Proponents of the multicampus church option cite flexibility, stewardship and the “spark” that newness can bring to ministry.

“You get the big-church bang … but you also get the pop and sizzle of a new church,” said Rodney Harrison, vice president for institutional effectiveness at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and co-author of Sponsoring Starbucks Churches in a Folgers World.

Stewardship is a key element of the model’s draw. “It allows a church to plant a presence without having to replicate resources,” Harrison said.

A multisite church shares resources—financial, management and personnel. “We are networked for stewardship of resources, not only for money, curriculum and other resources, but also for ideas and best practices,” explained Stephen Boster, campus pastor for a site Pleasant Valley Baptist Church in Liberty, Mo., started near Kansas City International Airport.

The model seems to save money, particularly in urban areas where retail or commercial space is more readily available to rent or lease, noted Glenn Akins, assistant executive director for the Baptist General Association of Virginia and a multicampus expert.

“We advocate a low-cost, low-risk model as much as possible,” he added. “Buying land (and] building buildings, especially in urban areas, is getting to be cost prohibitive and increasingly difficult because of regulations (and) restrictions imposed.”

Sites often share a senior pastor by video link, Skype or CD. Some churches use site pastors for hands-on ministry to site members. Campuses may have their own worship teams or also share music with the main campus. The church and its sites share other personnel for education, counseling or other services.

“A church can have a new work with an on-site pastor, but can use other specialists which are available to all. They don’t have to pay additional staff,” Harrison said.

He added that insurance for a new site can be cheaper as a rider to the main campus’ policy, bylaws and church policies are in place and the sites can share special events.

The multisite model can allow a church to minister to a targeted group in several locations. “Some churches have figured out that they can reach a certain people group well and that they can reach those in other sections,” Akins said. The new site “is a replica but that is contextualized in that area.”

Harrison believes the model allows “so much flexibility” for ministry. He noted a church in Holden, Mo., that met in several sites until it could complete a building to accommodate its growth. “It was an interim strategy,” he said.

A church also can use the model to reach underserved areas. “Many small towns in Missouri don’t have an evangelical presence or a church presence at all,” he said.

Harrison pointed to the church in Jerusalem that met house to house. “That’s the theological mooring that the multisite model is embracing. “We don’t want to go beyond the New Testament church,” he said. “If you understand (multisite) as a church, is it much different than a church with multiple services?”

Congregations interested in using the model need “to do their homework, visit those that are working and learn about those that fail,” he said.

Churches also need to address some issues in advance, Akins said. Leaders must determine the essential core and non-negotiables in the church’s function.

How should the church customize and how will it function as a multiple unit? Leaders must determine how it will measure “success” and how it will handle possible power and control issues.

Paul Atkinson, Baptist General Convention of Texas director of church planting, believes leaders also must be prepared to answer the question: What happens if a site determines it wants to be autonomous?

WICHITA FALLS—When Pastor Bob McCartney arrived at First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls, he wanted to lead the congregation to minister better to two distinct populations—students at Midwestern State University and the airmen and their families at Sheppard Air Force Base.

The core group of volunteers from First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls who agreed to help launch The Church at Sheppard gathered for prayer the week before the congregation launched.

The students now meet in a newly constructed building on the church campus each Tuesday night. But to reach military families, the church decided to go to them.

Eden Hills Baptist Church sat near the base gates. It had been a strong church in decades past but dwindled to a handful of members in recent years. A joint vision between First Baptist and the remnant at Eden Hills led to a renovation and rebirth of the fellowship as The Church at Sheppard.

Rather than adopt The Church at Sheppard as a mission congregation, First Baptist chose to make it a satellite church. While the music is live, and Robb Havens serves as campus pastor, McCartney’s sermons are broadcasted through a television signal, and he is the preacher for both campuses.

Multiple families from First Baptist went to the Church at Sheppard to serve as a core leadership group.

Because Sheppard primarily is used for training, its population constantly rotates.

“That’s what ultimately drove us to the satellite concept. What we realize is that The Church at Sheppard will have constant turnover,” McCartney said.

Pastor Bob McCartney shows members of First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls the facilities of The Church at Sheppard during a preview service.

“The only thing The Church at Sheppard maybe should have but doesn’t is a revolving door. We’re going to have people coming in, and we’re going to have people going out. There will be a constant demand on outreach, but that’s why we did it. It’s a place where we can lead people to make a decision to trust Christ, developing them to be like Christ, and then deploying them in service to Christ.”

The Church at Sheppard also will give Havens a chance to grow into his call to ministry, McCartney said.

“His role is a shepherding role. He will be there for the people in the sense of caring for their needs, the visiting ministry and the evangelistic ministry,” he explained. “If they have need for biblical counsel, need for advice, need someone to pray with, he’s the guy on the scene to do that.”

On those Sundays when McCartney is out of the pulpit himself, Havens will preach at The Church at Sheppard “because we want to raise him up and train him,”

The couples who moved from the main campus to The Church at Sheppard were asked for an 18-month commitment.

