor for a book given to them by their son.

The story features an unlikely cast of damaged and forgotten Depression-era castoffs. When he was born, Seabiscuit was described as a "runty little thing." The horse’s forelegs wouldn't straighten all the way. He spent two years floundering in the lowest ranks of horseracing. Seabiscuit lost 16 races in a row. The most respected trainer of the day beat Seabiscuit hard to cure him of "laziness." Dismissed as worthless, the horse was sold for a pittance.

The man who bought Seabiscuit, Charles Howard, was a self-made millionaire who knew about floundering. In his first two years as the owner of the new Buick dealership in San Francisco, he failed to sell a single car. Just as he began to succeed, his 15-year-old son died in a devastating car accident. His marriage collapsed, and Howard was inconsolable.

Seabiscuit’s new trainer, Tom Smith, was a mysterious, virtually mute refugee from a vanishing frontier. When Howard found Smith, he was living on a cot in a horse stall at a Mexican racetrack. Henry Ford’s gas-powered revolution had made the solitary, broken-down cowboy obsolete. "Tom Smith," wrote a reporter, "says almost nothing constantly."

Seabiscuit’s jockey, Red Pollard, had been abandoned by his father at a makeshift racetrack in a Montana hay field. He became a losing prizefighter as well as a failing bush-league jockey. After 12 years, his winning percentage riding horses was in single digits. Emotionally haunted and blind in one eye, Pollard had no money and no home.

These lost causes came together to give one another a second chance. The unlikely heroes continued to endure bad breaks and harsh fortune, but the lame losers heal one another.

In 1938, the subject of the most newspaper column inches wasn’t FDR, Hitler or Clark Gable. Nobody’s idea of a winner became the No. 1 newsmaker. Seabiscuit’s surprising victory in a match race with War Admiral (who was owned by the kind of people who never seem to need a second chance) is considered the greatest horse race ever. During the hopelessness of the Great Depression, a knobby-kneed horse with a goofy gait became a source of hope.

The present popularity of Seabiscuit’s story is almost as unlikely as Seabiscuit’s story. Why would our cynical, self-centered society embrace a story as sentimental and corny as a horse renewing our spirit? How could a story capture our imagination without car chases, comic book heroes or pirates? What leads people to read 340 pages about a horse or attend a movie without any of Charlie’s Angels in it?

Maybe what makes us pay attention is that we all instinctively understand how much we need the grace of a second chance.

Christians should recognize the message as central to our faith. Mending the broken is what the church is about. The church is here for those who think of themselves as dismissed as worthless, shattered by tragedy, wounded by divorce, damaged, forgotten and abandoned.

The gospel is the promise of redemption, a second chance, for the most unlikely, world-weary characters.

Brett Younger is pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.