Three-fourths of congregations skipped BGCT meetings

DALLAS—Only about one-fourth of the congregations affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas have been involved in annual meetings in recent years, a committee charged with studying ways to increase annual meeting attendance discovered.

In the last five years, 74 percent of BGCT-affiliated churches did not send any messengers to even one annual meeting of the state convention, according to data Clay Price, BGCT information analyst, provided the committee. That means more than 3,200 congregations have not been represented at any annual meeting from 2005 to 2009. Another 427 congregations had at least one messenger attend just one meeting.

The number of churches with messengers attending an annual meeting has decreased each year from 2006 to 2009, Price reported. At the 2006 annual meeting, 616 churches sent messengers. By the 2009 meeting, that number dropped to 502 churches.

Church historian Alan Lefever, director of the Texas Baptist Historical Collection , also provided the study committee long-term historical perspective on the annual meeting.

From 1936 to 1990, the percentage of affiliated churches that sent messengers to the BGCT annual meeting fluctuated from a high of 47 percent to a low of 20 percent, with most of the meetings drawing participation in the mid-30 percentage range, he reported.

As the committee explores options for a revised annual meeting format, Lefever noted the event was held in churches until the 1950s.

From 1886 to 1941, the annual meeting was four to five days duration, beginning on a Tuesday and ending on a Friday or Saturday. From 1942 to 1990, it was three days long. From 1991 to 2002, it was two days, with no afternoon session on the second day. Since 2003, it has started early afternoon on a Monday and ended at noon Tuesday.

While the Texas Baptist annual meeting has been held in October or November for most of its history, the conventions that merged to form the BGCT in 1886 met in May or June from 1848 to 1854, Lefever noted.

Kyle Henderson, pastor of First Baptist Church in Athens and chair of the study committee, noted the committee is exploring a variety of approaches and is interested in hearing from Texas Baptists. To contact him, e-mail TexasBaptistMeeting@gmail.com .

 




New Testament stories shape Christian character, Gregory says

ABILENE—Stories describe the essence of human life, and New Testament stories shape moral and spiritual character, Joel Gregory told participants at the annual T.B. Maston Lectures at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Seminary.

Gregory discussed “The Power of Narrative and Character Formation” at this year’s lectures, which honor the memory of Maston, a pioneer in Christian ethics and longtime professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Joel Gregory

“Narratives … include a story and a storyteller, manifest movement through time, require cause-and-effect relationships in a plot and … define the very nature of human existence,” explained Gregory, professor of preaching at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary.

Every person’s life is shaped by two kinds of stories—the sacred and the mundane, Gregory reported.

Secular stories are not sacred because gods act in them, but because they provide people with a sense of self and their place in the world’s structure, he said. Mundane stories describe the ways of the world and the culture in which people live. And narrative is the way a person experiences both sets of stories and understands how they relate.

From a religious perspective, an individual’s spiritual conversion marks a significant change in that person’s story, he said, adding, “In conversion, we adopt a new script.”

Understanding that script from a theological perspective provides a profound insight into life, he said. It “appears to be part of the ‘imago dei,’ the very stamp of God on the consciousness of humanity,” he observed. And the stories of individuals and groups merge to “tell us who we are and where we are in the world: Stories give identity,” he noted, citing Vanderbilt University preaching professor David Buttrick.

Of the varieties of narrative or story, didactic fiction—stories composed to teach truths—is the most effective at forming character, “the most likely to change or reinforce attitudes and behavior,” he said. “In the tale of the tortoise and the hare, for example, you want to be the tortoise. Most such fables render some ethical agenda.”

Looking at the Bible in this light, Gregory focused specifically on Jesus’ parables. In contrast to the Hebrew Scriptures’ just-the-facts emphasis on outward action, the Christian Scriptures, and particularly the parables, insist on “the inwardness of Christian motivation, requir(ing) an account of the inwardness of the motivation of even fictional biblical characters,” such as the players in the parables.

“The form of the narrative directly relates to the ethical outcome of the narrative,” he said. “Only a narrative that presents inwardness can finally reach the inwardness of the hearer/reader and resonate at the depth of inwardness.”

To illustrate, he cited four parables in which a primary character talks to himself and evaluates moral outcomes.

• The rich fool’s discussion with himself comprises three verses of the five-verse parable (Luke 12:16-21). He tells himself, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink and be merry” before God tells him his time is up.

• The prodigal son practices to himself the speech he intends to make when he returns home to his father (Luke 15:18-19).

• The unjust steward also talks to himself, “describing how he will cook the books to save his skin” (Luke 16:3-4).

• And the unjust judge likewise “carries on an internal dialogue” as he decides to give a pestering widow what she wants so she will leave him alone (Luke 18:4-5).

Jesus’ insight into “the unseen forces residing deep within the mind” preceded a similar interest reflected in Western art by more than 1,800 years, Gregory reported.

That insight packs special power, he added, noting, “The nature of Christian biblical language is akin to someone who stands up in the middle of a riot and utters an authoritative word that calms things down.”

And Jesus’ stories miraculously transcend time and culture, he said. “No one can describe how it is that … (Christ) can address me in 2010 from the edge of the first century Roman Empire. His horizon merges with mine in a sense of direct, eye-to-eye, belly-to-belly address that even skeptics have admitted.”

