WASHINGTON (RNS )— With his path now clear to the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney is on the verge of becoming the first Mormon to head a major party's presidential ticket, a new milestone in America's embrace of religious groups that once were shunned by society.

Mitt Romney is on the verge of becoming the first Mormon to head a major party's presidential ticket, a new milestone in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (RNS FILE PHOTO)

Mormons had it especially bad as they routinely faced mob violence and government-led crackdowns in the 19th century. Joseph Smith, who founded Mormonism in the 1830s, was killed in Illinois just months after he announced a third-party bid for president in 1844.

"I think Mitt Romney's selection as the Republican nominee means as much for the United States as it does for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," said Richard Bushman, a leading scholar of Mormonism who teaches at Claremont Graduate University. "It demonstrates, once again, the capacity of the nation to expand its limits to include once-despised minorities within the fold."

Bushman and others have said the closest analogy to Romney's breakthrough is the Democrats' 1928 nomination of New York Gov. Al Smith, the first Catholic to head a major party ticket, or the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960—still the only Catholic to have attained the presidency.

Yet there also are significant differences between Romney's rise and Kennedy's success, experts say.

One is that Catholics always have comprised a bigger share of the population than Mormons—upwards of one-quarter of all Americans today are Catholic, versus just 6 million Mormons, or about 2 percent, concentrated mainly in the western United States. That has given Catholics a larger profile in the minds of many people, and frequently made them appear to be a greater threat for their critics.

"Though 2012 is vitally important for the Mormon people, this is a less dramatic development for American culture overall than the nominations of Catholics Al Smith and John F. Kennedy, simply because the Catholic population is so much larger," said Richard Ostling, who wrote the book Mormon America: The Power and the Promise, with his wife, the late Joan Ostling.

"It is a breakthrough more akin to an observant Orthodox Jew, Joseph Lieberman, running as a vice presidential nominee," Ostling said, referring to John Kerry's running mate on the 2004 Democratic presidential ticket.

President John F. Kennedy spoke to Protestant ministers during the 1960 campaign in an attempt to allay concerns that his Catholic faith would make him subject to Vatican influence.

Ostling also argued the attacks on Romney's Mormonism don't compare with those Smith or Kennedy endured. In fact, the religious barbs directed at Romney not only have been fewer in number, but also have come from both right and left. When Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, sparked controversy last fall by saying that Mormonism is a "cult" and suggesting Christians should not support Mormons candidates, "nobody ran to his flagpole," Ostling said.

Matthew Bowman, author of a new book, The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith, agreed.

"Many of the suspicions and fears that people have been expressing about Mormonism are strikingly similar to those expressed about Catholicism when Kennedy and Smith ran for president but, at the same time, they're largely marginal," said Bowman, who teaches religion at Hampden-Sydney College.

While part of the change may be due to concerted efforts by Mormons to assimilate into American life —a path followed by American Jews and Catholics as well—Bowman also believes Ameri-can society has changed significantly in the last 50 years. The country is more tolerant now, and Ameri-cans also may view religion through a different lens.

"It's my impression that people today do find Mormonism odd—but in a benign and rather cute way rather than in the ominous or hostile way that Americans a hundred years ago perceived Mormonism and Catholicism," Bowman said. "This is the Mormonism of the Book of Mormon musical—they believe weird things, but they sure are nice."

On the other hand, he added, "If you'd told Woodrow Wilson that a hundred years after his election. the two major party candidates would be a Mormon and a black man, his head would probably have exploded."

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Charles Colson, the Watergate felon who became an evangelical icon and born-again advocate for prisoners, died April 21 after a brief illness. He was 80.

Despite an early reputation as a cutthroat "hatchet man" for President Richard Nixon, Colson later built a legacy of repentance, based on his work with Prison Fellowship, a ministry he designed to bring Bible study and a Christian message to prison inmates and their families.

Colson founded the group in 1976 upon release from federal prison on Watergate-related charges. Prison reform and advocating for inmates became his life's work, and his lasting legacy.

Colson had undergone surgery on March 31 to remove a pool of clotted blood on his brain, and his condition subsequently worsened. Due to his illness, for the first time in 34 years, he did not spend Easter Sunday preaching to prisoners, his ministry said.

