WASHINGTON (ABP) — A diverse group of leaders who often find themselves on opposite sides of the contentious battles at the intersection of church and state joined forces Jan. 12 to unveil an unprecedented consensus statement aimed at advancing public understanding of — and preventing needless controversy over — the legal issues around religious expression in the public square.

“In a free society, there will always be conflicts of principle and of interest,” said E.J. Dionne, a Washington Post columnist and Brookings Institution fellow who moderated a panel discussion featuring some of the document’s drafters. “But there are useful conflicts and useless conflicts…. Today’s document sets its face against useless arguments.”

Led by Wake Forest University Divinity School's Center for Religion and Public Affairs, the document does not advocate a particular direction for future legislation and case law in regard to religious expression. Instead, it outlines what experts in church-state relations agree that the law currently says in an effort to stave off needlessly divisive debates and lawsuits.

The project evolved from a 2005 meeting in which experts, discussing several earlier joint statements that helped advance public understanding of rules governing religion in public schools, suggested a similar consensus document on what the law says about religious expression in the wider public square. Areas addressed include religion and politics; religious gatherings on government property; holiday or seasonal religious displays on government and private property; government-paid chaplains; and religion in the workplace.

“While this diverse group often disagrees about how the law should address legal issues, the drafters agree in many cases on what he law is today,” said Melissa Rogers, director of the Wake Forest center and a former general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

Fellow document drafter Colby May, senior counsel for the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, agreed. “What really brought us together is our shared conviction that religious liberty and the freedom of conscience are in fact fundamental — they are inalienable rights for all people,” he said.

The statement's signers represent a wide swath of American religious life. Baptists supporting the project include Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission as well as Brent Walker and Holly Hollman of the Baptist Joint Committee — two organizations that often find themselves on opposing sides of church-state debates.

Groups represented by other document drafters include the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Jewish Committee, the Islamic Networks Group, the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and the Sikh Council on Religion and Education.

“If experts like this can agree on what the law is, I think it commands our attention,” Rogers said.

Rogers and other drafters of the document said the legal rights and responsibilities regarding religious expression in public life are often poorly understood, and the statement is an attempt to remedy that problem.

“There has been an incredibly brain-dead discussion about religious expression in American public life in so many contexts — and part of that brain-dead nature of the conversation is that there are so many false claims” about what the law actually says about the protections for, and limits upon, individual, group and governmental expressions of religious faith, Rogers said.

“I do hope this document will help us to have a more productive discussion,” she continued.

Melissa Rogers directs the Center for Religion and Public Affairs at Wake Forest University School of Divinity at Wake Forest University Divinity School in Winston-Salem, N.C. (Religion News Service file photo by Ken Bennett/courtesy of Melissa Rogers)

The signers said they hope that their attempt to describe current law as accurately as possible will play a positive role in future debate. "That certainly will not end our debates, but it will help make them more productive," the document says.

Charles Haynes, one of the driving forces behind the document's creation as well as its predecessor statements on religion and schools, is senior scholar at the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center in Washington. He said he hopes the document will be used by public officials, employers and private groups the same way that the earlier statements on religion in public schools have been used by school boards, administrators and teachers.

“The consensus on what the law requires on key issues involving religion in public schools … has helped transform how many public schools apply the First Amendment,” he said. “Common ground reached on a national level frequently allows local communities to adopt policies and practices that enjoy broad public support.”

He noted that many policies on religion produced by state boards of education and school districts in the past decade quote verbatim from the earlier consensus statements — and that they have repeatedly helped defuse situations that otherwise would have exploded into litigation.

“Based on the track record of these past agreements, I am convinced that this new joint statement, covering a wide range of issues, can and will play a significant role in preventing litigation and promoting civil public discourse,” Haynes said.

Rogers said the next phase of the project is disseminating the document to public officials and others who could use it.

—Bob Allen is senior writer, and Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief, for Associated Baptist Press.

Read more:

Religious Expresion in American Public Life: A Joint Statement of Current Law

VENTURA, Calif. (ABP) — The economic recession has hit larger churches harder than it has smaller ones, according to a new survey by the Barna Group .

Percentage-wise, churches with fewer than 100 members lost more of their income than churches larger than 1,000 adults (16 percent of income for smaller churches versus 9 percent for large churches). Large churches, however, were more likely to report being under financial duress. Researchers speculated that belt tightening may feel more painful for larger churches, because since they have larger budgets, in actual dollars their cuts are larger.