Gregory quoted theologian Amos N. Wilder to illustrate how and why Jesus’ stories still pointedly apply to people who read and hear them 2,000 years later: “Perhaps the special character of the stories in the New Testament lies in the fact that they are not told for themselves, that they are not only about other people, but that they are always about us. They locate us in the very midst of the great story and plot of all time and space, and therefore relate us to the great dramatist and storyteller, God himself. …

“What is interesting here is the suggestion that it takes a good story to make people realize what the right thing to do is. The road to moral judgment is by way of the imagination.”

Jesus’ stories are so powerful because they are mirrors, he said.

“As often quoted, the text interprets me more than my interpreting the text,” he explained. “In the parable of the talents, I am right there burying my talent and preferring life without risk to edgy investments in the stuff of life. In the parable of the vineyard, I am right there with Peter, complaining that this Johnny-come-lately is getting into the kingdom while I have been around the kingdom since I was an 8-year-old. I was getting hit between the eyes with the fact that the last one in at sunset gets just as much of the grace of God as I get.”

Stories form Christian character better than commands do, Gregory suggested.

“It is only by resorting to the narrative that we put flesh, blood, bones, causality and depth to the concept,” he said. “Narrative draws us in. Law frustrates us by naming what is wrong but not giving us any power to change it. The Cross of Christ itself is a narrative.”

 




Believer’s baptism— sacrament or symbolic ordinance?

One of the distinguishing marks of the people of God called Baptists, across our 400 years of witness, has been our strong affirmation of believer’s baptism, which is rooted in our high view of Christ’s authority in Scripture. When Jesus commanded his followers to go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19), the earliest believers clearly understood baptism to be an important expression of faithfulness to him. Baptists stand in this heritage.

Across the years, Baptists have published more about believer’s baptism, the church and mission, than perhaps any other topic. Historically and theologically, Baptists have followed the apostolic practice of emphasizing the obligation to be baptized in obedience to the command of Jesus. We understand believer’s baptism to be connected with the foundational biblical teachings about who God is, how salvation happens, the person and work of Christ, maturation in Christian faith, and the nature, composition and governance of the believer’s church. For Baptists, believer’s baptism is the distinctive act that both encapsulates the deepest meanings of, and relates to, all of these essential doctrines.

In 17th century England, our earliest Baptist views were forged within a specific context. The English Church, like the Roman Catholic Church in this regard, still understood communion and baptism as sacramental rites (vehicles of salvation-grace). Infant baptism, for example, was an initiatory, regenerative act that assured salvation to the babe through the vows of the godparents on the child’s behalf. After hearing these vows, the priest would give thanks that the child was now “regenerate and grafted into the body of Christ’s Church” and pray that Almighty God would “incorporate him into thy holy Church.” The law of the land required all citizens to believe in this method of salvation and families to have their babies duly baptized. To refuse either to believe this notion, or to have one’s newborn baptized, was cause for arrest, fines or imprisonment, as early Baptists knew well.

Early Baptists did not believe in baptismal regeneration for many reasons. Infants were still incapable of vowing to follow Christ, and their “sureties,” or godparents, equally incapable of vowing such an eternally binding spiritual commitment for the babe. Baptists also resisted the stress placed upon the outward act to the extent that the act itself was made necessary for salvation. Neither did Baptists agree that both faith and baptism were necessary for salvation to occur. Baptists held that both faith in and obedience to Jesus Christ were required for true discipleship. At the same time, Baptists did not believe that the act of baptism was a symbol stripped of meaning, as did the early Quakers at the time, who discarded both water baptism and the Lord’s Supper as external rites having no “efficacy.” Instead, Baptists offered a carefully considered baptismal theology based upon their study of the New Testament.

Baptists believe the act of believer’s baptism is richly symbolic. The symbol itself portrays its most significant theological meaning, a sign of what has happened in a spiritual sense to the new believer, a vivid picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Believer’s baptism by immersion portrays that the individual has spiritually participated in the death and burial of Christ and been raised to new life in Christ (Romans 6:3-4). Moreover, since salvation is a gift of God, not through any human contrivance (Ephesians 2:5, 8-9) and faith itself is a gift, believer’s baptism is the expression by which the believer affirms publicly what God alone has done. The believer identifies with Christ and commits to walk in obedience and unity with other believers in the ways of Christ. This vow is not taken lightly, for believer’s baptism is a picture both of individuals and the community of faith joined together, corporately and spiritually, in Christ (Galatians 3:26-9).

Step by step, the Holy Spirit transforms the life of the believer from the inside out (speaking, guiding, convicting of sin and righteousness, interceding, gifting, fruit-bearing, empowering, unifying, and linking believers generationally and geographically for kingdom causes). The believer joins with others of the believer’s church around the globe to introduce men and women to the kingdom of Christ. Since the church has a spiritual mission and is guided by Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit, there is an essential connection between baptism and believers who are members of each local congregation. The true church is comprised of Christ-apprentices who worship, fellowship and walk together in the Spirit to accomplish the purposes of God. Believer’s baptism identifies individuals and communities of faith both who are in Christ and in whom he abides.

Why is this reminder important now? In the past 200 years, millions of Christians have come to practice believer’s baptism by immersion as part of their understanding of salvation, discipleship and the church. Particularly in mission contexts, believer’s baptismal practices have become widely accepted and declared to be the most consistent practice with the ancient churches. Yet younger believers, Baptists among them, are asking fresh questions about whether symbolic church acts or ordinances are important at all. Some suggest removing believer’s baptism as a prerequisite for church membership or wish to abandon the practice altogether.