The Church at Sheppard

“We felt they needed significant buy-in. They had to truly be as committed to the effort as I was and our leadership team was. We felt a revolving door in our core group of volunteers out there would be catastrophic,” McCartney explained.

The leadership team spent a great deal of time researching best practices of churches already engaged in multisite ministry and adopted those that fit the situation in Wichita Falls best.

“We felt we needed to share those best practices” with the core group in training sessions, he said.

McCartney preached on the vision for The Church at Sheppard in two sermons. Couples who were interested in serving in the volunteer corps then were engaged in one-on-one interviews where the level of commitment and the things that would be sacrificed were carefully spelled out for them, McCartney said.

“We had a number of people who looked at us and said: ‘We love this. We’ll support you in this. We’ll do anything we can, but we realize now, this isn’t for us,’” he said.

While the need for The Church at Sheppard appeared obvious, it did not come without sacrifice, McCartney noted.

“We talked about three types of sacrifice that we were going to make it if was going to work. One is the sacrifice of resources. We’ve had people give sacrificially, but we’ve had ministries inside our church that have had to sacrifice bud-get funds. From an economic standpoint, this may not have been the best, most strategic time to plant a satellite congregation. Our ministries have sacrificed to make this work,” he said.

There also has been a relational sacrifice. “That is, ‘I’m going to have leave my life group, I’m going to have to leave this service that I enjoy and these people that I’m associated with. And while I’m going to be around people I like and certainly build a relationship with, I’m going to sacrifice relationally.’

“And we talked about a leadership sacrifice, because we took some of our best—some of our best leaders, some of our best teachers—and we asked them to take this assignment,” McCartney said.

“I don’t know what other pastors would say, but let me tell you from my perspective, this is not easy. This is exceptionally difficult. It’s obviously difficult financially; it’s difficult technologically; it’s difficult relationally. One of the things the staff says around here is, ‘We have complicated matters greatly.’ But we believe it is worth the sacrifice and the complications to reach people for Christ.”

As First Baptist’s leadership team talked to other churches involved in multisite minstry, they were told it would take two years to get it going.

“We took a year and two months, but it took every bit of that. If you’re going to do this well, I think you need ramp up time. You need time to recruit and train. … Our recruiting process was every bit as important as our training.

“It’s the boldest thing I’ve every done in ministry, but the church has to do bold things. We wonder why we’re losing ground in the country and the culture, and while we can see a growth trajectory, the population far outpaces the growth of Christianity in America.

“… I think faith favors the bold. I think God is honored when he’s leading us, but we take a bold step to follow him.”

Perhaps a congregation has discovered a neighborhood or nearby community with no evangelical or other church presence. Or maybe the church has found a demographic that isn’t being reached with the gospel.

Church leaders believe God is leading their congregation to minister to that group. What approach do they take—plant a new church that would one day function as an autonomous body or start an extension of the congregation in that targeted area?

The decision isn’t always easy, according to church planting experts. Many factors—from potential leaders to available resources to culture—determine the choice.

Distance/difference

Virginia Baptist leaders start with proximity measures—to determine how closely related the church and the group it wants to reach are in physical distance and in cultural differences, noted Glenn Akins, assistant executive director for the Baptist General Association of Virginia and an expert in the multicampus model.

The church must decide the geographic distance it is comfortable bridging and that would not be a barrier to providing ministry resources. Would time or fuel costs inhibit sharing staff or facilities? Would distance hinder opportunities for joint activities or worship experiences?

While geographic distance will affect the decision, Akins believes other measures—racial, religious and national—are more influential.

“The greater the differences or distance, the more likely that a plant is the better strategy,” he said. “In other words, if the market area you seek to serve is both far away and very different than your existing ministry approach, this is going to be tough sledding for a multisite approach.”

If a church wants to pursue ministry through another campus site, it must close the distance or difference gap as much as resources will allow. “Technology does this for many, but lots of churches can’t afford the investment required,” Akins added.

When the gap is too wide, planting a new work often is the best approach, he said.

Authentic church

Bo Prosser, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship coordinator of congregational formation, and David King, CBF church starts assistant, focus on making certain the local body is authentic in its setting, whether as a new plant or as an extension of an established ministry.

“It’s a question of how to balance lower costs (and) higher efficiency (of the multicampus model) with a need to make each local church indigenous and contextualized in each setting so as to be authentic,” King said. “I do believe (the multisite approach) has a place, but only as it balances (those) concerns. I think it has been proven to work in large churches that rely on a particular leader or brand.”

King believes the concept would work in smaller settings, but that the host church would have to focus “more on a commitment to living missionally in each setting” and “less on personality or brand.”

Motivation

Motivation for new ministry also is key, noted Rodney Harrison, vice president for institutional effectiveness at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and co-author of Sponsoring Starbucks’ Churches in a Folgers World. “A church must ask itself first what is the motivation,” he said.