"For more than 35 years, Chuck Colson, a former prisoner himself, has had a tremendous ministry reaching into prisons and jails with the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ," evangelist Billy Graham said. "When I get to heaven and see Chuck again, I believe I will also see many, many people there whose lives have been transformed because of the message he shared with them. He will be greatly missed by many, including me. I count it a privilege to have called him friend."

In many ways, Colson's life personified the evangelical ethos of a sinner in search of redemption after a dramatic personal encounter with Jesus. He also embodied the evangelical movement's embrace of conservative social issues, although often as a happy warrior.

Today, Prison Fellowship has more than 14,000 volunteers working in more than 1,300 prisons across the country. More than 150,000 prisoners participate in its Bible studies and seminars every year.

The organization founded by Colson also provides post-release pastoring for thousands of ex-convicts, and supplies Christmas gifts to more than 300,000 kids with a locked-up parent through its Angel Tree program.

Colson also founded Justice Fellowship, to develop what he called Bible-based criminal justice, and advocate for prison reform. In 1993, Colson won the $1 million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, and he donated the money to his ministry.

As recently as February, Colson still was contributing to political debates, writing an open letter with fellow evangelical leader Timothy George that criticized the Obama administration's health care contraception mandate.

In 2009, Colson was a chief architect of the "Manhattan Declaration," which advocated grass-roots resistance to abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage. He called the manifesto "one of the most important documents produced by the American church, at least in my lifetime."

Colson also was a key figure in Evangelicals and Catholics Together, a network of religious leaders who found common ground supporting a "culture of life" and reaffirmed their stance in 2006 when they called abortion "murder."

Religion was far from Colson's mind during his early adult life, when his main passion was politics. A Boston native, Colson showed early signs of political acumen as a star debater in high school.

After graduating from Brown University, Colson enlisted in the Marines and rose to the rank of captain. Following law school and a stint in the Pentagon, Colson worked on Capitol Hill as a top aide to Sen. Leverett Saltonstall, R-Mass.

After serving on Nixon's 1968 election team, Colson was appointed by the newly elected president as special counsel to the president. During Nixon's first term, he was known as Nixon's feared but respected "hatchet man."

Colson once bragged of a willingness to "walk over my grandmother if necessary to assure the President's reelection," and was roundly known within the Nixon administration as the "evil genius."

''I was known as the toughest of the Nixon tough guys," he said in 1995.

Nixon himself described Colson as one of his most loyal aides. "When I complained to Colson I felt confident that something would be done, and I was rarely disappointed," the former president wrote in his memoirs.

Among other activities, Colson helped set up the "Plumbers" to plug news leaks. The Plumbers engaged in illegal wiretapping of Democratic headquarters at the Watergate apartment complex, triggering the scandal that took down the Nixon White House.

Colson also was involved in the creation of the Special Investigations Unit, whose members broke into the office of Lewis Fielding, the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, who had given copies of the Pentagon Papers, a secret account of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, to newspapers.

Nixon aides justified the break-in on the grounds of national security, but Colson later admitted that the agents were trying to dig up damaging information about Ellsberg before his espionage trial.

As the Watergate scandal mushroomed, Colson pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in 1974, and the felony led him to serve seven months of a one- to three-year sentence at Alabama's Maxwell Prison as Prisoner 23226.

Colson later said he became a Christian before going to jail, and his time behind bars cemented his faith.

"There was more than a little skepticism in Washington, D.C., when I announced that I had become a Christian," he said in 1995. "But I wasn't bitter. I knew my task wasn't to convince my former political cronies of my sincerity."

In addition to his work with Prison Fellowship, Colson authored more than 30 books that sold more than 5 million copies, including his seminal 1976 autobiography, Born Again.

Colson became an evangelist for better prison conditions and championed what he called "restorative justice," in which nonviolent criminals should stay out of jail, remain in the community where they committed their crime, and work to support their families and pay restitution to the victim.

Richard Land

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP)—After initially defending comments accusing black leaders of politicizing the death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, the head of Southern Baptists’ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission issued back-to-back apologies regarding statements he made on his radio program.

Richard Land apologized both for offense caused by the remarks and for lifting some of the comments word-for-word from published materials without attributing their source.

“I obviously overestimated the extent of progress that has been made in slaying the racial dragon of our past,” Richard Land said in an open letter released through Baptist Press.

“I should have remembered that whenever we have a discussion about race, the ghosts of our ancestors are in the room with us. And I underestimated the need to be extremely careful in how you address any controversial issue that involves race as a factor.”