While most pastors and church executives said they have felt the economic pinch, for most it has not been severe so far. In all, 57 percent said the economy negatively affected their church over the past year, but only 8 percent called the effect "very negative."

About a third of churches — 35 percent — said the economy had not affected them, while about one in 11 churches — 9 percent — defied trends by describing the last year's finances as favorable.

Overall, church budgets are down about 7 percent from a year ago, the study found, but some are feeling the pain more acutely than others. The typical "down" church reported a budget down by 14 percent, and 9 percent reported losing more than 20 percent of their income during the last year.

Southern Baptists, charismatic denominations and black churches were most likely to say their budget was down. Mainline churches and those with pastors earning between $40,000 and $60,000 were most likely to be holding ground. Churches with seminary-trained pastors who have been in the ministry less than 20 years were most likely to experience budget growth.

Many church leaders said they believe the economic outlook for churches is stabilizing. About two out of three (62 percent) said their church's finances had stayed about the same during the last two months. Of those who disagreed, 21 percent said things were getting better and 17 percent said they were getting worse.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

DURHAM, N.C. (ABP) — Eight years of President George W. Bush's faith-based agenda to increase religion's role in providing social services had little impact on day-to-day ministries of local congregations, according to scholar at Duke Divinity School.

Mark Chavez, a professor of sociology and religion who directs the National Congregations Study, said the Bush administration's push to increase the flow of government money to faith-based organizations was reported widely by the media because of the church-state debates it provoked, but did little to increase the role religious organizations have long played in America's social-welfare system.

Chavez said that the proportions of congregations that provide social services (82 percent of all houses of worship), that have a staff member who devotes at least a quarter of their time to providing social services (11 percent) and that receive government funding for such services (4 percent) did not change between data collected in 1998 and in 2006-2007. In both surveys, about 6 percent of social services performed by congregations were done in collaboration with the government, while 20 percent were done in collaboration with a secular non-profit agency.

Easier availability of government funding for faith-based groups, introduced as part of welfare reform during the Clinton administration but elevated to a centerpiece of Bush's domestic agenda, did increase congregational interest in social services, however. Nearly half (47 percent) of surveyed congregations said in 2006 they would like to apply for government funding, compared to 39 percent who said so in 1998.

Chavez said that despite heated debate over the faith-based initiative, religious congregations have long played a role in providing social services and have long received public funds to support social-service programs.

The idea behind the faith-based initiative was that removing hurdles like requiring religious organizations to segregate social-service from religious functions would make it easier for churches and other houses of worship to compete with secular providers.

Chavez said the data hint that the faith-based initiative may have led some congregations already involved in social services to devote slightly more staff and volunteer time to those activities, but that overall "the faith-based initiative increased congregations' interest in social service programs, but it did not change their behavior."

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

WASHINGTON (ABP) — Fewer death sentences were imposed in 2009 than in any year since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, according to year-end statistics compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center.

It marked the seventh consecutive annual decline — with the rationale for juries, judges and prosecutors increasingly shifting away from the morality of the death penalty toward whether the higher cost of executing criminals is worth the benefit it brings to society.

The American Law Institute — the organization that laid legal groundwork for the death penalty in the early 1960s — voted in October to abandon support for it in October. The institute — which represents about 4,000 judges, lawyers and law professors — overwhelmingly adopted a resolution stating that America's half-century experiment with the death penalty has failed to develop even "a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment."

Eleven states considered repealing the death penalty in 2009, with high cost and lack of measurable benefit during severe budget crises frequently mentioned as a theme of legislative debate.

The Supreme Court has ruled that there must be a heightened level of due process in cases involving the death penalty. That makes them more expensive to prosecute than non-capital cases. There are no national figures on the cost of the death penalty, but every state that has studied it has concluded the death-penalty system is far more expensive than alternatives like life without parole.

In testimony before a panel reviewing the death penalty in New Hampshire, Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that opposes capital punishment, said those costs multiply because of how the system really works. A single death penalty trial might cost a state $1 million more than a non-death-penalty trial, he said, but only one in three capital trials may result in a death sentence. That makes the true cost of a death-penalty conviction is more like $3 million. In some states, like Maryland, only one in 10 death sentences ever results in an execution. That would mean the real cost to put a single inmate to death was $30 million.

In a nationwide poll of 500 police chiefs by the Death Penalty Information Center, officers ranked the death penalty the least-efficient use of taxpayer money to reduce violent crime. 

Another factor shaking public support for the death penalty is development of DNA evidence, which has resulted in overturning about 250 wrongful convictions since 1989, including 17 involving inmates on death row.

