AUSTIN—When the 88th Texas Legislature convenes Jan. 10, Texas Baptist public policy watchdogs believe state lawmakers will resist intense pressure to expand gambling and approve some form of vouchers for private education.

“Expect legislation similar to the types of bills filed in the past,” said John Litzler, director of public policy for Texas Baptists’ Christian Life Commission.

But unlike some recent sessions in which legislators faced tight budgets, this year lawmakers likely will work with a $27 billion budget surplus, albeit limited by a spending cap.

“The challenge legislators face is making improvements that can be sustainable for the future,” Litzler said. “They have to look for permanent solutions. It can’t be just a one-time fix, working with extra money.”

Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, already introduced SJR17, which would allow up to nine casino licenses in Texas, including four for destination casinos, and would create a sports wagering licensing program.

And both Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick campaigned on expanding “school choice,” allowing parents to direct state funds to private schools.

However, Texas Baptists who oppose gambling expansion and support public education note the greatest threat is not a frontal assault on Texas’ prohibition on casino gambling or an effort to launch a full-scale voucher program to divert tax dollars to private religious schools.

Rather, the more likely threats are incremental efforts to authorize sports betting and approve some limited voucher program—perhaps attached as amendments to other bills, they warned.

Efforts to expand legalized gambling

The Texas Constitution prohibits gambling in Texas with a few exceptions—a state-run lottery, pari-mutuel betting on horse and greyhound races, and games such as bingo, pull-tabs and raffles when operated for charitable purposes.

However, individuals and businesses with a vested interest in seeing the expansion of gambling in Texas—from billionaire owners of professional sports teams to Las Vegas-based casinos—already are hiring lobbyists in Austin. In late November, the Houston Chronicle reported state records revealed more than 300 registered lobbyists on gambling issues.

Former Gov. Rick Perry, who opposed gambling expansion when he was in office, now is a spokesman for the Sports Betting Alliance, a coalition organized by Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. Perry released a video in November calling for legalized mobile sports betting in Texas.

Rob Kohler, a consultant with the CLC, sees “no appetite” in the Texas Senate and little in the House of Representatives for legislation that overtly would legalize casinos in Texas.

Sports gambling would trigger change

However, if Texas allows legalized sports gambling, it automatically opens the door to Native American tribes operating casinos, because it triggers a change in classification under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988, Kohler warned.

“It’s not just a slippery slope argument” that says one form of legalized gambling leads to another, Kohler explained. “It’s a turnkey reaction by tribes.”

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act established three classes of gambling:

• Class 1 is limited to traditional gaming conducted as a part of tribal ceremonies and celebrations, along with social gaming for minimal prizes.
• Class 2 covers bingo and similar games.
• Class 3 includes all forms of gambling that are not Class 1 or Class 2. It includes casino-type gambling such as slot machines, blackjack and roulette.

IGRA grants Native American tribes “the exclusive right to regulate gaming activity on Indian lands if the gaming activity is not specifically prohibited by federal law and is conducted within a state which does not, as a matter of criminal law and public policy, prohibit such gaming activity.”

Only three federally recognized tribes have reservations in Texas—the Alabama-Coushatta in East Texas, the Tigua in El Paso and the Kickapoo in Eagle Pass.

However, Kohler warned, “Indian lands” could be broadly interpreted to include out-of-state tribes with a historic claim to land in Texas.

So, if the “Class 3 veil is pierced” by allowing any additional form of legalized gambling—including sports wagering—“the right of the citizens of the state to govern gambling no longer exists,” Kohler explained.

Some form of school voucher push possible

Similarly, school vouchers undercut the ability of citizens to govern local public schools through elected school boards by diverting state funds to private schools that are not accountable to the public, said Charles Foster Johnson, executive director of Pastors for Texas Children.

Furthermore, both Johnson and Litzler emphasized, private school vouchers violate religious liberty and the separation of church and state.

Nevertheless, some lawmakers likely will introduce a limited voucher proposal in this legislative session, whether crafted as a pilot program limited to certain urban areas or earmarked for special education, Johnson noted.

Even so, he predicted Texas’ “unique coalition of rural Republicans and urban Democrats” will resist efforts to approve any form of vouchers for private schools, Johnson predicted.

“There is no consensus for vouchers in this state,” Johnson said.

On the other hand, Litzler pointed to a growing consensus among Texas lawmakers to increase funding for mental health services, mostly in response to school violence, such as the May 24 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

“There is a bipartisan push to improve mental health services, particularly linked to schools,” he said.

The CLC supports increased funding for mental health as part of its commitment to a broad understanding of “pro-life” initiatives, Litzler noted.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—At Mattie Richland Baptist Church in Pineview, Ga., the adults have been back in Sunday school and the kids led a Black history presentation, but the bus that picks up children for their education program remained idle until this month.

At St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in the Chicago suburb of Woodstock, Ill., the once weekly Christian education program is now monthly and is known as “Second Sunday Sunday School.”

At Crossroads Community Cathedral, an Assemblies of God church in East Hartford, Conn., children’s church continues to thrive each weekend, but church leaders describe Christian education for young people as “one of our greatest weaknesses.”

Sunday school, adult forums and other Christian formation classes, already threatened by declines in worship attendance, have been further challenged since COVID-19 shuttered churches and sent their services online.

A study by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research said more than half were disrupted in some way. Other research shows religious education for adults has bounced back more than for younger church members.

“For some, it continued without any real major disruptions, and for others, it basically collapsed,” said Scott Thumma, the institute’s director, summing up its 2022 pandemic-related research during an October event at Yale Divinity School.

“And the easiest way to make it collapse was to keep religious education for children and youth online. If you kept it online, you probably don’t have a religious education program now.”