The Southern Baptist Convention news service said Land issued an apology after conversations with SBC President Bryant Wright about how many African-Americans and other Christians were taking offense at his remarks.

On his March 31 radio program, he labeled black activists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton “race hustlers” and accused President Obama of using the tragedy to “gin up the black vote” for his re-election.

“I am grieved that anyone would feel my comments have retarded in any way the Southern Baptists' march toward racial reconciliation, which I have been committed to for the entirety of my ministry, since 1962,” Land said. “I certainly apologize to anyone who was hurt or offended by my remarks.”

Furthermore, Aaron Weaver, a doctoral candidate at Baylor who blogs as The Big Daddy Weave, reported that many of Land’s comments were quoted verbatim from a Washington Times column penned by conservative commentator Jeffrey Kuhner.

While a link to Kuhner’s March 29 commentary headlined “Obama foments racial division” appeared as a “story note” on Land’s website, Weaver said Land failed to cite the article during his radio show, leading listeners to mistakenly assume that the words were his own.

Weaver said Land also lifted comments from an Investor’s Business Daily editorial without attribution, linking to the editorial without comment in a program note.
 
“Richard Land’s rant is not his,” Weaver said. “It’s a plagiarized rant.”

Land released a statement apologizing for failure to "provide appropriate verbal attributions" during the March 31 broadcast. He called it an oversight and said it was not intended to deceive or mislead listeners.

Land was defending his comments as recently as his April 14 radio broadcast, when he called one news story about the backlash slanted and accused a black MSBNC correspondent of racial profiling for implying he would have sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War.

An Associated Press story quoted Land as saying he had no regrets about his remarks and justifying the idea that some people see young black males as threatening because an African-American man is “statistically more likely to do you harm than a white man.”

On the same day Baptist Press released his apology, Land told a radio station in Missouri that there’s a double standard about mixing politics and religion for the religious left and right, in part because the media doesn’t want to criticize blacks.

“If whites criticize blacks – it’s OK for Bill Cosby to say things to the black community that if a white person said them, that’s racist,” Land said on KSGF radio in Springfield, Mo. “It’s unfair, but that’s the reality.”

Land also said in the interview that at first he was troubled by President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiatives because Baptists believe in the separation of church and state and are suspicious of government regulation.

He said he changed his mind while attending a summit put together by Sen. Rick Santorum and Rep. J.C. Watts where African-American and Hispanic pastors described the program as “an opportunity to get off the liberal plantation, to get out of the liberal barrio.”

“In other words, as one pastor put it, to have people who live in the ZIP code where the problem is get resources to deal with the problem instead of having to go over to a ZIP code on the other side of town and get approval from some liberal who doesn’t understand where we live,” Land said.

“These folks are facing a lifeboat situation,” Land said. “They looked upon this as sort of their 40 acres and a mule and empowering them as opposed to the liberal establishment, which is one reason the liberal establishment opposed the faith-based initiative.”

Land said at the start of his March 31 broadcast segment titled “Trayvon Martin scandal” that what he was about to say would create controversy.

“I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’ve decided it’s time to talk about this issue,” Land said. “I realize it’s going to be controversial, but so be it.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The recession and a sluggish recovery have made for a lighter collection plate in recent years, but a new study shows that giving to U.S. congregations bounced back in 2011 as the economy improved.

According to the fourth annual State of the Plate survey , 51 percent of churches last year saw an increase in giving, up from 43 percent in 2010 and 36 percent in 2009.

The national survey, sponsored by MAXIMUM Generosity, Christianity Today and the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, asked more than 1,360 congregations of different sizes to report on their donations and budgets.

Fifty-one percent of churches last year saw an increase in giving, up from 43 percent in 2010 and 36 percent in 2009.

“This has been the worst season of our lifetime in declines in giving,” said Brian Kluth, founder of MAXIMUM Generosity and the State of the Plate research. But 2011 “is the first time we’re seeing an upswing after three very hard years.”

A separate report issued recently as part of the 2012 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches showed the impact of the recession’s worst damage—churches lost $1.2 billion in giving in 2010, nearly three times as large as the $431 million in losses reported in 2009.

The increase seen in 2011 was most noticeable in the most mega of megachurches: 86 percent of churches with more than 10,000 congregants saw an greatest rise in giving, compared to 39 percent of churches with fewer than 100 people saw an increase.