In March, New Mexico became the 15th state to abolish the death penalty. Gov. Bill Richardson (D), a life-long supporter of capital punishment, signed the bill. He said new DNA evidence exonerating individuals on death row caused him to reconsider his earlier views.

"Faced with the reality that our system for imposing the death penalty can never be perfect, my conscience compels me to replace the death penalty with a solution that keeps society safe," Richardson said in a statement. "In a society which values individual life and liberty above all else, where justice and not vengeance is the singular guiding principle of our system of criminal law, the potential for wrongful conviction and, God forbid, execution of an innocent person stands as anathema to our very sensibilities as human beings."

Other arguments against the death penalty claim it is imposed unfairly. Deacons at First Baptist Church in Jefferson City, Mo., joined more than 300 other faith groups, businesses and organizations calling for a moratorium on executions while the state's death penalty is studied.

"The death penalty as now administered appears to be exercised often in unfair ways, with the burden of death falling on African Americans disproportionately, with crimes against males punished by death more than crimes against females and the rich executed far less [often] than the poor," John Baker, pastor of First Baptist Church in Columbia, Mo., said at a press conference held at the church Jan. 6.

In August the federal Supreme Court ordered a hearing to receive testimony about whether new evidence establishes the innocence of Troy Davis, an African-American man on death row for the 1991 murder of a white police officer in Savannah, Ga.

Seven of nine witnesses who testified they saw Davis shoot and kill Officer Mark Allen McPhail later recanted, saying police pressured them into falsely fingering Davis. One of two witnesses who did not recant allegedly told family and friends that he is the actual murderer.

Supporters of the fallen officer say Davis was convicted on physical evidence and should be executed in the name of justice.  But Alan Bean, an ordained American Baptist minister who runs a criminal-justice-reform organization called Friends for Justice, said manipulation of eyewitness testimony is a problem in the court system nationwide.

"Not only do police officers and investigators coerce 'eyewitnesses' into cooperating with the government's theory of the case," said Bean, a white man who helped bring national attention to a noose-hanging incident that revealed racial tensions in Jena, La. "There is growing evidence that even sincere and well-intentioned eyewitness testimony if far less reliable than is generally believed."

Bean started Friends of Justice in response to a famous drug sting in Tulia, Texas, in 1999, in which more than half of the town's black male residents were arrested and convicted on the questionable testimony of a single undercover officer. Bean said he is monitoring the Troy Davis case because of its similarity to one involving Curtis Flowers, a black man behind bars for a 1996 execution-style slaying of four people in Winona, Miss., who has been tried five times without a final conviction by the state. 

More executions were carried out in 2009 than in 2008 — 52 compared to 37 — but the Death Penalty Information Center said that was partly due to backlog from a de facto moratorium on executions for four months of 2008, as the Supreme Court addressed controversy over the use of lethal injection. Texas led all states with 24 executions — four times the number executed in No. 2 Alabama. California has the largest number of inmates on death row — 690 — in part because executions are on hold because of challenges to the three-drug protocol used in the state's capital-punishment method.

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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (ABP) — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said God's wrath is looming over a nation headed for economic ruin in his annual predictions for the coming year, aired Jan. 4 on "The 700 Club."

Robertson, 79, has a tradition of ending each year in a prayer retreat and sharing what he believes God is telling him at a chapel service for staff of the Christian Broadcasting Network and Regent University.

Sometimes the messages are quite specific. In 2008, for example, he predicted a major stock market crash and rising fuel prices. For 2010, Robertson said, God gave him a more general warning of judgment for America's acceptance of abortion, gay marriage and secularism.

Pat Robertson

"What he is telling me, and I believe is right, is that there is a cloud over this nation now," Robertson said in a segment of the chapel service broadcast on the program. "There's a cloud of God's wrath over America."

"This country has enjoyed tremendous blessing," he continued. "We have been blessed like no nation on the face of the Earth, and yet we have forsaken the Lord."

"You can't have your courts turn against me," Robertson said the Lord told him. "You can't have legislation that is anti-God. You can't foster in your midst things that I call an abomination. You can't do that. And if you do, sooner or later judgment's going to come."

Robertson said God will not bless a nation where abortion is commonplace, homosexuality is institutionalized and government-sanctioned prayer and Bible reading are banned in public schools.

"Fifty million babies slaughtered," he said, in reference to abortion. "It exceeds the slaughters of antiquity."