In British Baptist life, several theologians across the past half-century have advocated that Baptists reconsider both the terms and meaning of sacramental acts. Ecumenical explorations of how faith develops have led some scholars to question old beliefs about baptism. Some propose that baptism is either the initiatory rite to inaugurate, or the signal of one’s return to, the journey of faith. Still others emphasize the communal aspects of salvation and baptism, preferring to describe persons as being “in God” rather than emphasizing that Christ, at the moment of faith, has come to indwell the life of a believer. Some of this thinking re-engages the sacramental notions of churchly acts and ordinances as “gateways to salvation.”

Wherever these newer questions and theologies probe the issues of salvation or Christ’s work or church life, implications for the meaning of baptism emerge. Baptism by sprinkling, for example, weakens or abolishes the symbolic death, burial, and resurrection reference. Another implication devolves from the notion that the act of baptism itself is able to convey salvation (without reference to either conscious faith in, or obedience to, Jesus Christ). This practice fills churches with members who believe they are in Christ by virtue of their baptism when they in fact may never have been truly converted. When the baptismal act itself is necessary to regeneration, then no hope of assurance of salvation-grace exists apart from the act. This reduces the grand work of Christ to a mechanical process performed by a human agent and calls into question the nature of saving-faith.

Global Baptists today wrestle to explain the meaning, even necessity, of baptism in our pluralistic cultures. Baptists today must be careful to explore biblically, understand fully, articulate clearly and hold closely the precious truths contained in the rich symbolic ordinance of baptism. The Baptists’ historical and theological understanding of believer’s baptism has encapsulated our deepest and most profound spiritual truths and demonstrated them to the world. At its core, believer’s baptism richly symbolizes both the unchanging gospel message of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the believer’s relationships in Christ—both individually and within his believing church.

 

Karen Bullock is professor Christian heritage and director of the Ph.D. program at the B.H. Carroll Theological Institute.

 




Analysis: Should Baptist churches adopt open membership? Yes.

The Baptist movement began 400 years ago with the self-baptism of John Smyth, but the roots of immersion lie beyond that first gathered community whose mode was affusion, or pouring. Edward Barber was probably the first to embrace believer’s baptism by immersion sometime in 1640. In his tract, A Small Treatise of Baptisme or Dipping, written in 1641, Barber argued: “They only are to be dipped that are made disciples by teaching. Infants cannot be made disciples by teaching, therefore infants are not to be dipped.”

Barber’s Treatise was followed by at least 34 baptismal tracts between 1640 and 1645, which stirred the trans-Atlantic controversy in Old and New England. The most famous was a 51-page booklet published in 1643, entitled A Confutation of Infants Baptisme, by Thomas Lambe, a popular London Baptist pastor and soap-boiler. Lambe declaimed that no one was a true member of “the visible Church according to the Gospel, unless they did manifest faith, and be in covenant with Abraham according to the Spirit and baptised into the same faith.”

The basic conviction of the early Baptists, however, was not antipaedobaptism (anti-infant baptism), although as later Baptists became ardent denominationalists this often became a dominant theme. For example, R.B.C. Howell, pastor of Second Baptist Church of Richmond, Va., and later president of the Southern Baptist Convention, famously inveighed against paedobaptists in his 1851 book, The Evils of Infant Baptism. It is a shocking title even to those who are firmly convinced that membership should be reserved exclusively for those baptized by Baptists only, as believers only, by immersion only. But the early Baptists were not merely against something—infant baptism. They were for something—a believers’ church.

When Baptists began arguing for believer’s baptism by immersion, they were alone. But the 21st century ecclesial landscape looks quite different. Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, the most widely-distributed and studied ecumenical document, states: “While the possibility that infant baptism was also practised in the apostolic age cannot be excluded, baptism upon personal profession of faith is the most clearly attested pattern in the New Testament documents.” Non-Baptist churches commonly practice believer’s baptism by immersion. Even the Catholic rite of Christian initiation of adults recognizes adult believer’s baptism as the normal way for unbaptized people to become Catholic Christians, and, as the norm, adult conversion baptism makes the exception of infant baptism make sense.

Yet the persuasiveness of the Baptist witness is too seldom acknowledged. In many Baptist congregations, those who have been baptized as believers by immersion but not in a Baptist church are refused membership until they have been “properly” dunked in Baptist water. Baptism as practiced by many Baptists has consequently ceased to be a biblical mandate and a sign of union with Jesus Christ and his universal body. Instead, it has devolved into a denuded ritual of club membership. Only lingering Landmarkism, which still clings to the empty assertion that the Baptists and only the Baptists are the true Church, can justify the refusal to admit into membership those who have been baptized by immersion upon their profession of faith in Jesus Christ but whose baptism happens to have been administered by a non-Baptist church. Consider the following case.

When Henry Noble Sherwood assumed his duties as president of Georgetown College in Georgetown, Ky., he was concerned about keeping the school solvent through the economic challenges of the Great Depression, but he soon found himself the subject of an unexpected theological dispute. In the fall of 1934, the annual meeting of the General Association of Baptists in Kentucky passed a resolution calling for Sherwood’s resignation on the grounds that he was improperly baptized and therefore unfit to serve as president of the oldest Baptist college west of the Alleghenies. Although Sherwood had been baptized by immersion and upon confession of his faith, as called for in Baptist faith and practice, his baptism was at the hands of the Disciples of Christ, with whom the Baptists of Kentucky had been involved in a bitter and protracted controversy for over a century. The Disciples of Christ, or Campbellites as the Baptists derisively called them, held to the doctrine of baptismal regeneration—the teaching that salvation is dependent on, or more precisely mediated by, the act of baptism.