Has the church grown to the point that it can no longer accommodate additional growth? Does that church want to be able to draw and reach people from another area? Does the church feel called to reach a different people group? The motive for beginning another ministry will help a church determine the model to use.

Paul Atkinson, Baptist General Convention of Texas director of church planting, agrees a church must examine its intent. Does it want to reach a unique group of people and plan for the group to become autonomous?

Ministry demand

A multicampus model for church growth generally increases administrative demands for the main campus staff. The existing congregation must determine the level of complexity leaders believe they can handle.

“More sites mean more administrative/resourcing demands,” Akins explained. “Many existing churches cannot figure out how to modify their current approach to get to the movement level of reproduction.”

Starting a new church plant generally means building in a timeframe to relinquish all control and withdraw most resources, particularly if partnering with a convention or other body. Generally, most partners, such as the BGCT and CBF, require the new work to become autonomous within three to five years.

Often, resourcing gradually is stepped down over that period, with a lower percentage of funding and other resources trimmed each year.

Leader personality

Sometimes the decision comes down to the personality of the church planter or new site coordinator and how closely that person wants to be tied to the host church.

“If you are starting with a particular planter in mind, then build around them. But if you are starting with a ministry model, then hire accordingly,” he advised.

The host church also may recognize one model works best because of the target personality. First Baptist Church of Farmington, Mo., began New Horizons, intending it to become an autonomous congregation. Church leaders, including the staff member who would become pastor, recognized a growing group of unchurched who did not and likely would not attend the older, established church.

LEWISVILLE—Before a church launches a multisite ministry, it must select and secure a site, assemble a leadership team, raise funds and work through logistical details. But Northview Baptist Church in Lewisville has discovered the most difficult task sometimes may be education.

“The multisite concept totally confused our people,” said Rob Veal, associate pastor at Northview Baptist Church. “The term ‘multisite’ became a negative. So, we changed the lingo.”

The church—which had 25 members when Pastor Kenneth Wells arrived 30 years ago—has grown in recent years to about 700 in attendance at three worship services on any given Sunday. But its location has limited growth.

“The big issue for us is parking,” Veal explained. “We are on three acres in a neighborhood, surrounded by houses. … As we try to move people in and out of three services, we have cars parked on the grass, parked in bar ditches—it’s just a mess.”

A representative from Denton Baptist Association initially told church leaders Northview Baptist was “a great candidate to go multisite,” Veal recalled. The church put together a team last year to study the matter, looking at existing multisite models and the potential for implementing that approach at Northview.

“It looked like a good fit for us,” he said. The church found a potential site in neighboring Flower Mound, just seven miles from the existing campus and home to about 120 members.

However, members of Northview Baptist had difficulty relating to the high-profile megachurches in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that follow a multisite approach. Some saw the multicampus model as no different than a church split.

“Our people have never seen it before. … There’s not a model in the area that we know of that is like our church,” Veal noted.

So, instead of talking about multisites and satellites, Northview Baptist leaders began using more familiar terms—starting a mission or planting another church, but doing it a different way. The church envisions a congregation that would meet at a school in Flower Mound.

“There will be a campus pastor and a worship team, but it will be the same music and format our people know,” Veal said. “Our pastor will preach there. We reach all generations. We’re not selling a video pastor. But the church will grow as people become more attached to the campus pastor.”

Instead of focusing attention solely on the multisite ministry, the proposal became one part of a three-pronged capital campaign launched May 1 and scheduled to culminate June 5. The campaign involves a master plan expansion and debt reduction, as well as the multisite project.

For now, Northview Baptist leaders are “not pushing it,” Veal said, but simply helping members grow in their understanding of what multisite ministry might look like for a fairly traditional, multigenerational neighborhood church that wants to move beyond the limits of its location.

“We’re not trying to become a megachurch,” Veal said. “We’re just trying to reach people for the Lord.”

HUNTSVILLE—Covenant Fellowship in Huntsville functions as a hybrid multicampus church as a means to give birth to autonomous congregations across the state and the nation.

While he was pastor of First Baptist Church in Huntsville, David Valentine led the congregation to minister within the prisons located in and around the city and to join other churches to minister to ex-offenders as they were released. Members focused primarily on ministry to correctional staff, but few staff joined the established church.

“Then I realized that the institutional church is not equipped to handle the needs,” he said. “The best way was to start new churches.”

In 2008, Valentine began Covenant Fellowship with the help of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. With the BGCT, First Baptist Church of Deer Park and Union Baptist Association, Covenant Fellowship began starting house churches.

Dub Wallace, a volunteer with Covenant Fellowship in Huntsville, collects information from soon-to-be-released men in correctional facilities.

The state’s prison population stands at roughly 154,000 throughout the year, with about 70,000 brought into the system and an equal number released each year, Valentine said.

“Our work built trust with the state, and then the state asked if we would assist them with prisoners to lower the recidivism rate,” he explained. “Our biggest goal is how to minister to those impacted by the criminal justice system.”

Covenant Fellowship touches every group connected to the system in some way—inmates, staff, ex-offenders and the families of each.