"How can we pray for his blessing when we have that going on and when we have courts that have ruled repeatedly against him?" he asked. "We have the Bible taken from the schools. We have prayer taken from the children, and now we have perversion that God calls an abomination — we have that legitimized and given a constitutional standing by the court."

Robertson said he did receive a clear word about the economy.

"We are engaged in a slow time of financial ruin," he said. "This country will be ultimately bankrupt. It's just a question of how soon. We're beginning that. That's one thing that I can say for certain that is happening. It's a dangerous thing. It's going to hurt America very badly."

He said it is a problem not so much of government policy but human greed.

"Can you imagine if you are getting Social Security that you would say I want my Social Security check to get cut?" he asked. "The problem is so many people right now are depending on the government for their support, and there's nobody who wants to give up anything at all, and if anybody begins to suggest fiscal restraint, the people will rise up against them and vote them out of office. So you've got a situation where you can't arrest this problem — the big financial problem — because the people don't want it. Only a movement of God that brings in a spirit of self-sacrifice and a desire for the common good and some wisdom are we going to be spared this thing."

Robertson said he viewed God's message as a word of warning, and that God does not want to hurt people but only is allowing it to bring revival.

"I would love to say the Lord told me it's gong to be peace and prosperity and it's wonderful and that God's going to bless America, he's going to bless you, he's going to bless your business, you're going to make a lot of money in the stock market and everybody's going to be happy," he said. "I can't say that."

Robertson claims a good record in the percentage of his predictions that come true, but there have been notable misses. He predicted that Russia would invade Israel in 1982, projected a worldwide economic collapse in 1985 and said U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) would be elected president in 1996.

In 2007 Robertson predicted a terrorist attack, possibly involving a nuclear weapon, but it did not come about. "All I can think is that somehow the people of God prayed, and God in his mercy spared us," Robertson said in January 2008.

Robertson got in hot water in 2001, when he and the late Jerry Falwell blamed 9/11 on liberals, feminists, abortion providers and gays whom they said prompted God to remove a hedge of divine protection from around the United States.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

Previous ABP story:

Robertson predicts economic recovery, 'socialism' in 2009

WASHINGTON (ABP) — Thirty-nine pro-life Christian pastors and leaders released a statement Dec. 18 applauding alternative language aimed at preventing health-care reform from being derailed by debate over abortion.

With bill supporters in the Sneate lacking a filibuster-proof majority to ensure passage sweeping health-care legislation backed by the Obama administration, Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) proposed compromise language aimed at winning support of anti-abortion Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). He has said he will not support a vote to close debate — reqiring 60 votes in the chamber — on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the Senate.

Evangelical leaders including Ron Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, Florida mega-pastor Joel Hunter and Christianity Today Editor David Neff applauded Casey's effort to move debate over health-care beyond abortion.

"Sen. Casey’s alternative language, which we expect to be available in its final legislative form soon, could ensure that strong provider-conscience protections passed in the House bill are maintained; no federal funds pay for abortions in any way; and no [insurance] premium dollars from individuals who opt out of abortion coverage will be used to fund abortions," the leaders said.

Baptist signers included David Gushee, a professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University who writes a regular column for Associated Baptist Press, and Glen Stassen, a former Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor who now teaches Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary.

The evangelical leaders also welcomed expansion of economic-support measures in the legislation, citing statistics that 73 percent of women who have an abortion say they cannot afford to have a child.

"Given the complicated set of concerns surrounding abortion funding and coverage in health care reform, this alternative language … is a way forward," the leaders said. "We urge all other pro-life people of good will to give it the careful consideration it deserves."

Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, said in an e-mail to media outlets that Casey's proposal is "entirely unacceptable" and called it "an exercise in cosmetics."

Republicans prefer language in the House version that includes an amendment by anti-abortion-rights Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), to prevent any plans in the proposed national-health-insurance exchange from receiving federal subsidies if they cover abortion.

Planned Parenthood opposes the Stupak Amendment, saying it reaches further than the Hyde Amendment, which has prohibited federal funding of abortion in most instances since 1977. 

The Stupak Amendment prevents the government from paying directly for abortions or subsidizing private plans that cover abortions. Individuals could still purchase plans that cover abortion with their own money.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

WASHINGTON (ABP) — The Supreme Court agreed Dec. 7 to hear a case dealing with sticky questions about whether religious groups at state schools can be forced to either comply with non-discrimination policies or forego the access to funding and other benefits that go along with official school recognition.