It mattered not that a Baptist church in Franklin, Ind., had accepted Sherwood’s baptism as baptistic enough, receiving him into membership and even calling him as pastor. Kentucky Baptists, and most other Southern Baptists at the time, were sticklers when it came to baptism. They considered Sherwood’s baptism “alien immersion”—their term for false baptism by a false church. The General Association commended Sherwood for following his conscience, which he continued to do, never submitting to rebaptism, but they withheld their annual contribution to the college until the trustees finally voted in December 1941 “that President Sherwood’s services would no longer be required after the close of the year.”

My modest proposal, then, is that Baptists look for marks of true Christian baptism which may not always be indicated by a sign out front with the word “Baptist” on it. We do well to attend to our original conviction—not that everyone must be immersed and become a Baptist, but that believer’s baptism by immersion is the most clearly warranted pattern of Christian initiation in the New Testament and that it is a disciple-making practice waiting to be embraced by the whole church. Believer’s baptism deserves, and indeed demands, to be practiced by Baptists. This is a gift to the Church catholic. Yet, faithfulness to the Baptist heritage also means that whenever Christian baptism is practiced according to the apostolic pattern, it must be recognized and received.

But there is another lesson to learn from the early Baptists. Though all of them argued for and practiced only believer’s baptism (and after 1641 by immersion), some of them went further by not excluding from their church fellowship those who had received infant baptism but had never submitted to rebaptism. Among the so-called “open membership” Baptists were John Bunyan, John Thombes and Henry Jessey. Advocates of open membership were admittedly a distinct minority, but their voices were influential, and their dissent was respected.

Daniel Turner, an 18th-century English Baptist minister, argued that by excluding any of God’s children from the means of grace “we are guilty of invading the prerogative of Christ.” Not surprisingly, he was the guiding influence behind the covenant for a gathered church in Oxford, which admitted into membership both Presbyterians and Baptists. After noting the difference of sentiment on the baptismal views of the two groups, the church covenant pledged “to receive one another into the same affection and love,” offering among its reasons “because the Lord Jesus receiving and owning them on both sides of the question, we think we ought to do so too.”

Perhaps the time has come for Baptists today to ask in the same spirit whether or not Methodists, Catholics, Presbyterians and others who are genuinely committed disciples of Jesus Christ are true Christians and have been accepted by the grace of the Triune God into the one universal church. Can the infant baptism of such individuals be recognized as a true baptism that has been joined with personal faith? And if the answer is “Yes!” then the question must be asked why a church that is limited to those who have been baptized as believers only and by immersion only should remain smaller than that one true universal church. If the Lord Jesus receives and owns them, can’t Baptists find a way to do the same?

Curtis W. Freeman is research professor of theology and Baptist studies and director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke University Divinity School. A version of this article appeared in the December 2009 issue of Baptists Today.

 

 




Analysis: Should Baptist churches adopt open membership? No.

Baptists have not always agreed among themselves on doctrinal or ethical issues, but they have had some common beliefs that they have defended and on which they have been united. When one of these is challenged or rejected, the Baptist community is likely to be in a crisis as to how to respond.

Currently, a movement has been launched to convince Baptist churches to adopt open membership. That means Baptist churches should no longer insist that all individuals received into membership—barring some physical disability—have been baptized upon and after profession of faith in Jesus Christ by the mode of immersion. Instead, people who have had only infant baptism, who have had baptism by pouring or sprinkling, and possibly those who have had no baptism, may be received into Baptist churches without immersion so long as they profess faith in Jesus. Open membership is to be clearly differentiated from open communion, even though open communion has sometimes led to open membership.

Should Baptist churches be encouraged to adopt open membership, or are there good reasons for not doing so? I would like to offer five of the latter.

First, believer’s baptism by immersion is probably the all-time central Baptist distinctive. Other answers have been given to that question. Soul competency can hardly be traced behind E.Y. Mullins, leading Southern Baptist theologian who made it the clue to Baptist identity in 1905. Congregational polity has from the beginning been shared with Congregationalists. The priesthood of all believers has also been strongly affirmed by Lutherans. Religious liberty for all originally was a Baptist distinctive, but today it has been affirmed by most other Christian denominations. The Lordship of Christ has been claimed by others, if not applied as thoroughly.  

Although not a few non-Baptists today practice believer’s baptism by immersion, the majority of professing Christians in the world today practice infant baptism. It is true, of course, that John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, having recovered believer’s baptism, did not practice immersion. The Particular Baptists, who believed the death of Christ was intended for and actually brings about the remission of the sins of only those elected by God, a quarter of a century later adopted immersion. General Baptists, who believed that the death of Christ was adequate for the remission of the sins of all human beings but is effective only among those who believe, soon followed, unless, as Stephen Wright of England recently has argued, some Generals began to immerse a few months earlier. Thereafter, immersion became the normative mode of baptism for Baptists.