The ministry is built around life transformation groups, meeting at the prison and in several other locations. Covenant Fellowship trains leaders and tracks each group. Church leaders make sure ex-offenders are put in touch with a group in his or her home area once they have been released.

Covenant Fellowship in Huntsville uses a variety of new work to minister to offenders, correctional staff and families.

The fellowship also connects each group to a church or an association in its network of about 70,000 entities. As each life transformation group matures, it becomes a house church. “Our goal is for them to be autonomous churches,” Valentine said. “God didn’t call us to be the administrative center. … We’re just trying to identify the cluster groups and then are developing leaders.”

Currently, Covenant Fellowship has about two dozen life transformation groups through which it ministers. The church offers a celebration service each Sunday. “But our main aim is to move people to the small groups,” he said, adding that many prefer only the small group atmosphere.

Once an ex-offender is released, the entities affiliated with the fellowship’s network in the area help him or her find housing and a job. They also provide support to those who have been trained to be house church leaders and help them begin new groups as needed.

Covenant Fellowship sees God at work through the life transformation groups. About two years ago, a high-ranking gang member came to Christ and now works with other gang members. The church also baptized 100 individuals in the system last year, Valentine said.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Give these billboards credit. They don’t hedge their bet.

Judgment Day is coming May 21, 2011—not sometime this decade, not sometime this year, but precisely May 21.

The hundreds of billboards warning unrepentant commuters of their impending doom are courtesy of a California radio station led by 89-year-old Howard Camping, who initially predicted the world would end in 1994.

“Seven billion people are facing their death! What else could I do?” said Bob James, a Morristown, N.J., engineer who organized a grassroots effort to erect the billboards in his state. James views the billboards as a message of hope. “When you have this information, with my love for my fellow man, I wanted to tell people.”

Warnings of “end times” are cropping up all over. Throw in buzz about the Mayan calendar’s purported lights-out date of 2012, and it makes for jittery times.

“People love to speculate about the end of the world. It’s human nature to want to know when Jesus is returning,” said Barbara Rossing, author of The Rapture Exposed and an ordained pastor at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. “But Christ specifically admonishes us, ‘Don’t try to figure it out.’”

She finds Camping’s views to be at odds even with those described in the best-selling Left Behind books about the Rapture, when some Christians believe they will be swept up into heaven as those left behind endure years of war and hardship.

“He has some very strange teachings on his website,” she said. “This is very odd thinking.”

May 21 believers say the Bible contains clues that brook no argument. God tells Noah the world will end in seven days; the Bible also equates a day to 1,000 years. They set the date of the flood at 4990 B.C. So, adding 7,000 years and considering the missing year “0” produces the year 2011. Translating a biblical reference to a month and day, from the Hebrew calendar to the Gregorian, results in May 21.

“It’s no other date. It’s only that date,” said Michael Garcia, special projects coordinator at Camping’s Family Radio enterprise.

The gathering up of saved souls will begin, followed by five months of chaos and tribulation that will serve as a spiritual going-out-of-business sale, Camping teaches. It will culminate with the end of the world on Oct. 21.

That is daunting to Anthony Hernandez, a 44-year-old technology worker from Chester Township, N.J., who runs a monthly Bible study class in his home. Although he devotes himself to proclaiming the message of the May 21 date, he knows that doesn’t guarantee his salvation.

“If I find myself here May 22, then I’ll be unsaved, because all the believers will be taken,” he said. Asked if that scared him, the father of seven answered: “It is scary. I don’t know if my children are saved.”

He’s made no contingency plans for life after May 21, neither booking a summer vacation with relatives, nor stocking up on provisions.

“I’ve done nothing, because if I’m lost, I’m lost. It’s over,” he said.

Although most Christians have dismissed the May 21 prediction as silly, Camping’s followers see validation in that reaction. After all, Garcia said, Noah met nothing but skepticism when building his ark.

“It probably wasn’t even raining at that time,” said Garcia, a 39-year-old father of six.

“What was the attitude of everybody else? They scoffed—and they died,” said James, who also sees inspiration in Noah’s tale. “So, scoffers don’t bother me.”

Nor is the refusal of mainstream churches to accept their prediction any cause for doubt, because Camping’s followers believe most churches now are corrupt.

Family Radio has placed about 1,000 billboards nationally. Garcia declined to disclose the cost, nor how much contributors gave in total, but individual donations ranged from $100 to $5,000.

End-of-the-world predictions are nothing new, said Rossing, who specializes in eschatology—the branch of theology examining the end of the world.

William Miller had thousands of followers—called Adventists—convinced the date would be Oct. 22, 1844. Many climbed on their roofs in anticipation of their imminent ascension. When that didn’t happen, the day became known as the Great Disappointment.

Belief in the discovery of secret information is alluring, Rossing said.

“It’s like the decoder ring you found in your cereal box,” she said. “You can be the first on your block to decode the Bible.”