Decreasing frequency of Bible study gatherings

Pastor Scott Zaucha of St. Ann’s in Woodstock, a mostly white congregation with about 50 attending on Sundays, said its Sunday school ceased to exist before the pandemic because of its aging congregation. He wondered how to begin it again and learned online Christian education was not the answer, because it seemed like “another thing to try to keep up with” when regular schooling was online.

Zaucha found meeting one Sunday a month in person was the best route, realizing even if families choose St. Ann’s as their congregational home, they may not be weekly attenders.

“When you have only a few families with kids at your church, and you have two kids on this Sunday and six kids on that Sunday, they’re all sort of spread out,” he said. “But if you say, ‘Hey, families, we’re going to have Sunday school once a month.’ Then it lets them know when is the best Sunday for them to come if they’re only going to choose one.”

In Orthodox churches, research shows the parishes that never ceased holding in-person religious education classes for their children and teenagers fared better than those that halted the Sunday school lessons, with some even increasing the number of attendees. The combination of attending worship as well as Sunday school and seeing other youth on a regular basis became crucial for their participation.

“For them, it has become even more valuable through the pandemic for those parishes, which kept young people together,” said Alexei Krindatch, national coordinator of the National Census of Orthodox Christian Churches, in an interview conducted at the Religious Research Association conference in November. “It was an excuse to get together.”

Making adjustments

At Crossroads, a multicultural congregation with about 1,500 gathering each weekend, online campus pastor Luke Monahan has tried numerous options to keep adults and kids engaged since the start of the pandemic. In 2020 there were daily adult devotional videos and two a week for kids. Online options appealed more to the adults than to the kids—his own youngster, at age 6, “shut the little laptop and ran away,” he said. An online kids’ church video he had developed gained little traction.

“One month, I didn’t put it out and didn’t notify anyone on purpose,” said Monahan, who also directs IT and education at the Connecticut church. “Nobody said, ‘Where did that video go?’”

In his presentation at Yale, Thumma said adults have had a much more positive reaction to religious education that is not in person.

“Adults seem to love religious education online,” he said. “And we’re hearing stories about all kinds of Bible studies, all kinds of prayer meetings, all kinds of education events that are happening online for adults, but not for children and youth.”

Publishers seek to respond

Urban Ministries Inc. has found adults, even those who aren’t tech-savvy, are interested in its digital platform, Precepts Digital, which launched this year. The video-enhanced Bible study is meant for individuals or small groups.

“We have been encouraged by the oldest members of our audience embracing digital,” said CEO Jeffrey Wright, whose Christian education publishing company primarily serves African American congregations. “You expect pushback from nondigital natives. And in one focus group, a person commented, ‘Well, you know, it’s harder but it’s worth it.’”

After the pandemic caused a significant drop—Wright estimates a 60 percent to 80 percent decrease—in requests for materials for children and youth in the African American community, the company is working on a children’s version of its digital Bible lessons.

“We have a crisis of catechism going on in America right now,” Wright said, expressing concern for the religious upbringing of the youngest generation.

“If you think about it, a 4- or 5-year-old kid, say, born in 2017 or 2018, has never been in an Easter program or a Christmas program and given that little speech you gave when you were a little kid up in the front of the church. Hasn’t happened. Children aren’t being served.”

Illustrated Ministry, a 7-year-old publishing company that aimed at progressive Christian congregations, also has sought to provide materials to churches as they shifted from in-person to online and, sometimes, back and forth again, depending on the stage of the pandemic.

Adam Walker Cleaveland, who founded the company in Racine, Wisc., said he is seeing a greater demand for resources that provide stand-alone lessons for those who may not be attending Sunday school week after week.

“Since COVID, we have seen increasing need for curriculum and resources that are extremely flexible, extremely adaptable,” he said.

Though many of Illustrated Ministry’s products, including children’s bulletins, children’s ministry curricula and pages to color, are designed for children, they also can be used in intergenerational activities around a table at home.

Walker Cleaveland said his organization is also keeping in mind the volunteer teachers—also in shorter supply since the start of the pandemic—who are preparing for Bible lessons, making sure the work is not too time-consuming.

“In terms of our materials, we try to make it so that there isn’t that in-depth prep required, there’s not a huge supply list,” he said. “So you don’t have to make a trip to Michael’s every week before Sunday school.”

Some return to weekly Sunday Bible study

Pastor Florine Newberry, who leads Mattie Richland Baptist, said its membership rolls have grown from 50 to 96 as the congregation shifted from predominantly Black to a more diverse group after welcoming people who stopped to listen to her outdoor sermons during the pandemic.

After preaching at her church’s front door to people who remained seated socially distant near their cars, the congregation is back inside and adult Sunday school started early in 2022. But formal Christian education for teens and children has been limited due to the pandemic and concerns about respiratory syncytial virus, commonly called RSV.

Instead, Newberry has picked up the phone and suggested particular Scriptures to encourage them when they told her of bullying that’s occurred at school.

But Newberry has been looking forward to January. She plans to use her church’s bus to pick up children for Sunday school after deciding it is safe to transport them again.

“If you can get ’em while they’re at that age, you can really make a difference,” she said of the children who’ve been inquiring about when she’s going to pick them up.

“Once I get them back in Sunday school, I’ll be happy.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Jessie Johnson, teaching pastor at Immanuel Bible Church in Springfield, Va., rejects the idea of a Christian nation.

“The government doesn’t establish churches nor should it,” he said.

But Johnson also believes the Pilgrims who landed in Plymouth, Mass., in 1620 were on the right track when they made a covenant with God to establish a Christian society.

“There has to be a moral compass for society,” he added.

Because Johnson and his wife believe American public schools lack that compass, they homeschool their three children.

A movement that originated among educators on the left in the 1970s, homeschooling was increasingly adopted through the 1980s and 1990s by conservative Christian families seeking to instill traditional values in their children and protect them from an increasingly secularized public school system.