Still, nearly one-third (32 percent) of churches said giving was down in 2011, although a smaller share than the 39 percent of churches that reported a decline two years ago, according to the survey.

The survey included small and large churches, although more than half had fewer than 250 members. Respondents included mainline Protestant, evangelical, Pentecostal and nondenominational congregations; just 1 percent were Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.

Church leaders attributed the reversal in fortunes to better attendance, which was reported by half of the churches surveyed. Many others also cited their efforts to address giving and generosity with the congregation.

In addition, according to the survey, 51.3 percent of churches enjoyed a bigger budget, with extra money going to pay raises (40.3 percent) and missions (36.5 percent), among other priorities.

A shift away from “envelope packets” toward electronic giving—such as using cell phones, online donations and lobby kiosks—changed the way churches received donations in 2011, a trend that has accelerated in the past four years, according to report.

The survey also showed churches in the past year have tried to be more transparent with their finances: 92 percent make their financial statements available by request to members, and 89 percent do the same for their annual budgets.

The majority of churches “really do desire to handle their finances with integrity and they use financial best practices that ensure that integrity,” said Matt Branaugh, the editorial director for Christianity Today’s Church Management Team.

“If you handle your finances with this kind of integrity up front,” he said, “then people will respond.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Even as membership remains relatively stable in U.S. churches, the effects of the recession have caused contributions to drop by $1.2 billion.

According to the 2012 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, the almost $29 billion contributed by church members represented a 2.2 percent decrease in terms of per capita giving.

The $1.2 billion decline in 2010 was nearly three times as large as the $431 million in losses reported in 2009, and “provides clear evidence of the impact of the deepening crises in the reporting period,” Yearbook Editor Eileen Lindner wrote.

The Yearbook is produced annually by the National Council of Churches and is considered one of the most authoritative sources of church membership. The 2010 figures were collected from 228 U.S. denominations in 2011.

The Roman Catholic Church (No. 1) and the Southern Baptist Convention (No. 2) continued as the nation’s largest churches in 2010, and both posted a decrease of less than 1 percent, the fourth year in a row of declining membership for Southern Baptists.

Overall, total membership in the top 25 largest churches declined 1.15 percent, to 145.7 million.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, though still in the top 10, reported the sharpest decline in membership, dropping 5.9 percent to 4.3 million members.

Four Pentecostal churches out of the top 25 showed a continuing increase in membership, with the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Inc. jumping up 20 percent, the highest out of all reporting churches.

Only six out of the top 25 increased in membership, according to the Yearbook. Some of those growing denominations include Jehovah’s Witnesses (up 1.85 percent), Seventh-day Adventist Church (up 1.61 percent) and the National Baptist Convention, USA (up 3.95 percent).

The 10 largest U.S. Christian bodies reported in the 2012 Yearbook are:

1. The Catholic Church: 68.2 million, down 0.44 percent.

2. Southern Baptist Convention: 16.1 million, down 0.15 percent.

3. The United Methodist Church: 7.7 million, down 1.22 percent.

4. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: 6.2 million, up 1.62 percent.

5. The Church of God in Christ: 5.5 million, no membership updates reported.

6. National Baptist Convention, USA: 5.2 million, up 3.95 percent.

7. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: 4.3 million, down 5.9 percent.

8. National Baptist Convention of America, 3.5 million, no membership updates reported.

9. Assemblies of God: 3.03 million, up 3.99 percent.

10. Presbyterian Church (USA): 2.7 million, down 3.42 percent.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The Obama administration is offering to expand the number of faith-based groups that can be exempt from the controversial contraception mandate and proposing that third-party companies administer coverage for self-insured faith-based groups at no cost.

At its heart, the newest offering from the White House would allow religious groups—dioceses, denominations and others—to decide which affiliated institutions are “religious” and therefore exempt from the new requirement that employers offer free contraception coverage as part of employee insurance plans.

The proposals represent an effort by the administration to blunt criticisms of the controversial regulation, especially by the nation’s Catholic bishops, who have been at loggerheads with the White House since President Obama announced the contraception mandate in January.

Obama was sharply criticized by faith groups for not providing a sufficiently broad exemption for religious groups. On Feb. 10 he outlined an “accommodation” that tried to circumvent most of the problems by having insurance companies—rather than religious employers—provide the birth control coverage through a separate rider and at no cost to the employer.