The justices agreed to hear the Christian Legal Society’s appeal of a lower court’s decision saying the group’s student chapter at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law had to, like other school-recognized student groups, follow the university’s non-discrimination policy. The policy includes provisions prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or religion.

In 2004, the chapter asked for exemptions from those two aspects of the non-discrimination rules, saying the national Christian Legal Society’s policies prohibit non-Christians and people who engage in non-marital sex from being voting members or officers of the organization.

But the school denied the exemption, saying the non-discrimination requirement is a neutral rule that applies to all student groups and it would be unfair to treat the society differently. The society — a national networking organization for Christian judges, attorneys and law students — sued, saying the denial was a violation of its rights of association and comprised viewpoint discrimination against its religious views.

“Public universities shouldn’t single out Christian student groups for discrimination. All student groups have the right to associate with people of like mind and interest,” said Kim Colby, senior counsel for the Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law & Religious Freedom, in a press release on the high court agreeing to hear the case. “We trust the Supreme Court will not allow Hastings to continue to deprive CLS of this right by forcing the group to abandon its identity as a Christian student organization.”

Two lower federal courts sided with the school, saying the non-discrimination policy was viewpoint-neutral and that the legal society had not proven that its ability to carry out its mission would be harmed if it either allowed gays or non-Christians to become members or chose to forego the benefits of official registration. As attorneys for the school have noted in legal filings, the predecessor to the Christian Legal Society chapter comported with the school’s non-discrimination provisions prior to 2004, when it adopted the national organization’s policies on membership. The school’s lawyers have also noted that other religious student organizations on campus — including another Christian group and Muslim and Jewish organizations — comply with the non-discrimination policy.

In hearing the case, the Supreme Court could clarify the rules for what sorts of stipulations, if any, state schools may place on religious student organizations wanting to enjoy the benefits of official registration or recognition.

It also provides the court one of its first chances under Chief Justice John Roberts to deal with the difficult constitutional questions at the intersection of religion, public policy and sexuality.

The case is Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (No. 08-1371).

–Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.

BUENA PARK, Calif. (ABP) — A former Southern Baptist Convention officer who made headlines in June when he said on national radio that he was praying for Barack Obama to die now says he wants to see the president live long enough to stand trial for treason.

Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., issued a press release Nov. 19 calling for end to "imprecatory prayer" — words of judgment from the Book of Psalms prayed back to God, directed toward Obama.

Drake said he is now "calling for all of God's people and prayer warriors to cease the imprecatory prayer, and pray for Mr. Obama's protection until he can be properly tried for treason."

Drake attributed his change of heart to "spiritual counsel" of James David Manning, pastor at ATLAH World Missionary Church in New York, contained in a 16 1/2-minute video recorded Nov. 18. 

"I have asked men everywhere please do you no harm," Manning said in remarks he addressed to "Barack Hussein the long-legged mack daddy Obama." According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, "mack daddy" is slang for a slick womanizer or conspicuously successful pimp. 

"I do not want to see anyone attempt, dream about, think about or ever discuss assassinating you," Manning continued. "It is most important to you and to my savior Jesus that you live, and that you live a long life, but that you live that we might be able to bring you to trial. You see if someone does you harm, and you are not able to be brought to trial, then we lose the opportunity of proving our statements that you are not the president of the United States of America. You are not. You are an illegal alien, a usurper."

Manning preached a series of harsh sermons last year against then-candidate Obama that prompted Americans United for the Separation of Church and State to ask the IRS to investigate him for violating rules governing tax-exempt charities against electioneering. He says he was visited by officials from the Department of Homeland Security after a recent video message in which he advised people who strongly oppose Obama to "be ready to die."

Drake, who was second vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 2006-2007, said he was also questioned in his home by the Secret Service after he said in a Fox News Radio interview June 2 with Alan Colmes that he was praying for Obama to die.

Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention criticized Drake's comment and said that most Southern Baptists believe it is their duty to pray for the well-being of government leaders. In June the SBC passed a resolution praising the election of America's first African-American president while criticizing a number of Obama's policies.

Drake, a third-party candidate for vice president from the American Independent Party on the California ballot in the 2008 presidential election, recently lost a round in an ongoing legal battle challenging the legitimacy of Obama's presidency.

U.S. District Judge David Carter dismissed a lawsuit filed by Drake and other plaintiffs Oct. 29, saying the Constitution does not give federal courts, but only Congress, the authority to remove a sitting president.