The homeschooling population consistently hovered at around 2 million students since then—a little more than 3 percent of the national student body—until the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered in-person school and forced children into Zoom classrooms.

In September 2020, six months into the pandemic, the U.S. Census Bureau reported the share of homeschooled children had shot up to 11 percent of households. With the escalated numbers has come increased attention to homeschooling.

Debates, meanwhile, have arisen over what children are being taught about American history, partly in response to the 1619 Project, a recounting of U.S. history that stresses the story of Black America, beginning with the arrival of the first slaves.

Culture war led to politically charged curriculum

The surrounding culture war picked up on the controversy, resulting in book bans and accusations that teachers are instructing elementary students using a legal and academic framework known as critical race theory.

These controversies have prompted the release of new, politically charged homeschool curricula such as Turning Point Academy, a product engineered by pro-Trump talk show host Charlie Kirk that promises to deliver an “America-first education.”

Another, the Christendom Curriculum, touts itself as “America’s only Christian Nationalist homeschool curriculum” and includes “battle papers” that tell children how to argue with the liberals who supposedly hate white Christians.

Some of these programs have tiny reach—Christendom Curriculum only had 100 current subscribers as of September. But critics of religious homeschooling say the same Christian nationalist messages, if not the same partisan divisions, have been present in the most popular and long-established curriculums used by Christian parents.

“The ideology has been taking root for at least a generation,” said Doug Pagitt, an evangelical pastor in Minnesota and executive director of Vote the Common Good, a progressive voting-rights organization. Christian nationalist ideas are “all over the place” in Christian education companies’ materials, Pagitt said.

“It’s in there in theology. It’s in there in history. It’s in there in current events,” he said.

Some of the most popular homeschool curriculum textbooks, produced by publishing giants Abeka, Accelerated Christian Education and Bob Jones University Press, teach that the first Europeans to arrive in Virginia and Massachusetts made a covenant with God to Christianize the land.

The History of the United States in Christian Perspective, a textbook from Abeka, promises students: “You will learn how God blessed America because of the principles (truths) for which America stands.”

Those truths made America “the greatest nation on the face of the earth,” the book says, before issuing a warning: “No nation can remain great without God’s blessing.”

Homeschooling texts stress American exceptionalism

These companies’ books offer students an “unproblematic and unquestionably exceptional America,” said Kathleen Wellman, professor of history at Southern Methodist University and author of Hijacking History: How the Christian Right Teaches History and Why It Matters, in a column for RNS.

Abeka’s history injects conservative values into more recent history as well, noting that, “since the 1960s, decisions of the Supreme Court and other judges have contributed to the moral decline of our country.”

Abeka, ACE and BJU Press declined to comment to RNS.

The Abeka curriculum was born at Pensacola Christian Academy, a K-12 school on Florida’s panhandle founded in 1954. Working initially from outdated public school textbooks, the school’s Southern Baptist founders, Arlin and Rebekah Horton, began publishing their textbooks in 1972 to supply the Christian schools that had proliferated after Supreme Court rulings ended segregation in public education and banned religious expression in the classroom.

Today, Pensacola Christian Academy’s website boasts every class is taught from a biblical perspective, and science instructors are explicit about “God’s wonderful design,” but students also learn the basic principles of chemistry and dissect frogs, much as secular students do.

‘Nationalist propaganda’

It is in the humanities, especially history, that former PCA students say they were indoctrinated into a form of Christian triumphalism, in which American society was at its best when it hewed to Christian faith.

 “It was just pure propaganda—nationalist propaganda,” said Tyler Burns, a graduate of Pensacola Christian Academy. Former Republican President Ronald Reagan was treated as practically the “fourth member of the Godhead,” Burns recalled.

An African American, Burns remembers feeling disoriented while being taught slavery was a “blessing in disguise” for introducing enslaved Africans to Christianity. Burns, now president of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, has spoken extensively about the ways Christian education affected his ability to embrace his Black identity.

The white supremacist ideas that dismayed Burns can be found in Abeka’s home history curriculum as well. It implies that Southern land owners had little choice but to buy slaves to keep up with the demand of raising cotton and tobacco.

“The Southern planter could never hire enough people to get his work done,” it reads, noting at the same time that “only one out of 10 Southerners owned slaves.”

Some parents design personalized reading lists

In practice many homeschooling parents fashion their own reading lists to suit their views or their children’s abilities. Stephanie Rotramel, who has homeschooled her three children off and on since her oldest, now 17, was in preschool, said homeschooling allows her flexibility to meet specific educational needs.

This year, as her kids head back to school at home, she’s using mostly Christian curricula, though none of the ones mentioned in this article. She wants to expose her kids to diverse perspectives, though, and plans to supplement the curricula with YouTube videos from Trevor Noah and with a “year of nontraditional lit”—books such as Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri and I Am Malala by the Pakistani education activist.

She doesn’t see giving a warts-and-all account of the country’s history while sharing a Christian worldview with her children as contradictory.

Rotramel said, as a Christian, she sees America as a place “full of sinners who need Jesus.” That includes the Founding Fathers. It includes Ronald Reagan, too.

“I feel like that’s the message of the Bible,” she said. “We’re all messed up. We need Jesus.”

Jessie Johnson agrees. He said he and his wife try to teach their children about the ways the United States has fallen short of the values of Christianity, in particular when it comes to race.

So, while the Johnsons have their children read the Mayflower Compact, the Pilgrims’ charter for their new society that would honor the glory of God and the “advancement of the Christian faith,” the family has traveled to Charleston, S.C., to study the history of slavery and have made repeated trips to the Manassas National Battlefield Park, not far from where they now make their home, where two major Civil War battles were fought.

“We know whose side we are on,” said Johnson, adding that slavery violated the Christian ideal that all people are made in God’s image—a founding American principle, he said.