While that move appeased some concerns, Catholic bishops and others argued that the religious exemption was still too narrow and could set a dangerous precedent by appearing to allow the government to determine what groups within a faith should be considered religious.

Others—including some Baptist agencies and institutions—object that many religious groups self-insure in order to save money, and so having the insurer pay for contraception coverage rather than the employer made no difference because insurer and employer are one and the same.

The 32-page proposal, published March 16 in the Federal Register, goes out of its way to state that “this religious exemption is intended solely for purposes of the contraceptive coverage requirement” and does not “set a precedent for any other purpose.”

“Whether an employer is designated as ‘religious’ for these purposes is not intended as a judgment about the mission, sincerity, or commitment of the employer, and the use of such designation is limited to defining the class that qualifies for this specific exemption,” the proposed rule states.

The other main innovation in the new proposal is to have a “third-party administrator of the group health plan or some other independent entity” assume responsibility for the contraception coverage for self-insured organizations, with various proposals for ensuring that self-insured groups with religious objections would not directly or indirectly pay for the birth control policy.

Whether any of these ideas will satisfy critics of the contraception mandate is unclear and perhaps unlikely.

“At the end of the day, no accounting gimmick changes the fact that the mandate forces religious organizations to pay health insurance companies for coverage to their employees with drugs and services that simply violates their religious convictions,” said Jeanne Monahan, director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council.

Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. bishops’ conference, told National Catholic Reporter she was “surprised that such important information would be announced late Friday of St. Patrick’s Day weekend and as we prepare for the fourth Sunday of Lent.”

Others involved in the negotiations said it would take time to review the proposals properly.

Carol Keehan, the head of the Catholic Health Association, which represents hundreds of Catholic hospitals, said she and her members “will have to give it a careful review” before responding.

Some critics charge the latest proposals are an effort to “kick the can down the road” so that the administration does not have to issue a final determination until after the November election. Yet the delay in finalizing the regulations also could serve to prolong the debate.

Others believe that the 90-day open comment period on the proposals, known as an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking or ANPR, actually could function as a kind of cooling-off mechanism for this issue, which has exploded into an election-year debate that poses risks and rewards for all sides.

The ANPR at several points sets out a variety of possible solutions to religious objections, and invites “input on these options, particularly how to enable religious organizations to avoid such objectionable cooperation when it comes to the funding of contraceptive coverage, as well as new ideas to inform the next stage of the rulemaking process.”

By providing new details and extending the opportunity for dialogue, the Obama administration now can begin to shift discussions to the nuts and bolts of addressing the religious freedom concerns and away from rhetorical broadsides that the White House is launching a “war on religion” and can’t be trusted.

Staff members from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops were involved in initial discussions to work out a deal, but those ground to a halt when bishops accused the White House of negotiating in bad faith, a charge the administration strongly rejects.

WASHINGTON (ABP) – President Obama denied March 12 that he is “waging a war on religion,” citing his own work as a community organizer before entering politics as part of the “social gospel.”

Asked in a White House interview with WHO television in Des Moines, Iowa, how he responds to charges by conservative Christians that he is anti-religion, Obama said: “I find this very puzzling, because my first job, my first real job out of college, was working with churches in low-income communities trying to make sure that the social gospel was made real,” the president said, “that people were getting help, sending their kids to school, being able to feed their families and having an opportunity to find a job.”

President Barak Obama in a White House interview with WHO television in Des Moines, Iowa.

The social gospel is a name given to a movement prominent in early 20th century Protestantism that applied Christian ethics to social problems like poverty, racism and war. Scholars debate why it declined after World War I, but theories include that its embrace of neo-orthodoxy — a movement toward traditional Christianity away from the language of 19th century liberalism — conflicted with fundamentalism, another movement also on the rise that insisted the Bible be read literally and interpreted as historical fact.

Though now dwarfed in influence by evangelicalism, which emphasizes a personal relationship with Christ and matters of private morality like abortion and homosexuality, the social gospel is alive and well in places including the historic mainline churches and the more progressive Baptist traditions. It occasionally pops up in politics.

Two years ago conservative commentator Glenn Beck called on Christians to leave their churches if they were preaching about social or economic justice, comparing it to communism. Jim Wallis of Sojourners fired back by calling on Christians to leave Glenn Beck.

Conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention like Albert Mohler and Richard Land said that Beck had a point in that some on the left had abandoned traditional Christianity for a political agenda, but he went too far because some of those churches might be Southern Baptists carrying out the Baptist Faith and Message exhortation "to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society.”

Discussing the proper relationship between faith and politics, Obama said: “Obviously my own personal faith is very important to me. I think the proper role here is to recognized that faith-based groups can do a lot of good out there that informs our values and who we are as a people, but when we start using religion as a bludgeon in politics, when we start questioning other people’s faith, we start using religion to divide instead of bring the country together, then I think we’ve got a problem. And unfortunately we’ve seen that sometimes during the political season.

The president smiled with Channel 13 reporter John Bachman asked him if he agreed with 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr that a Christian statesman has a hard time because he must choose between the lesser of two evils.

“That’s one of my favorite philosophers, and it’s true,” he said. “Look, we are mortal. We are sinful, and in this world we’re always trying to deal with the compromises, the accommodations that are required in a big messy democracy where not everybody agrees on the same thing.”

Despite that, the president said he has great confidence in “the American people’s core decency” and that most people, wherever they come from, “want to do the right thing.”

“My job as president is to give them the tools to make sure they can succeed,” Obama said.

–Bob Allen is managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (ABP)—A Baptist church-state scholar says religious liberty concerns about new coverage mandates come with the territory in America's employer-based health insurance system. 

Melissa Rogers, director of the Center for Religion and Public Affairs at Wake Forest Divinity School, said in a Huffington Post article that if the Obama administration's attempt to provide free birth control coverage to all women while respecting the conscience of religious employers who oppose contraception on moral grounds sounds complicated, "that's because it is."

Melissa Rogers

"Indeed, my hope is this episode will prompt us to reconsider our employer-based health insurance system," said Rogers, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former chair of President Obama's first Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership.

The Obama administration's re-cent proposal to take religious organizations that object to contraception coverage out of the equation by requiring insurance companies to pay for it "makes good sense to me" and to a lot of Catholics and other people of faith who say it works well for them, Rogers said.

Some Catholics who oppose artificial birth control and evangelicals who believe "morning-after" or "Plan B" birth control pills cause an abortion, however, still object to supporting such coverage even indirectly and believe forcing them to provide it tramples on their religious liberty.

The Affordable Care Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by the President in March 2010, requires employers to cover preventive services like mammograms, colonoscopies, immunizations and pre-natal and new-baby care with no out-of-pocket costs.

The administration included FDA-approved contraceptives and sterilization among covered services. The White House originally announced a conscience clause exempting churches from the requirement, but not institutions such as church-run hospitals and schools.

After receiving backlash, the president said nonexempt religious organizations would be treated essentially the same as churches and would not have to pay for birth control if they object.

The White House has promised to work out a similar arrangement for self-funded insurance providers like GuideStone Financial Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Obama administration is right to take seriously legitimate religious-liberty concerns in developing its coverage rules, Rogers asserted.

It is not the government's business to determine whether a certain faith's beliefs are "right," she said. At the same time, allowing employers' to use their religious convictions as an excuse to deny federal benefits to their workers "would be disturbing."

Rogers said the tension is inherent in the U.S. health-care system, where most people are insured through their jobs.

"It is right to honor the religious objections of faith-based employers, but it is also right to ask why we retain a system where the health coverage employees receive may be limited by those objections," she said.

President Obama has said that if he were starting a system from scratch, a single-party plan might make sense, but he isn't starting from scratch. Instead of disrupting an employer-based health-care plan that Americans have grown accustomed to and generally like, his health-care plan calls for reforming the system to control costs and provide coverage for an estimated 50 million citizens who lack health insurance.

Rogers said debate about how to accomplish that is inevitable but need not be so acrimonious.

"These matters are complex, but our debate over them need not be caustic," she said. "May cool heads and fair-mindedness prevail as we move forward."

WASHINGTON (ABP)—Some Baptist leaders applauded President Obama's announcement that insurance companies, rather than religious institutions, will be required to provide employees' contraception coverage.

However, the head of a Southern Baptist Convention agency said the compromise proposal failed to answer the concerns of self-funded religious insurance providers.

Brent Walker, Melissa Rogers and O. S. Hawkins respond to contraception coverage proposal.

"This is a positive step in protecting the right of religious institutions to define themselves and accommodate religious conscience," said Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. "Leaving room for the health-care needs of women—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—to get the coverage they deserve is also important."