Drake said his attorney, Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation, filed an appeal in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Nov. 16.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

WASHINGTON (ABP) — A church-state watchdog group says a faith-based prison being proposed in Oklahoma would likely be unconstitutional.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State wrote the Oklahoma Department of Corrections Nov. 18 advising the state not to send prisoners to what would be the first all-Christian prison in the country.

Formerly best known as the town used for filming the 1996 blockbuster movie "Twister," Wakita, Okla., has been back in the news lately with town leaders supporting the building of a 600-bed facility for men nearing the end of prison terms. The prison would employ only Christians.

"Habilitation House," brainchild of an ex-con turned Baptist minister from Dallas, would hire only Christian administrators, employees, counselors and programs. "Residents," as the inmates would be called after their arrival, would be encouraged but not required to attend worship services.

Bill Robinson, founder of Corrections Concepts Inc., the non-profit company spearheading the project, argues that instilling a faith-based work ethic that emphasizes personal responsibility and provides income for family support and restitution and marketable job skills is more likely than traditional prison to return an offender to society as a law-abiding citizen.

Americans United, however, said the concept would inevitably result in indoctrination, and that funding it with taxpayer dollars would therefore represent an establishment of religion forbidden by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

"It is wrong for government to take taxpayers' money and spend it on religious indoctrination," said Barry Lynn, the group's executive director. "That's a violation of the fundamental rights of every American."

Lynn, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, said he believes strongly that inmates should have access to religious services of their choosing, "but government should never favor one faith over others or coerce inmates to participate in religion."

Robinson has pitched his "faith- based work-ethic corrections" philosophy to several communities over the years without success. 

A native of Shreveport, La., Robinson served seven-and-a-half years in prison for white-collar crimes in the 1960s. He professed faith in Christ in the early 1980s and felt called into prison ministry in 1984. He was licensed as a minister of the gospel by First Baptist Church in Euless, Texas, in 1986.

Along with Southern Baptist Convention leader Jimmy Draper, Robinson first proposed to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 1995 that he use a little-known federal Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program, implemented in 1979, to promote Corrections Concepts Inc. as a faith-based initiative. Bush responded by appointing a 16-member task force to study how the government could expand its ability to fund social services through churches and other faith-based organizations.

After Bush became president in 2001, support for Habilitation House lost traction in Texas. The idea it inspired, however, moved to Washington, where the faith-based initiative became a centerpiece of the 43rd president's domestic agenda.

Robinson continued to promote his idea in local communities in Texas and Oklahoma. Several expressed interest, only to back out for political reasons or questions about whether the plan was financially viable.

In an open letter to citizens of Wilson, Okla., in February, Robinson withdrew his offer for lack of enthusiasm. "The Bible says, 'If a city does not receive you, shake the dust off your feet as testimony against them,'" he wrote. "We are convinced that when Habilitation House arrives, it will be in God's place, at God's time, and with God's people.

Dallas attorney John Sheedy, who has represented cities negotiating with Robinson, was quoted as saying that Satan does not want the project to succeed.

City fathers in Wakita, a community of 380 residents 35 miles north of Enid, Okla., have most recently expressed support for the idea, saying it would create jobs and help reduce recidivism.

"If Chicken Little doesn't come to town, we'll be open in 16 months," Robinson said recently in the Tulsa World.

He said he believes that as a religious organization, the prison will be able to hire only Christians, but if constitutional challenges do arise, the American Center for Law and Justice has agreed to represent the ministry for free.

AU, however, says a federal court has already struck down a similar program based on the Establishment Clause. In 2007 the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Prison Fellowship inmate program in Iowa had "the effect of advancing or endorsing religion" and the per-diem method of state funding was direct aid to a religious organization in violation of the First Amendment.

Draper, a past president of the Southern Baptist Convention and retired president of LifeWay Christian Resources, spoke at a fundraiser benefit for CCI in April. A presentation packet for the program quotes Draper as saying there is more biblical authority for a Baptist prison than for a Baptist university and there ought to be "just as many Christian corrections centers as Christian medical centers."

Others endorsing the Habilitation House concept include former Vice President Dan Quayle, Prison Fellowship Founder Charles Colson and Paige Patterson, a former SBC president and current president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Next year the town of Wakita will celebrate the 15th anniversary of the filiming of "Twister," an Oscar-nominated action thriller starring Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton and Cary Elwes. The story of the movie actually began in 1991, when Wakita applied for and was denied a state grant to demolish old and abandoned buildings in the downtown area.