English Baptists were attacked for their baptismal beliefs and had to defend such; indeed it was this belief that provided Baptists their name. Texts such as Romans 6:1-4 and 1 Peter 3:21 were employed in that defense. To make believer’s immersion optional in Baptist churches would be to denigrate the central reason for a Baptist witness and a Baptist denomination. According to William H. Brackney, a respected present-day historian of the Baptists, “believer’s baptism by immersion is essentially Baptist,” and it is “the major Baptist contribution to modern Christian ecclesiology (doctrine of the church).”

Second, open membership has been a very marginal deviation in Baptist history. John Bunyan often is cited, but we must remember that his church in Bedford, England, was in the beginning and still is in the 21st century a mixed Baptist-Congregationalist (infant-baptizing) church—a pattern not followed by most all later Baptists. Open membership has become common only during recent decades in England, and now a few churches in the United States have embraced it. Should others join in the adoption of open membership? Tell that to Benjamin Keach, who was jailed and put in the pillory for explaining to children the Baptist understanding of baptism, to William Kiffin, who insisted infant baptism is not genuine baptism, to Obadiah Holmes, who was publicly whipped and jailed in Boston for his Baptist convictions, to Henry Dunster, who had to resign as the first president of Harvard College because he was a Baptist, or to Adoniram Judson, who lost his appointment as a Congregtionalist missionary and in Burma wrote to affirm his Baptist convictions about baptism!

Third, adopting open membership would not be prudent for today’s Baptists because the cause of believer’s baptism by immersion has not been a failure. Between 1850 and 1950, half a dozen new Christian denominations in the United States adopted believer’s baptism by immersion, and this trend is being replicated today in various indigenous Christian movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America. We should be grateful that believer’s baptism by immersion is no longer a Baptist distinctive. We should have the Spirit-led wisdom not to trivialize or abandon this foundation for Baptist life. To do so could leave Baptists with an uncertain and undefined ecclesiology, drifting on the high seas when Mormons, Roman Catholics, Pentecostals and—yes—Muslims are more confident and explicit about their beliefs.

Fourth, the adoption of open membership may be based on a false ecumenism. For Southern Baptists in particular, who have been influenced in the past by Landmarkism, the problem may be acute. Landmarkers insist only Baptist churches have the authority to administer believer’s baptism by immersion, and hence Baptist churches should not recognize “alien immersions,” that is, immersions of believers performed in non-Baptist churches and/or by non-Baptist ministers.

The growing rejection of anti-alien immersion, especially after other denominations have adopted believer’s baptism by immersion, has led some Baptists to “throw out the baby with the bath water.” They are ready to jettison the earlier, historic, pre-Landmark Baptist understanding of baptism in order to be accommodating to members of other denominations.

Three things need to be said in reply. The first principle of healthy interdenominational dialogue is to represent one’s own beliefs faithfully and accurately. It is not prerequisite to such dialogue to deny one’s own beliefs. Second, Baptists have defended immersion from the Greek verb baptizein (ital.), meaning “to dip, plunge, or immerse,” from examples of baptism in the New Testament (Acts 8:36, 38-39), and from Romans 6:1-4. But current advocates of open membership discredit that evidence. Third, truth and unity need to be kept in balance.  Jesus both made truth claims and prayed for the unity of his followers. We indeed should seek more extensive Christian unity but not at the price of the compromise of truth. Nor should Baptists deny that infant-baptizing churches may in some sense be true churches.

Believer’s baptism by immersion is not merely a practice such as whether to use wine or grape juice in the Lord’s Supper; it is a principle with deep theological connections. Does one expect Roman Catholics to renounce the primacy of Peter or Pentecostals to deny a post-conversional baptism in or with the Holy Spirit?

Fifth, believer’s baptism by immersion, as well as the Lord’s Supper, is closely connected with and is proclamatory of our Lord’s death, burial and resurrection. Paul understood this and made it the basis for the Christian life (Romans 6:1-14). No other mode can picture these events—death, burial and resurrection. Moreover, for Paul these events were veritably the center of the gospel proclamation (1 Cor. 15:3-8). The ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are gospel ordinances.

Among the advocates of open membership concern has been registered about “toddler baptisms” (under the age of 8) in Baptist churches. One should not deny the existence of problems in this regard. But concern must also be registered about the dry baptistries, the few baptisms and the plateaued congregations that are so prevalent. The effective proclamation of the gospel needs to be accompanied by the great symbols of that gospel.

For these reasons and in the awareness of the gravity of the issue, I ask you to reject open membership and to give renewed and celebratory emphasis to believer’s baptism by immersion.

James Leo Garrett is distinguished professor of theology, emeritus, at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of Baptist Theology: A Four-Century Study (Mercer University Press).

 




Churches try varied ways to approach question of membership and baptism

Baptism and local church membership have been inextricably linked historically in the minds of many Baptists. But that view is shifting as a decline in denominational loyalty and the easy movement of American Christians among churches of all stripes have created what writer Phyllis Tickle is calling the “great emergence”—a swirling convergence of denominational traditions toward a spiritual Christian core.

Nearly half of American adults have switched denominational affiliation at least once, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. As Baptist churches find growing numbers of Christians from other traditions knocking on their doors, assumptions about membership requirements have been shaken.

Although the vast majority of Baptists churches have retained their characteristic commitment to believer’s baptism by immersion, responses to membership requests vary—and more churches are exploring the available options.