Melissa Rogers, director of the Center for Religion and Public Affairs at Wake Forest Divinity School, said the policy adjustment "resolves the religious liberty concerns and respects the interests of Americans who would like to have these important health benefits."

"President Obama and his administration deserve great credit for implementing a solution that honors free exercise rights and fairness," said Roger.

"I deeply appreciate the fact that the White House has taken the religious community's concerns so seriously."

But O.S. Hawkins, president of GuideStone Financial Resources, said Obama's compromise plan for mandatory coverage of contraceptives does not solve religious liberty concerns for his agency.

GuideStone's medical plan is self-funded, Hawkins said, meaning it pays its benefits directly instead of using a third-party insurance company. The president's solution—requiring insurance companies to pay directly for reproductive services of employees of religious organizations that oppose contraception—"completely ignored" the self-funded approach, Hawkins said.

"The president's statement … is an insulting affront illustrating a basic lack of understanding that this issue will not be solved by sleight-of-hand word games," Hawkins said.

"It is a fundamental matter of religious liberty that threatens the very coverage of those dedicated persons who serve our churches and affiliated organizations."

Besides the religous liberty issue, Hawkins expressed concern that some contraceptives can cause abortions.

"The comments today appear to reflect a narrow and inadequate approach that does not address the issues at hand for Southern Baptists who oppose so-called contraceptives that can and do cause an abortion. Even more troubling is that the broader issue of religious freedom was only given lip service but no serious consideration in the President’s remarks."

The new policy announced by the Obama administration updates a January announcement by Health and Human Services Director Kathleen Sebelius that churches would be exempt from paying for required coverage of FDA-approved contraceptive methods and sterilization procedures, but employers like religious schools and hospitals that hire people of different faiths have until August 2013 to get their house in order and start providing coverage for those services.

Roman Catholic, Southern Baptist and other religious leaders called the policy an assault on religious freedom that would force faith-based institutions to violate their consciences by paying for services they view as immoral.

The new regulation will require insurance companies to cover contraception if the non-exempted religious organization chooses not to.

Such employers will not be required to cover or subsidize birth control. Insurance companies will offer contraception coverage to women directly and free of charge, with no role for religious employers who oppose birth control.

"Religious liberty will be protected, and a law that requires free preventive care will not discriminate against women," Obama told reporters. 

"I've been confident from the start that we could work out a sensible approach here, just as we promised," he said.

While "people of good will on both sides" disagree on the issue, he said, that "doesn't mean we have to choose between individual liberty and basic fairness."

The Catholic Health Association of the United States released a statement saying it was "very pleased" with the announcement.

Rogers, a Baptist, said her own faith tradition and conscience support the use of contraceptives, but the issue for her is not birth control. Rather, it is the freedom of religious bodies "to practice their faith as they see fit, not as government sees fit."

Walker called it a "win-win solution."

"Religious freedom is the first freedom and must be protected," Walker said. "At the same time, we must be mindful of the health-care needs of all employees."

[Editor's Note:  This article has been corrected to include a complete statement of Guidestone's concern about contraceptives that could cause abortions.]

WASHINGTON (ABP) – President Obama said Feb. 10 that insurance companies must pay for birth control services for women who work for religious institutions that object to paying for them on moral grounds.

The new policy updates a January announcement by Health and Human Services Director Kathleen Sebelius that churches would be exempt from paying for required coverage of FDA-approved contraceptive methods and sterilization procedures, but employers like religious schools and hospitals that hire people of different faiths have until August 2013 to get their house in order and start providing coverage for those services.

Roman Catholic, Southern Baptist and other religious leaders called the policy an assault on religious freedom that would force faith-based institutions to violate their consciences by paying for services they view as immoral.

The new regulation will require insurance companies to cover contraception if the non-exempted religious organization chooses not to. Such employers will not be required to cover or subsidize birth control. Their companies will offer contraception coverage to women directly and free of charge, with no role for religious employers who oppose birth control.

President Obama called it “a solution that works for everyone.”

“Religious liberty will be protected, and a law that requires free preventive care will not discriminate against women,” the president told reporters.

Melissa Rogers, director of the Center for Religion and Public Affairs and Wake Forest Divinity School, said the policy adjustment “resolves the religious liberty concerns and respects the interests of Americans who would like to have these important health benefits.”