In the meantime director Steven Spielberg was looking for places to film a new movie idea hatched with author Michael Crichton featuring a town hit by an F4 tornado. With a $30 million budget, crew members spruced up buildings and yards only to later stage their destruction. Demolition crews reduced some of Wakita's original buildings to piles of brick, some of which were later salvaged and engraved. Today they are sold as souvenirs at the "Twister" Museum in downtown Wakita.

–Bob Allen is news writer for Associated Baptist Press.

DALLAS—Battles in the Texas State Board of Education over social studies textbooks really amount to a conflict over what kind of nation the United States was founded to be—and what it may become in the future, a nationally recognized authority on religious liberty issues told an interfaith gathering in Dallas.

“It’s important to all of us because what happens in Texas schools doesn’t stay in Texas schools. What Texas says goes in those textbooks, the rest of us have to read,” said Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington, D.C.

Texas is the second-biggest buyer of textbooks in the United States, behind California, and many publishers craft their books with the Texas market in mind.

“What we teach in the public schools matters,” Haynes told a group at Northaven United Methodist Church in Dallas during the “Faith & Freedom Speaker Series,” sponsored by the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund.

Two outspoken critics of church/state separation—evangelical author Peter Marshall and David Barton, founding president of the WallBuilders organization—are among the panel of experts appointed to guide the Texas textbook standard writing process.

When Marshall and Barton speak of “Christian America” and stress its importance in teaching history and social studies, the term means more than a nation where a majority of the people claim Christian faith, Haynes noted.

Instead, they believe the United States has “fallen away” from its founders’ ideals, and they are driven by the desire to “restore America by recovering its biblical roots.”

Their calls for teaching more about the importance of the Puritans’ influence on colonial society and for stressing to students how the First Great Awakening set the stage for the American Revolution are appropriate, he noted. Christianity’s role in American history should be taught, he said, “But we need to get it right. … I’m concerned about what’s left out of the Christian America vision. It’s selective history.”

Puritan John Winthrop’s vision of America as a “city on a hill”—a shining example of Christian virtue—needs to be balanced by Roger Williams’ commitment to full liberty of conscience for all people, including those with whom he deeply disagree theologically, Haynes noted.

At the time of the American Revolution, some of the founders wanted not just a Christian America but an exclusively Protestant America, he observed.

But others— such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine—hardly fit the mold of orthodox Christianity.

“We were diverse from the very beginning,” Haynes noted. “The framers were divided.”

And history curriculum should reflect that balanced picture, he stressed.

“What I don’t want is selective history that gives a skewed understanding,” he said.

Neither “the restorers” who want to return to a Golden Age of Protestant America nor “the removers” who want to turn public schools into “religion-free zones” should be allowed to prevail, Haynes insisted.

“The land of the free has in many ways become the land of the easily offended. The answer to speech we don’t like is more speech, not less speech,” Haynes said.

Public schools should neither “inculcate nor inhibit religion,” he emphasized. Instead, they should be places where the religious liberty rights of all students are protected, and “civil habits of the heart” are instilled, Haynes said.

WASHINGTON (ABP) — An independent government panel that monitors global religious-freedom conditions thanked the State Department for its latest comprehensive report on the subject Oct. 26, but said the administration could move more boldly to protect freedom of conscience in some places.

“To date, President Obama has raised religious freedom in his speeches abroad without those sentiments being translated into concrete policy actions, and our hope is that this report will be the administration’s call to action” said Leonard Leo, chair of the bipartisan United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, in a statement. “This report can serve as a solid baseline for determining effective U.S. policy toward severe religious-freedom violators. The report makes clear that the United States must do more to ensure reforms are made and implemented.”

The USCIRF release was issued shortly after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released her department’s annual religious-freedom report to journalists.

“Every year, the staff of our office of international religious freedom works with our embassies overseas and experts here in Washington to produce the world’s most comprehensive survey of religious freedom. This report examines how governments in 198 countries and territories are protecting or failing to protect religious freedom,” she said. “The president has emphasized that faith should bring us together, and this year’s report has a special focus on efforts to promote interfaith dialogue and tolerance.”

For example, the report praised Jordanian leaders for their involvement in promoting interfaith dialogue between Muslims and Christians and Dutch officials for implementing a program to encourage tolerance of religious minorities.

Conditions little improved

But the report also noted that conditions had generally not improved in the world’s worst violators of religious freedom. In particular, it cited the eight countries that the department had already designated as particularly egregious violators of religious liberty — Burma, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan.