Some curriculum providers revise materials

The drumbeat of white supremacy and Christian nationalism in the past few years has also convinced some conservative Christian curriculum writers that they should revise their materials.

Charlene Notgrass, who runs Notgrass History with her husband, Ray, a retired pastor, from their home in Tennessee, has been writing U.S. history and civics lessons for Christian homeschool families since the early 1990s.

 At the time, most homeschoolers were either “conservative Christians or hippies,” said Charlene, 68. Most of the early homeschool textbooks reflected that.

Today, they say, homeschooling is more diverse—both politically and ethnically. The couple said they’ve had to keep learning about overlooked parts of history and to reflect that new knowledge in their products.

In 2020, amid the George Floyd protests and a contested election, Charlene Notgrass finished a new revision of America the Beautiful, their high school history text.

“Too often,” it reads, “people have not believed that we are all equally valuable creations of God. Therefore, sometimes people treat people who are different from themselves—in skin color, in nationality, in political party, in the amount of money they have—as less valuable.

“No two Americans are likely ever to think exactly alike about everything,” it concludes, “but we still must respect each other.”

The Notgrasses describe themselves as “patriotic Americans” and want students who read their lessons to love their country, but they also want them to know the truth.

“We don’t think Americans are God’s chosen people, the way the Israelites are God’s chosen people,” said Charlene Notgrass. “The Bible tells us point-blank that God chose the Israelites. It does not tell us point-blank that God chose America.”

Joe Vernon, a Texas Baptist pastor more than four decades, died Dec. 20 in Beeville. He was 91. He was born March 22, 1931, in Petersburg to William Morris Vernon and Vera Lucile (Truitt) Vernon. After graduating from Brownfield High School, where he was the salutatorian and participated in all sports, he went to Hardin-Simmons University to earn an undergraduate degree in English and religion. While a student at HSU, he met Emma Jo Goodson. They married Aug. 16, 1952, in Midway, near Lamesa. After he graduated from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1953, the Vernons moved to Midway where he became pastor of his wife’s home church. Over the course of 43 years, he was pastor of Texas Baptist churches in Midway, Menard, Canadian, Post, White Settlement, Earth and Rotan, as well as Lovington, N.M. Vernon was preceded in death in November 2019 by his wife of 67 years, Emma Jo Vernon, as well as by his sisters, Hazel Zorns and Ruth Scarborough.  He is survived by daughter Sarah McKinney and husband Ellis of Beeville; son David Vernon and wife Susanna of Round Rock; daughter Rachel Hoff and husband Ronnie of Three Rivers; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren, with two more expected in the near future. Visitation with the family is scheduled at 1 p.m. on Dec. 22 at First Baptist Church in Beeville. The memorial service follows at the same location at 2 p.m.

At its winter commencement, Dallas Baptist University awarded an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree to Shirley V. Hoogstra, president of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. Hoogstra has served in that role since 2014. The organization represents more than 185 colleges and associations around the world that share four common distinctives—faculty and staff who integrate their Christian faith into all classes; rigorous intellectual engagement; Christian formation of students; and a commitment to global service. During her tenure as CCCU president, Hoogstra has led initiatives in developing an online course-sharing consortium and has focused on expanding ethnic diversity, accessibility and inclusion on Christian campuses. She serves on the steering committee for the Washington Higher Ed Secretariat, is a leader for the Evangelical Immigration Table, and serves on the boards of the American Council on Education, the National Association of Evangelicals and Trinity Forum.

After more than 72 years of broadcasting to the greater Plainview area, Wayland Baptist University’s radio station—KWLD, 91.5 FM—has gone global with Christian music, Wayland sports and other programing. The radio station is now available on the RadioFX college radio app. KWLD now can reach more then 60,000 alumni and friends of Wayland, plus attract new listeners. Licensed in 1948, Wayland began broadcasting as KHBL in 1950. The station later switched call letters to KWLD.

First Baptist Church in Crowley will host the Waypoint Conference, Feb. 3-5. The conference is designed to help churches navigate current cultural issues. The program features Todd Pylant, pastor of First Baptist Church in Benbook; Katie Frugé, director of Texas Baptists’ Center for Cultural Engagement and Christian Life Commission; Katie McCoy, director of women’s ministry with Texas Baptists; Jonathan Smith, director of church health strategy for Texas Baptists; Tom Howe, director of church starting for Texas Baptists; David Hardage, recently retired executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas; and Matt Queen, evangelism professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. For more information, click here.

Since the February 2021 military coup in Myanmar, about 1 million people—most of them members of religious and ethnic minorities—have been internally displaced, in addition to those seeking refuge in neighboring countries, a recent report revealed.

Continued violence by the Burmese military—known as the Tatmadaw—also has resulted in about 2,500 noncombatant deaths, according to a policy update on Burma from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

As of September, the military junta’s State Administrative Council directly has overseen the arrest of 14,000 citizens, torched more than 19,000 homes, internally displaced 700,000 people, and forced 60,000 refugees to flee to neighboring India and Thailand, the commission reported.

Those arrested include Hkalam Samson, past president and general secretary of the Kachin Baptist Convention in Myanmar, who was detained earlier this month by the Burmese military and continues to be held in an undisclosed location in Kachin State.

“The unjust arrest of Dr. Samson, his detention in an unknown location, and the denial of his rights as a citizen both prior to his arrest and since his arrest jeopardize his life and are of grave concern,” Baptist World Alliance General Secretary Elijah Brown and Asia Pacific Baptist Federation General Secretary Vesekhoyi Tetseo wrote in a Dec. 8 letter.

“At a time when faith leaders can play an indispensable role in building just and lasting peace, far too many individuals continue to be imprisoned and communities of faith targeted and destroyed.”