“President Obama and his administration deserve great credit for implementing a solution that honors free exercise rights and fairness,” said Rogers, who chaired President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships 2009-2010. “I deeply appreciate the fact that the White House has taken the religious community’s concerns so seriously.”

The Catholic Health Association of the United States released a statement saying it was “very pleased” with the announcement. Catholic hospitals employ 530,673 full-time employees and 235,221 part-time workers, according to the association’s website. Each year, one in six patients in the United States is cared for in a Catholic hospital.

“I’ve been confident from the start that we could work out a sensible approach here, just as we promised,” Obama said. While “people of good will on both sides” disagree on the issue, he said, that “doesn’t mean we have to choose between individual liberty and basic fairness.”

Rogers, a Baptist, said her own faith tradition and conscience support the use of contraceptives, but the issue for her is not birth control but rather the freedom of religious bodies “to practice their faith as they see fit, not as government sees fit.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—If there's one thing the fractious Republican field agrees on, it's that personal religious devotion is central to their campaign message.

Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul stress their faith on the stump. Romney plays up his religion, although he downplays his Mormonism because of lingering evangelical suspicion toward his church.

But a LifeWay Research survey indicates frequent use of "God talk" actually may be more likely to hurt rather than help a candidate's chances with voters.

Rick Santorum

According to an online poll conducted last September by the research arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, only 1 in 6 Americans (16 percent) said they are more likely to vote for a candidate who regularly shares their religious beliefs.

The poll showed 30 percent of respondents indicated they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who prominently touts their religious beliefs and practices; 28 percent said it would have no impact; and 21 percent said it would depend on the candidate's religion.

The poll reinforces the conflicted feelings Americans have toward their politicians. A survey last year conducted by Public Religion Research Institute and Religion News Service found majorities of every religious group say it is important that a presidential candidate have strong religious beliefs. At the same time, respondents—including evangelical Christians—had a hard time identifying the religious affiliation of either President Obama or Romney.

The LifeWay poll found Americans who consider themselves to be "born-again, evangelical or fundamentalist" Christians are much more likely than nonreligious voters to support a candidate who deploys a very public piety on the stump, by a 28 percent to 11 percent margin.

Conservative Christians are more likely to say their support also "depends on the religion" of the candidate, the poll found—a factor that may matter more in the GOP primaries than the general election.

In the survey, respondents were asked: "When a candidate running for office regularly expresses religious conviction or activity, how does that impact your vote?"

The online survey of 2,144 Americans was conducted in September 2011 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

DALLAS (ABP) – The head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s publishing house said Feb. 3 that Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s reversal of a decision to disassociate from Planned Parenthood means that pink-bound Holman Christian Standard Bibles taking up warehouse space likely won’t be going anywhere soon.

“I am deeply disappointed with today’s announcement from Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation if it means a reversal of Komen's decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood,” Thom Rainer, head of LifeWay Christian Resources said in a statement. 

Thom Rainer

Earlier Rainer said changes in Komen foundation funding policies to deny grants to Planned Parenthood might revive plans to sell copies of the Here's Hope Breast Cancer Awareness Bible with a portion of proceeds benefitting Komen. LifeWay canceled the project last year amid reports that some Komen affiliates gave money to Planned Parenthood. Despite assurance that none of those grants were used to fund abortions, LifeWay officials said they did not want to be identified with Planned Parenthood even indirectly.

When news broke earlier this week that Komen was cutting off Planned Parenthood, Rainer expressed hope that the Bibles collecting dust since the recall might be used for their intended purpose after all.

"I would say that reconsidering our relationship with Komen is certainly on the table," Rainer told Baptist Press Feb. 1. "In the last 24 hours, we haven't even gotten to the point where we're making a decision on that. We certainly haven't spoken to Komen about it."

After days of criticism from women’s groups, however, the nation’s leading breast cancer advocacy group said Friday it would continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, which in addition to breast examinations offers reproductive services to poor women including abortion.

“I renew my strong encouragement of Komen’s leadership to end that relationship permanently, and restate LifeWay’s commitment to not be involved, even indirectly, with Planned Parenthood,” Rainer said Feb. 3.

Komen officials originally said Planned Parenthood failed newly added criteria for grants because of an investigation by Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican, into whether the organization has spent public money on abortions. A new statement on the Komen website said the policy denying grants to organizations under investigation would be amended to specify they be criminal and not political probes.

“We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood,” the statement said. “They were not.”

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