–Kathleen O’Brien writes for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Like many children, Texas native and Dove Award-winning recording artist Chris August had to deal with issues surrounding his parents’ divorce, including heartbreak, pain and bitterness that carried over into his teenage and college years.

But while writing songs for his debut album, No Far Away, he spent time reflecting on his past and realized what was truly missing—forgiveness.

“I think when we search our hearts and find bitterness to-wards another person, we need to be aware that the next step should be forgiveness,” August said. “Because of a relationship with Christ, we are able to forgive others. I’ve come to realize how important forgiveness is and that even as Christians, we sometimes skip over asking someone’s forgiveness or the need to forgive others.

“We need to remember that it’s only through Christ that we are able to be forgiven. We have the perfect example of his great love, grace and mercy, so we should be willing to forgive others and help them see Christ in us, the hope of glory.”

August’s desire to tell others about the freedom found in forgiveness inspired his song “7×70.”

“Since the song came out, I’ve heard a lot of stories from people about forgiveness,” August said. “One example that’s been on my mind a lot lately was a man who told me that this song saved his marriage. It’s amazing and humbling to hear stories like that, because God just laid the words for this song on my heart one day.

“To hear that this song is being used to heal marriages that were falling apart and giving people a little more hope to work through their problems almost leaves me speechless. All I can say is, ‘Hallelujah. God is good.’”

August’s music and message have been well-received. He garnered the Male Vocalist of the Year and New Artist of the Year honors at the 2011 Gospel Music Association Dove Awards in Atlanta. His album, No Far Away, also won Best Pop/Contemporary Album.

Growing up in Garland, August taught himself how to play the piano and began writing songs as a teenager. He led worship at Lake Pointe Church’s Firewheel campus in Garland before moving to Nashville, Tenn., to pursue music full time.

As he travels across the country and performs concerts, August shares the lessons he’s learned in hopes of inspiring others.

“At the end of the day, if you really want to get to know God, you have to dig into his word,” August said. “I encourage people to read the Bible, realize God’s truths and apply them to your life. When I’m writing songs, I’m incorporating those truths and hoping that people will be inspired to live for something greater than themselves.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Are Christianity and capitalism a marriage made in heaven, as some conservatives believe? Or are they in a strained relationship in need of some serious couples’ counseling?

A recent poll found more Americans (44 percent) see the free market system at odds with Christian values than those who don’t (36 percent), whether they are white evangelicals, mainline Protestants, Catholics or minority Christians.

But in other demographic breakdowns, several categories lean the other way. Republicans and Tea Party members, college graduates and members of high-income households view the systems as more compatible than not.

The poll, conducted by Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service, found al-though conservative Christians and evangelicals tend to want their clergy to speak out on issues like abortion and homosexuality, they also tend to hold left-of-center views on some economic issues.

“Throughout the Bible, we see numerous passages about being our brother’s keeper, welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and healing the sick,” said Andrew Walsh, author of Religion, Economics and Public Policy and a religion professor at Culver-Stockton College.

“The idea that we are autonomous individuals competing for limited resources without concern for the welfare of others is a philosophy that is totally alien to the Bible, and in my view, antithetical to genuine Christianity.”

The findings add a new wrinkle to national debates over the size and role of government and raise questions about the impact of the Tea Party’s cut-the-budget pressure on the GOP and its traditional base of religious conservatives.

The poll found stronger religious distinctions over the question of businesses acting ethically without government regulation, and whether faith leaders should speak out about economic concerns such as the budget deficit and the minimum wage.

White evangelicals (44 percent) are more likely than other Christians or the general population to believe unregulated businesses still would behave ethically, and they place a higher priority on religious leaders speaking out about social issues over economic concerns.

Minority Christians, in contrast, believe clergy should be vocal about both areas—particularly on the economic issue of home foreclosures, which 76 percent considered important, compared to 46 percent of the general population.

“Minority Christians have a deep theological tradition of connecting faith and economic justice, and we see that link in the survey,” said Robert Jones, CEO of Public Religion Research Institute. “Because minorities in the U.S. generally continue to have lower incomes than whites, economic issues are also more salient in these congregations.”

In other findings:

• Half of women believe that capitalism and Christian values are at odds, compared to 37 percent of men.

• A majority (53 percent) of Democrats believe capitalism and Christian values are at odds, compared to 37 percent of Republicans and 41 percent of independents. A majority (56 percent) of Tea Party members say capitalism is consistent with Christian values.

• Nearly half (46 percent) of Americans with household in-comes of $100,000 a year or more believe capitalism is consistent with Christian values, compared to just 23 percent of those with household incomes of $30,000 a year or less.

• Most Americans (61 percent) disagree that businesses would act ethically on their own without regulation from the government. White evangelicals (44 percent) are more likely than Catholics (36 percent), white mainline (33 percent) or minority Christians (34 percent) to say unregulated businesses would act ethically.

“The most idolatrous claim of the Christian right is that the invisible hand of the free market … is none other than the hand of God,” Walsh said. “And any attempt to regulate the free market, according to this theology, belies a lack of faith in God.”