Conditions deteriorate for Rohingya

Conditions for the country’s Rohingya Muslims—already targeted for at least a decade prior to the coup by the nation’s Buddhist majority—continued to deteriorate since the Tatmadaw seized control of the government, the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom report stated.

About 950,000 registered Rohingya refugees from Myanmar live in Bangladesh, where their freedom of movement is limited, hampering their ability to find legal employment.

After the commission sent a delegation to visit Rohingya refugees in the region last month, it called on the U.S. government to work with Bagladeshi authorities to support the Rohingya community and also engage with international organizations to provide for refugees.

The commission report also called on the U.S. to “prioritize religious freedom, including justice for Rohingya and voluntary repatriation, as core criteria for recognition of any pro-democracy opposition group within Burma.”

In Myanmar, the report noted, “ongoing clashes between the SAC, ethnic armies and pro-democracy forces have sparked new fears of another Rohingya exodus.”

In March, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced atrocities committed by the Burmese military against the Rohingya constituted “crimes against humanity and genocide.”

Christians suffer ‘violence and discrimination’

However, the Rohingya are not the only victims of systematic persecution by the Burmese military.

“Since the 2021 coup, Burma’s various Christian communities have suffered violence and discrimination in a magnitude that some have compared to what the Rohingya community has historically faced,” the commission report stated.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees documented an increase in more than 33,000 internally displaced individuals in Chin State and 4,100 in Kachin State, both areas where Christians constitute a majority. The U.N. documented 76,000 in Kayah State, where Christians are a significant minority.

Civil groups estimate the number of internally displaced people in Kayah State could be as many as 170,000, the report noted.

“Many Christian and other communities have fled to neighboring countries, including over 40,000 to Mizoram, India,” the report stated.

A commission delegation met last month with Christian refugees in Malaysia “who reported on dire conditions for their compatriots still within Burma,” the report continued.

“They also reported that their forced flight from Burma, which was in part a result of their religious identity, has deprived them of other rights—such as access to education and employment—due to an absence of laws in Malaysia that provide these rights for refugees and asylum seekers.

“Houses of worship remain particularly vulnerable targets of SAC violence within Burma as the military has bombed, mined and burned Catholic, Baptist and other Christian churches.”

Early last month, the Tatmadaw shelled the Kachin Bible School in northern Myanmar.

At its July meeting in Birmingham, Ala., the Baptist World Alliance general council approved a resolution condemning the coup in Myanmar and the Burmese military for waging “a campaign of terror and violence, particularly against minority religions.”

Craig Bird, Baptist journalist and educator, died Dec. 12 due to complications from a fall the week before. He was 73. Bird was born Oct. 4, 1949, in Arkansas to Clyde and C.W. Bird. He earned an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Texas and a master’s degree in English from Hardin-Simmons University, and he also studied at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He worked for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and the Lawton (Okla.) Constitution-Press before becoming features editor at Baptist Press in Nashville. From 1985 to 1996, he and his wife Melissa served with the Southern Baptist Convention’s Foreign Mission Board in Africa. While he was based in Nairobi, Kenya, Bird traveled to 26 African nations to report on missions as part of the first wave of SBC foreign correspondents. During his long career, he served on staff at Hardin-Simmons University, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, South Texas Children’s Home, Baptist Children’s Home of North Carolina and Baptist Child & Family Services. He most recently served 17 years at Baptist University of the Américas, where he taught cross-cultural communications and theology. He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Melissa; sons Brant and Coby; five grandchildren; and a brother, David Bird.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—David Baum has a warning for any church doing a live Nativity: Watch out for the sheep.

“They’re like little tanks, said Baum, recounting the time some sheep bolted, dragged a bale of hay behind them and “ran down some little old ladies singing Christmas carols.”

For the past few decades, Baum, owner of the Texas Camel Corps, has spent the Christmas season traipsing all over Texas, supplying camels—as well as donkeys, ox and sheep—for live Nativity sets at churches around the state.

“We have got it all,” he said. “I tell people we bring everything but the baby Jesus.”

A live Nativity at the Seaside Chapel in Carolina Beach, N.C., made headlines recently when a pair of cows staged a jailbreak from the manger and dove into a river—leading to an overnight search and a viral video rescue by local police.

The cows were sent home, Dana Vess, the wife of Seaside pastor Jerry Vess, told the Port City Daily newspaper. But the live Nativity—interrupted two years ago after a storm destroyed the church’s set—went on as planned.

“We don’t let anything stop us from sharing the meaning of Christmas,” Vess told the Port City Daily.

Long tradition of animals in Nativity scenes

While the Bible doesn’t specifically mention animals being present at the birth of Jesus, the non-canonical Infancy Gospel of Matthew, which dates to the 7th century, added them to the story, according to medieval historian Vanessa Corcoran.

“And on the third day after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, the most blessed Mary went forth out of the cave, and entering a stable, placed the child in the stall, and the ox and the ass adored him,” the Infancy Gospel recounts.

Corcoran said the tradition of staging reenactments of the birth of Jesus, with live animals as part of the cast, dates back to 1223 A.D., when St. Francis of Assisi set up a live Nativity in the town of Greccio, Italy, with a doll in the manger and live animals, according to a biography of Francis written by St. Bonaventure.

Then in 1291, Pope Nicholas VI, the first Franciscan pope, had a Nativity set up in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

“Within a century, virtually every church in Italy started to take up the practice, first with statues but then getting live Nativities as well,” said Corcoran.

More recent retellings of the birth of Jesus include the 2017 film The Star, which depicts the animals, including some camels brought by the wise men, as humorous sidekicks who save the Baby Jesus from Herod.

A 2014 short story by science fiction author John Scalzi, “Script Notes on the Birth of Jesus,” also features the animals as sidekicks, as well as reimagining the wise men as time-traveling “ninjas for Christ.”

Animals not always well-behaved

While the animals might have been on their best behavior for St. Francis, they don’t always cooperate with modern-day live Nativity scenes.