Expanded watchcare

Baptists have long offered “watchcare” status to anyone wishing to affiliate with a church on a temporary basis without relinquishing membership in what they regard as their “home church”—a practice especially popular with college students. Typically, watchcare members’ participation is limited in some way, usually when it comes to voting on church business.

Faced with growing membership requests from Christians raised in traditions which don’t practice believer’s baptism, however, many churches have found watchcare a convenient vehicle to permit fellowship without modifying baptism requirements for full membership. In some churches, that has become watchcare’s primary purpose.

At Williams Trace Baptist Church in Sugar Land, near Houston, watchcare is “a way to catch and hold the attention of people who are not yet members,” said Pastor Phil Lineberger, whose church restricts full membership to Christians baptized as believers by immersion.

“For those who are Christians but are not baptized as we believe, we do this to keep families together,” said Lineberger. “If someone is a Methodist or Presbyterian, we want the family to join together at the same time. What we want to do is help them understand that the family unit is very important, and we consider it to be sacred. We don’t want to create division.”

While membership at Williams Trace is tied to baptism experience, Lineberger downplays the privileges of membership, which usually have to do only with disposition of property or other routine issues, he said.

“I’ve never found a potential church member who came to our church specifically to be able to vote on something,” he said. “The idea that you have to be a member to vote on these things—they really don’t care about that. You can’t build a great church around a business meeting.”

For Lineberger, watchcare also is associated with something closer to what the Emerging Church would describe as “belong first, then believe.”

“We allow them to become part of our fellowship and we’ll watch over them, whether or not they ever become a Christian or a Baptist,” he said. “They come and listen and participate and decide for themselves what they want to do.”

In the last few years, the church has baptized both Muslims and Jews who made professions of faith Christ after years of watchcare affiliation. One watchcare member—a Jewish man whose wife is Christian—is a teacher in the church’s college Sunday school class, where his grasp of the Old Testament and fluency in Hebrew make him a “rich resource,” said Lineberger.

“Some churches would be threatened” by a non-Christian teaching Sunday school, Lineberger said. “We’re not.”

Open membership

A growing number of Baptist churches—particularly on the East Coast—are adopting open membership policies, not requiring immersion of Christians who have been baptized by any form, including infant baptism.

“The conversation I have with potential members (from other denominations) is to emphasize soul freedom and the priesthood of the believer,” said David Washburn, pastor of First Baptist Church in Waynesboro, Va., which adopted an open membership policy in the 1980s.

Deep Water Dilemma

“I ask, ‘Has there been a time beyond your infant baptism when you were able to claim faith in Christ and make it your own?’

“If they tell me they have claimed that faith and that it is their own experience, we don’t re-baptize them.”

On the other hand, the conversation often leads in a different direction, he said.

“Sometimes they say, ‘Well, let me think about that. That faith really wasn’t mine.’ Our openness allows us to extend the conversation to talk about baptism in a more significant way. … We cheapen the significance of baptism when we make it more of a ‘punch-the-ticket’ requirement for membership.”

First Baptist Church in Clemson, S.C., whose open membership policy dates to the 1970s, is motivated by the same desire to avoid devaluing baptism—and by the baptismal experience of its pastor.

“I grew up as a Methodist and was sprinkled as a baby,” said Rusty Brock, who became pastor in Clemson about five years ago. “Then I was sprinkled again at 13, and when I was 18, I joined a Baptist church which required that I be immersed. I told the pastor I was a Christian and had been baptized, and he agreed, but he had to abide by the church’s bylaws. So, when he baptized me, he said, ‘Rusty has been a Christian for a long time, and we’re baptizing him into the Baptist faith.’

“I didn’t think about it at the time,” said Brock, a graduate of Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. “But when I got to seminary and thought about it, I said: ‘Wait a minute. You don’t baptize people into a denomination; you baptize them into the body of Christ. Period.’ I realized we had made baptism an initiation into church membership.”

Both the Waynesboro and Clemson churches continue to baptize only believers by immersion. But like Washburn, Brock said the less restrictive membership practice “opens the door so you can have a dialogue with people. You can ask, are you secure in your baptism? And if faith in Christ is something you have never claimed, let’s talk about it and pray about it and consider baptism. But if your earlier baptism is valid in your faith journey, who are we to say that the last 20 years of your Christian discipleship doesn’t count?”

Believer’s baptism by any mode

In 2004, Northwest Baptist Church in Ardmore, Okla., modified its membership policy, retaining believer’s baptism as a requirement for membership but no longer insisting that it be by immersion.

“We feel that baptism should come after a profession of faith in Christ,” said Jonathan Blose, the church’s associate pastor. “But we don’t insist on a particular mode.”

Pastor Leonard Ezell, who has been at Northwest for less than two years, said probably half of his congregation comes from a non-Baptist background—and he wants them to feel welcomed.

“If they feel that their baptism as a believer—by immersion or sprinkling or pouring—was valid, we’ll accept them,” he said. “If they request to be rebaptized, of course we’ll do that, too.”

Separating baptism and membership

At Faith Community Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Barre, Vt., a concern not to devalue baptism by associating it only with church membership led it to separate the two.

“Even in churches that only practice believer’s baptism, if we automatically link baptism and church membership, we may well be hindering instead of helping people’s spiritual growth,” Pastor Terry Dorsett wrote in a recent blog.