Jennifer Butler, executive director of the Washington-based group Faith in Public Life, said the fact that religious values seem to trump political or class differences can help groups like hers advocate for the poor.

And in ongoing debates in Washington over the budget and cuts to domestic spending, that means “making the wealthiest Americans and corporations pay their fair share in taxes” she said.

“People of faith have a unique ability to show political leaders that the economy is a moral issue. Even some members of Congress are beginning to echo our argument that protecting the most vulnerable as we get out of debt is a moral duty.”

The poll was based on telephone interviews of 1,010 adults in April. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Bill would limit protests. A bipartisan group of senators has introduced a bill that would make it harder for protesters from a fringe church in Topeka, Kan., to protest outside military funerals. The Sanctity of Eternal Rest for Veterans Act, introduced by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 8-1 decision in March upholding the right of Westboro Baptist Church to picket military funerals. The bill would increase the “quiet time” before and after services from one hour to two hours and expand the protest buffer zone around a funeral from 150 feet to 300 feet. The buffer zone around access routes to and from the funeral would also grow from 300 feet to 500 feet. Westboro protesters have demonstrated outside military funerals with signs that say “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” calling U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan divine punishment for tolerance of homosexuality. The bill, which has seven Democratic co-sponsors and six Republicans, also is supported by military groups including AMVETS, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Military Order of the Purple Heart. Attorney Margie J. Phelps, daughter of Westboro founder Fred Phelps, has said her small church stands ready to “quadruple” its number of funeral protests.

Worker who burned Quran reinstated. A New Jersey Transit employee fired for burning pages of the Quran at the site of a proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero will get his job back. Derek Fenton, who sparked a national firestorm during his protest on the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks last year, will be reassigned to his $86,110-a-year job, get $25,000 for pain and suffering, and receive back pay for every day since he was fired. Fenton had joined a protest in Lower Manhattan at the site of a planned Islamic center, where he removed and burned three pages of the Quran. At the time, he was off duty and did not publicly link himself to the transit agency.

Toxic drywall taxes Katrina relief. Relief organizations whose volunteers built or repaired hundreds of damaged houses after Hurricane Katrina have found they installed toxic Chinese drywall in more than 200 buildings, requiring hundreds of low-income families to move out for months while the houses are gutted anew and rebuilt. For relief organizations, which have decided to shoulder the full cost of millions of dollars in repairs, doubling back to gut and rebuild old homes is a major budget setback that cuts into their future work. In class-action suits in federal court in New Orleans, people whose new or repaired homes were ruined described how sulfurous Chinese sheetrock emitted vapors that corroded electrical wiring; ruined the circuitry of air conditioners, appliances, computers and televisions; tarnished jewelry and other metals; pitted mirrors and sometimes made their homes stink of rotten eggs. Habitat for Humanity, Catholic Charities’ Operation Helping Hands and Rebuilding Together New Orleans all have launched programs to identify tainted homes, move homeowners out, sustain them for months and make the houses safe for occupancy.

–Compiled from Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Jesus said, “Love your enemies.” If only he had said how we should react when they die at our own hands.

After President Obama announced al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had been shot dead in Pakistan, ebullient crowds gathered outside the White House and at Ground Zero to cheer the demise of the world’s most wanted terrorist, smoking cigars and breaking into chest-thumping chants of “USA! USA!”

Watching from her home in suburban Virginia, Christian ethicist Diana Butler Bass felt a growing sense of unease.

“What if we responded in reverent prayer and quiet introspection instead of patriotic frenzy?” she posted on Facebook. “That would be truly American exceptionalism.”

At the Vatican, where church leaders had just wrapped up joyous celebrations elevating the late Pope John Paul II to one step below sainthood, officials urged caution.

“A Christian never rejoices” in the death of any man, no matter how evil, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said, but instead “reflects on the serious responsibility of each and every one of us has before God and before man.”

For many Americans, bin Laden’s death was quite literally an answer to prayer. Muslims who saw bin Laden as an apostate breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Ethicists and pastors searched for the appropriate space between vindication and vengeance.

U.S. Special Forces did what they had to do. How everyone else is supposed to feel about it is a little less clear.

“As Christians, we believe that there can be no celebrating, no dancing in the streets, no joy, in relation to the death of Osama bin Laden,” Christian ethicist David Gushee said. “In obedience to Scripture, there can be no rejoicing when our enemies fall.”

Indeed, the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel warned that our enemies are not necessarily God’s, who takes “no pleasure in the death of wicked people,” preferring only that they “turn from their wicked ways so they can live.”

Questions around bin Laden’s demise tended to break into two different camps: Were we right to kill him? And is his death something to cheer?

For many, what set bin Laden apart was his defiance, unrepentant violence and coldly calculating designs to rain destruction upon Americans, innocent civilians and even fellow Muslims.

“While vengeance is not a responsibility of us mortals, the pursuit of justice is,” said a statement from Agudath Israel, an Orthodox umbrella group. “As believing Jews, we see in bin Laden’s demise the clear hand of God.”