Last Christmas, a camel featured in a drive-thru Nativity scene at the National Agricultural Center and Hall of Fame in Bonner Springs, Kan., made a break for it and spent a day eluding capture by police, who chased the camel in golf carts. In 2010, a video of a reluctant camel toppling into the crowd at a church pageant went viral.

Live animals also played an unexpected role in the downfall of Southern California’s Crystal Cathedral. For decades, Robert Schuller’s now-shuttered megachurch staged a “Glory of Christmas” pageant featuring camels, horses and sheep, along with flying angels. The pageant ended when the church no longer could pay vendors for the pageant, a sign of a larger fiscal crisis at the church.

For years, Damascus Road Community Church in Mount Airy, Md., held a “Walk Through Bethlehem” event, complete with sheep, llamas and donkeys, on a set built on the church’s property. The animals behaved well when they were outside, said Michelle Rader, the church’s lead elder, but there was an adventure when one of the boys in the church tried to ride a donkey and got bucked off.

Things got tricky when a church leader brought a llama inside the church during the announcements to promote the event—and it promptly left an unexpected offering on the stage, Rader said.

“You never know with llamas,” she said.

The church, which put its Christmas reenactment on hold in 2020 due to the pandemic, has also used live animals during reenactments for Palm Sunday and Easter, which could be tricky. While the Bible recounts Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, bringing that to life is a challenge, said Rader.

“You have to find a very small man to be Jesus,” she said.

The church also has had wild animals take part in its event, though that was unplanned. One year, said Rader, a group of wild turkeys invaded the church’s property over the Easter weekend and would not go away. The group’s male leader decided to preen for the crowd while Jesus was dying on the cross—and would not leave, despite the best efforts of church members.

“They had absolutely no fear of the crowd,” said Rader.

Live animals ‘a great draw’

Despite some of the challenges, Rader said having animals at reenactments helps bring the Bible’s stories to life.

“They are a great draw,” she said.

The animals at the first live Nativity run by Kenosha Bible Church were mostly well-behaved, though the cow was too big to fit in the stable and had to remain in a trailer. The sheep and other animals provided a great soundtrack for the event run by the Wisconsin church, said worship pastor Mike Middleton, who helped organize the event.

A video from the event, held Dec. 11, catches the sheep baaing in the middle of a pastor’s welcome.

“Yep, thank you. I’ll take that as an ‘Amen,’” the pastor responded.

Middleton said the church had built an outdoor structure during the pandemic for worship services that resembles a stable. That inspired them to launch a live Nativity to retell the Christmas story. Church leaders also wanted to fill the gap left when another popular Nativity in Kenosha, a city about 40 miles south of Milwaukee, shut down.

The event featured live actors and a recorded narration taken from the New Testament accounts and drew more than 1,000 people.

“A lot of times, Bible stories feel like fairy tales,” Middleton said. “When you see the real people, there is more of an impact.”

Bringing the ‘wow’ factor

Having animals—especially larger ones—also brings a “wow” factor to Christmas events, said Baum, whose camels will take part in 36 performances over 28 days during the holiday season.

At some events, he said, the camels are part of the scenery, while at others, Baum and his animals serve as “chauffeurs for the Magi,” with the wise men from the biblical story riding through the crowd.

Along with helping tell the story, the camels add “a bit of spectacle,” Baum said.

“That’s the case whether we are at a small church where Joseph is a kid with a painted-on beard—or we are at a megachurch with lights and smoke machines,” he said.

Despite their reputation for being stubborn, Baum said his camels are “boringly gentle” and love being around people. They are the predictable part of a live Nativity, he said.

The public, however, is another story.

“A hundred years ago,” he said, “most people would have known not to do something goofy behind a horse or other large animal.”

Now that’s not the case. These days he spends much of his time trying to anticipate how people might react around the animals—and take steps to prevent any mishaps.

“The camels are the least of my concerns,” he said.

The Baptist General Convention of Texas is reopening its Inflation Relief Grant program, thanks to a gift from First Baptist Church in Midland.

The grant aims to help pastors impacted by the recent increase in costs of gas, utilities, groceries and other necessities.

“We are humbled and overjoyed by FBC Midland’s generosity towards pastors and ministers,” said Tammy Tervooren of the Texas Baptists’ financial health team. “Many pastors and ministers have seen increased needs due to inflation, and the generosity of FBC Midland and its congregation will provide some of these pastors with much-needed financial relief.”

First Baptist Church in Midland first heard about the grant when it was launched in July 2022. Following a year of generous giving, the church realized it had excess funds and began discussing ways to use them.

Pastor Darin Wood suggested helping to fund another BGCT Inflation Relief Grant, remembering his own days as a struggling bivocational pastor.

The church’s finance committee agreed and pledged $140,000 to the grant. Wood said the church hopes this grant will be an encouragement to the pastors who receive it.

“Our hope is that it will serve pastors and their families, and they’ll be able to stay in the church they’re serving in and breathe easier,” he said.

Wood, who has served at First Baptist in Midland almost seven years, said he hopes the grant serves as a reminder to ministers that their work is important and celebrated.

“Know you’re not forgotten—that the Lord has not forgotten you,” he said. “There are other people besides your church that see you and see the importance of the work that you are doing.”

Matching gift from Lilly Endowment

The gift from First Baptist in Midland gift was matched by the Lilly Endowment as part of its national Economic Challenges Facing Pastoral Leaders Initiative, bringing the total available funds to $280,000.

Funds from First Baptist in Midland will go toward supporting senior pastors, while the matching funds will be open to all full-time pastors and ministers.

To be eligible, pastors and ministers must be serving at a BGCT-affiliated church that has contributed to the Texas Baptists’ Cooperative Program within the last year. Pastors and ministers must have served in their current church for at least one year. Pastors who have received the grant previously are welcome to reapply.