USCIRF officials have long been urging the State Department — including under previous presidents Bush and Clinton — to designate several other nations as “Countries of Particular Concern,” or CPCs, under the terms of the International Religious Freedom Act. The 1998 law established the commission and a separate State Department office on religious freedom.

In particular, the USCIRF officials said, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam should all be designated CPCs — and the latest State Department report provides significant justification for doing so.

“Both Democratic and Republican administrations have underutilized the ‘country of particular concern’ designation,” Leo said. “As documented in this first report under the Obama administration, religious freedoms are aggressively repressed in the nations that have been designated as CPC countries. But the facts outlined in the report demonstrate just as clearly that countries such as Pakistan and Vietnam meet the CPC statutory requirements and should be so designated.”

In addition, the commission continued to argue — as it did under the previous administration — that the State Department was under-utilizing the tools that the law provided it to encourage CPC designees to improve conditions. The tools — specified by the religious-freedom act — include bilateral negotiations, sanctions and other instruments.

For instance, the State Department has long designated Saudi Arabia a CPC, but has used a waiver that the religious-freedom law provides to avoid enforcement of the status in the hopes that the U.S. ally would voluntarily agree to improvements. While Saudi officials have made some improvements, critics say the nation has shown only a minimal amount of progress.

“Freedom of religion is neither recognized nor protected under the law and is severely restricted in practice” in the oil-rich Middle Eastern kingdom, the department’s report said. Nonetheless, it claimed Saudi Arabia had shown “incremental improvements” over the reporting period.

Asked about a highly publicized effort by Saudi King Abdullah to foster increased dialogue between Muslims and other religious groups, Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner acknowledged that strong concerns remained.

“We believe and we support and we encourage the intention of King Abdullah; but at the same time, if you read this report, there is ample reason for very serious concern about the state of religious freedom in Saudi Arabia,” he said.

USCIRF’s Leo said it was past time for the State Department to take action on Saudi Arabia.

“It is time for the United States to lift that waiver and take action under” the terms of the religious-freedom law, he said. “This would demonstrate that the Obama administration cares about this issue, and it gives the United States much-needed leverage to urge the Saudis to make genuine, measurable improvements, including in its education system. That would be truly in our national interest.”

The State Department under Obama and Clinton has yet to determine any CPC designations. The current designations were made by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shortly before she left office last January and announced by the Clinton State Department in March. Posner said Clinton hopes to make her own designations by next January.

–Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.

Previous ABP story:

State Dept. reveals predecessors’ designations of freedom violators (3/27)

WASHINGTON (RNS)—White House advisers recommended federal officials do more to ensure that government partnerships with faith-based groups are constitutional, transparent and support religious liberty.

“We want to make sure that (religious providers of social services) understand all these ideas … so that they’re not confused, they’re not hamstrung and they’re not sued,” said Melissa Rogers, a member of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

But Rogers, director of Wake Forest Divinity School’s Center for Religion & Public Life , said advisers who are tasked with reforming the White House faith-based office differ on whether faith-based groups that receive federal grants should remove religious symbols or form separate corporations for taxpayer-funded charitable work.

Barry Lynn, a member of the task force who attended the council meeting, said he thinks such symbols should be avoided whenever possible.

“I do think that religious symbols, icons and scriptures should, except in extraordinary circumstances, not be present in a space providing a government-funded service,” said Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Richard Stearns, president of the Christian relief agency World Vision and a member of the council, said that it “lacks common sense” for such disputes to focus more on the symbols than the effectiveness of the programs.

“Because of a cross or a Star of David in the room, do we require that organization to change its identity in order to deliver that social service?” he asked as almost two dozen council members deliberated around a table in a Department of Commerce meeting room.

“I think the goal here should be … not to hamper or hinder these organizations from doing the good that they can do, but to enable and empower them while protecting the rights of both parties, the beneficiary and the service delivery organization.”

Advisers agreed a Bush administration executive order on faith-based and community organizations should be amended to ensure grant-making decisions are made “free from political interference or even the appearance of political interference,” Rogers said.

Over the course of a daylong meeting, council members gave suggestions on five other focus areas related to religious/federal partnerships:

• The fatherhood task force recommended increased federal funding of programs to assist fathers, including military and incarcerated dads.
• The task force on economic recovery and domestic poverty called for efforts to permanently reduce U.S. poverty rates.
• The interreligious cooperation task force recommended creating a working group of multi-religious and community groups to advise the Obama administration on a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• The environment and climate change task force urged the creation of an Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Environmental Protection Agency.
• The global poverty and development task force called for the launch of a public campaign to involve the American public in ending global poverty.