In a larger sense, removing the singular threat of bin Laden can also lessen the violent threat of radical extremism and terrorism. Put another way, taking one life can save countless others.

“It is a sad truth that one man’s death can represent a step forward in the progress of human relations,” said Zainab Al-Suwaij, president of the Washington-based American Islamic Congress.

For many people, bin Laden’s guilt or innocence never needed to be adjudicated in a court of law, and an American bullet to his head was judgment enough. Scholars cautioned, however, that there’s a difference between judging a man’s actions and judging his soul.

John Langan, a Jesuit professor of Christian ethics at Georgetown University, said killing bin Laden to prevent future attacks is morally valid, but cautioned that vengeance is ultimately a divine, not human, right.

“I knew people who died in 9/11,” Langan said. “I feel deeply the evil of that action. But I am part of a religious tradition that says that we don’t make final, independent judgments about the souls of other men. That rests with God.”

That all leads back to Americans’ response to the death of a madman.

 “You have to have compassion, even for your enemies,” said A. Rashied Omar, a research scholar at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

“The Quran teaches that you never should allow enmity to swerve you away from compassion, because without compassion, the pursuit of justice risks becoming a cycle of revenge.”

Others said there is a difference between rejoicing in bin Laden’s death and finding a certain degree of satisfaction—a “subtle but important difference,” said Jay Emerson Johnson, an Episcopal priest who teaches at the Pacific School of Religion.

“I’m not sorry Bin Laden is dead,” Johnson posted on Twitter. “That’s not the same thing as celebrating his death.”

And that, perhaps, is where Americans will live in the coming days and weeks, caught in the gray space between satisfaction and celebration, glad that bin Laden is finally gone but not wanting to dance on anyone’s grave.

“Without apology, we all sleep better in our beds knowing that Osama bin Laden is no longer a threat,” said R. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. “But celebration in the streets is something that falls short of the sobriety that I think Christians should have on our hearts in reflecting on this  event.”

With reporting Daniel Burke, Adelle M. Banks, Nicole Neroulias, Omar Sacirbey and Alessandro Speciale.

WASHINGTON (ABP) – Two American church-state experts say Friday’s British royal wedding holds lessons about why the marriage of church and state is a bad one.

Anticipating nuptials for Prince William and Kate Middleton at London's Westminster Abbey, the Washington Post’s On Faith blog posed a question April 26 about why, even in secular societies like the United Kingdom, people still turn to places of worship for rituals like coronations, weddings and funerals.

Brent Walker

Panelist Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said for him a more interesting question is how a country like England with deep Christian roots can become so secular in the first place.

Walker surmised that one reason is privilege afforded to an established religion – in this case the Church of England – “sows the seeds of its own attenuation.”

“State support for religion tends to rob religion of its vitality and, for some, turns it into a mere ceremonial exercise,” said Walker, an ordained Baptist minister. “This is one reason why I object so strongly to efforts in the United States to use tax dollars to support religious education and church ministries, allow officially sanctioned prayer in the public schools, and tolerate government-sponsored religious symbols.”

Another panelist, Barry Lynn of American United for Separation of Church and State, noted the irony that in a country with an official church only one in 10 people attend religious services weekly.

The Church of England formed early in the Protestant Reformation after Pope Clement VII refused over a number of years to annul the marriage of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon. The church in England recognized Henry as supreme head of the Anglican Church in 1531. If Prince William ever ascends to the throne, he will play the same role in the church.

Lynn, also an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, said that relationship between church and state causes several things to happen.

Barry Lynn

“First, official ceremonies, including weddings, are held at the place where church and state commingle: the church building itself,” Lynn wrote. “Second, the public ends up finding no need to send resources or put in any time to buttress the fortunes of something that the government is already supporting. Finally, the very idea that a government would select an official religion and, by implication, that God blesses a particular denomination, is itself anathema even to many theists.”

Walker said that even in highly secular societies, non-religious people often continue to turn to religion to “solemnize” important life events because of tradition and “a deep-seated sense of longing for the divine.”

“Religion does a lot better when government gets out of the religion business and leaves it to its own devices,” Walker concluded.

Supporters have called it “the book that changed the world.” Detractors have derided it as archaic and inaccurate. But few dispute the impact the King James Version of the Bible has made over the last four centuries.

Arguably, no other book has had the widespread influence and lasting significance of the King James Version of the English Bible,” said Jeffrey Straub, professor of historical theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Plymouth, Minn.

Although popularly known as the Authorized Version, the King James Bible of 1611—unlike the Great Bible of 1539—never carried an edict by king or bishop commanding that it be read in churches. Even so, for at least half its 400-year history, King James reigned over other translations.

How it was created

Contrary to popular misconception, King James did not translate the Bible that bears his name. But he assembled the committee that produced it over the course of seven years of translation, deliberation and review.

“It did not just drop down from heaven on a sheet and end up at the Red Roof Inn,” quipped Scott Carroll, research professor of manuscript studies at Baylor University.