Recipients will receive up to $500 in a one-time grant. The grant will be open to applicants on Jan. 3, 2023. Those who meet the eligibility requirements can find more grant information and apply here.

First Baptist in Midland has a generous heart, Wood said, and he celebrated the fact his congregation can look outward toward blessing people around the state.

“It’s a generous place, and people have a heart of giving,” he said.

He encouraged other churches to consider how they can be a part of blessing pastors, churches or ministries across Texas.

“It’s not our money. The Lord loaned it to us, and it’s our job to give it back,” he said.

Churches interested in helping others this Christmas season and beyond through the BGCT’s current or new ministry opportunities are encouraged to contact Texas Baptists’ CFO/Treasurer Ward Hayes at ward.hayes@txb.org to learn more about the large-scale impact they can make. 

Individuals interested in making a gift that will bless ministries for a lifetime and beyond can contact the Texas Baptist Missions Foundation to learn more.  

To learn more about the Inflation Relief Grant, click here. 

Texas’ use of the death penalty remained at a historically low level this year, but four of the five individuals executed in 2022 suffered from mental or physical impairments or from childhood trauma, a new report reveals.

 “Despite their low number, the executions set and carried out in 2022 raise troubling issues about the fairness and utility of the death penalty,” the report from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty states.

A separate report from the Death Penalty Information Center revealed national support for the death penalty continued a more than 20-year decline. Nationally, 18 inmates were executed in 2022, and the 20 death sentences pronounced in 2022 were the fewest of any year in half a century.

The national center’s report pointed out seven of the 20 attempted executions were “botched”—either highly problematic or taking an inordinate amount of time.

Only six states carried out executions in 2022—Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Alabama, Missouri and Mississippi.

Declining death sentences in Texas

In 2022, only two Texas juries sentenced an accused killer to death—the eighth consecutive year death sentences in the state numbered in single digits. The number of Texas death sentences have declined 96 percent since peaking at 48 in 1999, the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty report noted.

Juries in only 14 of Texas’ 254 counties have imposed death penalties in the last five years.

As of mid-December, 192 Texas inmates were on Death Row—the smallest death row population since 1985.

Stephen Reeves, executive director of Fellowship Southwest, an organizational member of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, noted the report reveals “even Texas is walking away from imposing the death penalty.”

“The death penalty is fundamentally flawed, and there is no defensible rationale for its continued use,” Reeves said.

While fewer Texas juries are imposing a death sentence and fewer Death Row inmates are being executed than in recent decades, capital punishment remains a “lethal lottery,” according to the report.

“Individuals who are set for execution were convicted years ago during an era of prosecutorial excess, putting the rampant flaws and failures in their cases on stark display. State and federal courts have allowed egregious constitutional violations to stand without review, and many death penalty cases remain frozen in time until the eleventh hour,” the coalition report states.

Childhood trauma, racial disparity

Death Row inmates executed in 2022 included John Henry Ramirez, who suffered from mental health issues stemming from childhood trauma, according to the coalition report.

When Ramirez was executed Oct. 5, Pastor Dana Moore of Second Baptist Church in Corpus Christi stood beside him in the Texas Death Chamber. Ramirez secured the right to have his pastor lay hands on him and pray audibly at the moment of his execution when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 the state should accommodate his request.

Moore served as spiritual adviser to Ramirez about five years. After Ramirez made a profession of faith in Christ and was baptized on Texas Death Row, Second Baptist Church allowed him to join the congregation’s membership.

Of the five inmates executed this year, three were white, one was Hispanic and one was of Southeast Asian heritage.

However, in the past five years, more than 70 percent of death sentences were imposed on people of color, with about 40 percent imposed on Black defendants.

Harris County and Smith County accounted for one-third of the death sentences imposed in the past five years. In Harris County, only one of the 22 most recent defendants sentenced to death was white, while 16 were Black.

Black inmates constitute 46.6 percent of the incarcerated individuals on Texas Death Row, while African Americans are only 11.8 percent of the total Texas population.

Some executions stayed by court

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed three executions. Melissa Lucio—one of only a handful of women on Texas Death Row and the only Latina—was within two days of her scheduled execution when she was granted a stay of execution.

The Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a Cameron County trial court to consider new evidence regarding the death of her 2-year-old daughter Mariah. Evidence included declarations of seven scientific and forensic experts who concluded false evidence misled the jury into believing the child was killed by physical abuse rather than medical complications after a fall.

More than 100 faith leaders—including Jesse Rincones, executive director of the Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas—had requested clemency for Lucio.

The coalition report noted a significant number of cases of Texas Death Row inmates involved false or misleading testimony, poor legal representation and faulty forensic evidence.

“The individuals set for execution likely would meet a different fate if they were charged and tried today,” said Kristin Houlé Cuellar, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

“Yet, because of the high hurdles that state and federal courts have erected for review and relief, these older cases from a bygone era of zealous use of the death penalty in Texas remain frozen in time, allowing their executions to proceed despite egregious constitutional violations.”

Reeves voiced the same concerns. Capital punishment’s “random and sporadic imposition only adds to the cruelty for those unlucky enough to be killed by the state,” he asserted.

“We are not safer, and justice is not served by the state killing a handful of individuals every year who are almost uniformly poor, mentally ill, developmentally impaired, or themselves the victims of childhood abuse and trauma. Not to mention the numbers of those sentenced to death who are later found to be innocent or the high number of those subject to botched executions,” Reeves said.

“It is inhumane and unworthy of public support, especially from Christians who follow a Savior who stopped a public execution and was himself unjustly executed.”

In response to a sharp increase in migrants crossing the Texas-Mexico border in the El Paso area, Gov. Greg Abbott is seeking an investigation of nongovernmental organizations he believes may have assisted with illegal border crossings.