Dorsett, who also is director of missions for the Green Mountain Baptist Association in northern Vermont and is partly funded by the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board, wrote that in his church, believer’s baptism by immersion makes a person eligible for membership but doesn’t automatically add him or her to the roll.

“After they are baptized, if they want to become a member of church, they go through a separate process,” Dorsett wrote. “Though this approach goes against the tradition of most churches in our own particular denomination, we feel that it more accurately follows the biblical model.”

Dorsett maintained that while some New Testament passages seem to link baptism and church membership, others don’t.

“For example, the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8 came to personal faith in Christ and was baptized in the middle of the desert,” Dorsett wrote. “There was literally no church for him to join. Philip baptized him anyway, resulting in him being a baptized Christian but not a member of any particular church. He most likely became part of a church at some future date, but not at the moment of his baptism. This passage indicates that baptism and church membership are not automatically connected.”

Redefining membership

At All Souls, a congregation with Virginia Baptist ties that is forming in Charlottesville, Va., the “bigger conversation is reflecting on what membership means,” Pastor Winn Collier said.

“It’s just not missional to say that before you can become part of us in a meaningful way you have to think like us, act like us, believe like us,” said Collier. “At the same time, there is something important about people who are truly attempting to live a way of life together and who are compelled by the same narrative, which for us is the narrative of Jesus—dead for our sins, resurrected, inviting us into the kingdom of God.”

As a sign of deeper commitment to the community, All Souls offers those who are part of the community an opportunity to adopt a rule of life that focuses on hospitality, restoration and peace.

“We ask people to commit to that way of living and form a personal rule of life for a year and challenge people to make specific choices about how they live their lives in those three areas,” Collier said. “But we don’t use the term ‘membership’ because membership speaks of being an insider. We say that no one is receiving any more privileges by taking on this rule of life. Everyone has a place at the table, everyone belongs, everyone has a part. But if you are ready to lay down your life for Jesus, consider adopting this rule of life.”

As a new church, Collier said, All Souls still is determining how and when baptism connects with the rule of life, and some observers might claim “we take a lower view of baptism because someone can be part of us without going through it.

“But, ironically, we take a much higher view of baptism. It’s not something where we just dunk believers. It’s not just an object lesson of their individual faith. The community of Jesus is accepting them; it’s not just them grabbing God but God grabbing them.

“For all of our attempts to try and come up with a culturally alive way to invite people into community—and I think we must always be contextually attuned—we just can’t recreate baptism. There’s nothing better. You die with Jesus, and your old life is drowned, and you come up resurrected and that’s the gospel. It’s powerful. And over the years following that act, we learn more and more about what it means.”

 




First-person reflection: Visiting an old Landmark

Like a lot of long-time church members, when I move to a new town I look for a home church with a worship style and doctrinal stance similar to where I have attended in the past. Moving a few years ago to a small town that didn’t have my kind of Baptist church, I started visiting a congregation in a larger town a few miles away.

One Sunday morning before I had moved my membership, I overslept and decided instead of arriving late I would—out of curiosity—visit a Presbyterian church not far from my home. Prior to the service, the pastor spotted me and approached my pew to check me out.

Bob Allen

I introduced myself and told her I was a Baptist. She replied that a lot of the members of her church are former Baptists. I didn’t bother explaining to her that I wasn’t a prospect, because my job required that I belong to a Baptist church, but I thanked her and told her, truthfully, that I might drop by again sometime in the future.

It happened to be Epiphany, the Sunday when some Christian traditions commemorate Jesus’ baptism, and the children’s sermon that morning was about the meaning of baptism. What happened next took me totally by surprise.

As the pastor invited the children forward to dip their fingers into the baptismal font placed in the pulpit area, feelings rose up inside me that I could barely contain. I didn’t physically grab the front of my pew, but it was close. She was talking about infant baptism.

I don’t remember a single word from the service after that moment, and to this day don’t fully understand why I reacted so viscerally.

I grew up in a part of the country strongly influenced by Landmarkism, a fiercely sectarian Baptist movement in the 19th century that taught that Baptists were the only New Testament church and had been around in unbroken succession since the time of Christ.

Unlike the polemical writings of the likes of J.R. Graves and J.M. Pendleton I read while in seminary, on this day I wasn’t primarily concerned that Presbyterian children were being inducted into a “corrupt and irregular” body that was in reality a “religious society” and not a “gospel church” or that “paedobaptist” preachers were false ministers that “do not belong to the church of Christ.”

I wasn’t even cognizant of the argument that the Greek word transliterated “baptize” in the King James Version means “dip” or “immerse” but wasn’t translated that way because it wasn’t the mode used by the Anglican scholars who wrote it.

It didn’t even particularly bother me that for this church, the symbolism of baptism was apparently less about the individual convert’s witness to the death, burial and resurrection of Christ and more about the congregation’s faith and a pledge to raise this newcomer in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Shoot, even in Baptist churches I had begun to wonder what we really meant by “believer’s baptism.” Most of the baptisms I had seen over the years were not adults but children, some at a very young age. I am sure a preschooler can believe that Jesus is his Savior, but I wonder how much it really means when she also believes in Santa Claus or that storks deliver babies.

One by-product of this almost-infant baptism is that often the young person will later have a more mature salvation experience and come forward either to be rebaptized or to “rededicate” his or her life.

Somehow, I managed to miss the first go-around. I wasn’t a bank robber or anything. I grew up in and out of churches and knew the plan of salvation. I suppose I was one of those “continue in sin so that grace may abound” types that Paul warned about in Romans 6.