When King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England after his cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, died in 1603, he inherited a divided Church of England. Puritans within the Anglican Church promptly presented King James the Millenary Petition detailing a long list of grievances.

In response, he convened a conference at Hampton Court the following January. King James dashed the Puritans’ hopes by rejecting virtually all of their demands and letting them know he would not tolerate religious nonconformists.

However, the king responded positively to a call for a new translation of the Bible into English. He saw it as a way to unify the Church of England and displace the Geneva Bible, which he believed undercut the office of bishop and divine right of kings.

A Torah, with a smaller scroll on top displaying the book of Esther, was on display at Baylor University as part of the Green Collection.

So, King James assembled 47 scholars to work under the direction of Bishop Richard Bancroft to create a new translation, using the Bishops’ Bible of 1568 as their guide. In 1611, the King James Bible was published.

Within two generations, the translation’s language became part of the Book of Common Prayer. And within about two centuries, it beat out competing translations as the preferred Bible of the English-speaking world.

Literature & language

At a time when many people bemoan a general lack of biblical literacy in American society, speakers continue to quote snippets from the King James Bible—although often without even knowing it.

The translators of the King James Bible preserved Hebrew idioms such as “fly in the ointment,” “sour grapes,” “skin of your teeth” and “fat of the land.” They also contributed expressions such as “sign of the times,” “holier than thou” and “straight and narrow.” Some literary analysts have asserted the King James Bible is second only to the writings of Shakespeare as a source of common English expressions.

“The King James Bible brought about profound changes in literature,” said Lamin Sanneh, professor of mission and world Christianity and professor of history at Yale University. He spoke at a conference sponsored by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, marking the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.

Indeed, from the speeches of Abraham Lincoln to the fiction of Herman Melville and William Faulkner, echoes of the King James Bible can be heard in American literature and language, said Robert Alter, professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

“If there is a single attribute readers attach almost reflexively to the King James Version, it is eloquence,” Alter told the Baylor conference.

Perhaps ironically, the King James Bible translators preserved the beauty of the original language in the Hebrew Bible most effectively in the narrative prose passages, rather than in its poetry, he noted.

“Homespun Anglo-Saxon vernacular offered a good English equivalent of the plain diction of Hebrew” in prose, he said. “It captures the evocative force of the original.”

But in the poetic passages—most notably Psalms and Job—translators demonstrated “indifference to the cadences of compactness of the Hebrew,” Alter said. Even so, they produced classic English in the process.

“After 400 years, its grand language still rings strong,” he said.

Impact on Great Britain

Until the 18th century, the King James Bible competed with multiple other English-language translations for use in churches throughout Great Britain, said David Bebbington, professor of history at the University of Stirling.

“It was not yet a sacrosanct cultural item,” he said.

However, as romantic sensibilities and “esteem for the old” grew in England, so did marked appreciation for the 1611 translation. Instead of looking down on the King James Bible as outdated and vulgar, it came to be seen as “freighted with wisdom,” he noted.

Particularly as revolutions occurred in the American colonies and in France, the British rallied around the Authorized Version as a national treasure “undergirding the fabric of the social order,” Bebbington observed.

When the British and Foreign Bible Society began printing and distributing copies of the Authorized Version, its reach extended to every part of the British Empire, he noted.

“The Authorized Version became a symbol of national culture,” he said.

Ironically, as new English translations have proliferated, the key defenders of the Authorized Version in Great Britain have been secular members of the “cultural elite” who view it as a literary treasure and a few conservative evangelical Christians who view it as divine revelation, Bebbington observed.

“In 2011, the Authorized Version is more warmly appreciated by public intellectuals than by believers in the pew,” he noted.

Impact in the United States

The King James Bible provided “an indispensable reference point” to Americans in the 19th century, said Mark Noll, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame.

In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln spoke of the people of the Union and the Confederacy who “read the same Bible and pray to the same God.” Everyone understood Lincoln referred to the King James Bible.

“It’s not that all the people were Bible readers,” Noll noted, but a Protestant consensus rooted in a common Bible shaped society and culture. “That changed after the end of the war.”

Increasing numbers of non-English-speaking immigrants and the claims of higher criticism that called into question preconceived attitudes about Christianity and the Bible meant a diminished adherence to the King James Bible.

“Internal fault lines became permanent fixtures in American Protestantism,” Noll said. By the time the King James Bible marked its 300th anniversary in 1911, he observed, those fissures could be seen clearly in representative speeches by Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan.

The social gospel civil religion expressed in speeches by Roosevelt and Wilson, as well as the anti-intellectual populism to which Bryan appealed, lacked the kind of deep biblical resonance and specific foundation in the King James Bible that naturally had permeated Lincoln’s speeches 50 years earlier, Noll concluded.

Today, the language of public speakers in the United States may be even more impoverished, because they cannot use allusions from the King James Bible with assurance their listeners will understand. Instead, they must rely on more generic references to faith.

“Platitudes, even when biblical, are platitudes still,” he said.