Nongovernmental organizations also “may be engaged in unlawfully orchestrating other border crossings through activities on both sides of the border, including in sectors other than El Paso,” Abbott wrote in a letter to Attorney General Ken Paxton.

In the Dec. 14 letter, Abbott called on the attorney general and his office to “initiate an investigation into the role of NGOs in planning and facilitating the illegal transportation of illegal immigrants across our borders.”

He also pledged to work with the attorney general’s office to “craft any sensible legislative solutions … aimed at solving the ongoing border crisis and the role that NGOs may play in encouraging it.”

Abbott sent the letter one week before the scheduled expiration of Title 42, which allows the United States to expel migrants rapidly from the border without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum. Title 42 first was enacted as part of the Public Health Service Act of 1944 to prevent the spread of communicable disease.

President Donald Trump invoked Title 42 in March 2020 with the expressed intent to stop the spread of COVID-19, and the Biden administration continued it until Dec. 21.

El Paso has experienced a dramatic surge in the number of border crossings prior to the Dec. 21 deadline. On Dec. 17, Mayor Oscar Leeser declared a state of disaster to deal with a humanitarian crisis.

NGOs working with Border Patrol

Stephen Reeves, executive director of Fellowship Southwest, called Abbott’s directive to investigate NGOs “an offensive attack on the faith of pastors and churches following the biblical commands to love their neighbor and welcome the stranger.”

“While the governor is engaged in political stunts like shipping migrants off to northern cities, and Congress can’t get its act together to provide the resources and policy changes necessary to adequately address this humanitarian crisis, it is churches who are taking responsibility to care for the desperate,” Reeves said.

Reeves said he does not know of any pastors in the Fellowship Southwest border network—or any other nonprofit—who are “unlawfully orchestrating border crossings.”

“What they are doing is feeding and protecting the desperate and vulnerable, many of whom are children, who are forced by our policies to languish in some of the most dangerous cartel-controlled cities in North America,” he said.

“Most nonprofits are working with Customs and Border Patrol to try and better control the flow of migrants. I implore the governor to work with the federal government and local officials to coordinate the care of migrants and join us in urging Congress to pass legislation now to address the situation.”

Director of Missions Larry Floyd said El Paso Baptist Association’s migrant ministry center operates within the law, working with migrants who have proper documentation. The center works closely with local government, as well as U.S. Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

John Litzler, director of public policy for the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission, noted the Baptist General Convention of Texas “is blessed with incredible churches, partners, missionaries and staff who engage in longstanding ministry efforts to meet the spiritual, physical and educational needs of those along the Texas and Mexico border.”

“This ministry is both in harmony with the biblical command to care for the foreigner and love the sojourner, while also within the parameters of and in compliance with local, state and federal law,” Litzler said.

“While we continue to pray for wise and compassionate immigration reform at the federal level, we are also eager to work with Texas legislators to address the border crisis in a way that affirms the God-given value and dignity of migrants to the United States.”

For more information about Texas Baptists’ ministries along the Texas/Mexico border, contact Mario Gonzales with River Ministry/Mexico Missions at (214) 828-5389 or mario.gonzalez@txb.org, or visit txb.org/riverministry.

EL PASO, Texas (BP)—Baptists in El Paso are joining other groups to respond to large numbers of migrants that can quickly and easily spiral into a humanitarian crisis.

“We’re averaging 2,500 crossings a day,” said Larry Floyd, executive director of the El Paso Baptist Association. “Shelters are full. I’ve never seen it like this.”

The recent crowds at the border can be linked to the scheduled Dec. 21 deadline of Title 42. Originally enacted as part of the Public Health Service Act of 1944, Title 42 regards the “suspension of entries and imports … to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.”

President Donald Trump cited the COVID-19 pandemic when he enacted Title 42 in March 2020, thus leading to the rapid expulsion of migrants at the border.

Floyd and others braced for a flood of immigrants last year as Title 42’s anticipated deadline neared, but the Biden administration ultimately decided to continue the policy.

At that time, El Paso Baptist Association had just opened its migrant ministry center. Since then, the center has worked with the local government as well as the U.S. Border Patrol and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in helping 60 to100 migrants each week.

The current crisis happens, though, as the association’s migrant center is closed for the rest of the month. Primarily, the closure is due to a lack of the center’s regular volunteers, who will be serving at their respective churches during Christmas.

“There are churches going out on their own and handing out items like blankets,” Floyd said. “Pastor Ariel Martinez and Del Sol Church have been active in this.”

The migrant center will reopen in January.

“I’m hoping this surge creates a bigger sense of the need for volunteers year-round,” said Floyd, who added that the center remains “spiritually based” and meets those needs alongside humanitarian ones. Families and individuals typically spend 24 to 36 hours there before being processed out.

Brent Moore, pastor of Life Church in El Paso, is one of those churches active at the migrant center.

“About a third of my church works with the government, so we’re ministering to them during this as well as those crossing the border,” he said.

Moore said government officials need to act.

“There’s a way to be compassionate while calling your local officials to uphold the law.” Moore said. “We’re ministering to our people who are putting in the overtime, as well as migrants.”

Coverage of the border situation and talk among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have picked up considerable steam. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, called President Biden’s chief of staff over the matter, according to reports.

On Dec. 13, Sen. John Cornyn joined others in calling on Biden to extend Title 42 beyond its Dec. 21 deadline.

In addition to full homeless shelters, Moore has observed “shantytowns” of migrants springing up around gas stations. He has spoken to air marshals who have been pulled into border patrol duty. There are valid concerns of migrants being trapped into human trafficking.

The situation is an unprecedented one for Floyd, an El Paso native.

“Normal migration in El Paso is pretty substantial, but well-maintained,” he said. “When the border patrol is dropping off migrants in the streets, like now, something is seriously wrong.”