When I made a profession of faith at age 19, it went something like this. I was told that I could be saved by walking the aisle and praying to receive Christ, but in order to join the church I would need to be baptized. To be honest, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me that faith alone was enough to make me right with God but not with the Baptist church, but the preacher said it was in “obedience to Christ.”

Once in the water my pastor asked me if I had accepted Christ as my Savior. (He already knew the answer, because I told him that when I walked the aisle the first time.) I said “I do.” Splash! I was in.

Given that baptism numbers are down even in the Southern Baptist Convention, which is supposedly more focused on soul-winning than it has been in decades, I must not be the only Baptist who wonders why in today’s pluralistic society—where it no longer seems natural to view Presbyterians, Methodists or even Catholics as a different religion—that something like believer’s baptism is still important.

But brother, I can tell you that it is to me.

 

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

 




Around the State

• The Texas/American Fellowship of Cowboy Churches will hold its 25th Ranchhouse School May 1-2 at Bar None Cowboy Church in Tatum. Jacon Taylor is pastor. The schools—where church planters and interested lay people learn about starting western-heritage churches—have been instrumental in helping plant, develop and nurture 162 cowboy churches in Texas in the last decade.

The 2010 Young Maston Scholars were named as a part of the T.B. Maston Christian Ethics Lectures held at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Theological Seminary. They are, front row, left to right: Kimmy Mauldin, Hardin-Simmons University; Emily Miculka, HSU; Amber Hamilton Wayland Baptist University; Wendy Mainka, Howard Payne University; Hannah Eaton, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor; Azucena Sanchez, Baptist University of the Américas; Derik Sanders, Baylor University; and Ruben de Rus, BUA. Back row: Bill Tillman, T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics, HSU, Logsdon School of Theology; Joshua Carter, East Texas Baptist University; Benjamin Rogers, ETBU; Ricky Estes, Dallas Baptist University; Jacob Edwards, DBU; Gordon Poem, BU; Eric, Sanford, UMHB; and Tommy Brisco, Dean of Logsdon School of Theology, HSU.

B.H. Carroll Theological Institute will hold its summer colloquy May 31-June 1. The theme of the colloquy lectures, “Vision from the Edges: Christianity and the Arts,” will be developed by Calvin Miller, widely known author, artist and preacher, beginning at 1:45 p.m. Monday. He is professor of preaching and past0ral ministry at Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School. The lectures will be held at First Church in Arlington. At 7 p.m. June 1, the institute will hold its convocation and graduation at Agape Church in Fort Worth. Dennis Wiles, pastor of First Church in Arlington, will be the convocation speaker.

East Texas Baptist University’s Trey Miller of Victoria won the national championship for debate in the novice division. Cole Franklin, professor of communication and coach of the debate team, was the runner-up for the national championship in the professional division.

• The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor office of marketing and public relations received several top honors at the national Baptist Communicators Association banquet, including the Albert McClellan Grand Prize Award for significant achievement in print media and design.

Hardin-Simmons University has named its outstanding young alumni for 2010. Brad Butler is an anethesiologist in Longview and also flight surgeon in the Air Force Reserves holding the rank of major. He is deputy chief of aerospace medicine of the 433rd Airlift Wing at Lackland Air Force Base. James Chistoferson is deputy chief of staff for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Michael McCown is an opera singer with the Frankfurt Opera Company in Germany.

• Wendy McNeeley has been appointed dean of advising and general education at Howard Payne University. She will develop a newly created university advising center. She has been chair of the department of developmental studies since 2006 and has been a professor at HPU since 1994.

• Six nurses from Baylor All Saints Medical Center in Fort Worth and four nurses from the Women’s Hospital there are among the top 100 nurses as named by the Texas Nurses Association. They are Susan Combrink, Jodi English, Patsy Goodman, Susan Goodnight, Wanda Jeavons, Laura Johnson, Gerard Kelley, Sharon Mahan, Kitty Sorlie and Anja Stewart.

Anniversaries

• James Blackwell, 20th, as pastor of South Park Church in Beaumont, March 18.

• Berea Church in Fort Worth, 30th, April 11. Charles Smith is pastor.

• North Fort Worth Church in Fort Worth, 120th, April 24-25. Stephen Lowrie is pastor.

• First Church in Navasota, 150th, April 25. Clyde Larrabee is pastor.

• Mike Woodard, 25th, at Southwest Park Church in Abilene. After initially serving the church as associate pastor, he has been the church’s pastor the last 22 years. A reception will be held to honor his family at 5 p.m., with a recognition service to follow at 6 p.m.

• New Hope Church in Cleburne, 150th, May 29-30. Activities will begin with a Memorial Day observance at Baker-Lain Cemetery at 4 p.m. Saturday. At 5:30 p.m., there will be a picnic at the church pavilion along with service of music and memories. Sunday’s service under the oak trees will begin at 10 a.m. Former pastors Richard Dickerson and Larry Jordan are among the former pastors expected to be present. Dickerson will speak. Some members will be in period costumes, and others will ride in on horseback. Fifth Sunday will lead the music. The church’s history/anniversary book will be available. A barbecue lunch will follow the morning service. Steve Mullen is pastor.

Reyiring

• Raymond Bailey, as pastor of Seventh & James Church in Waco, May 2. He has been pastor since August 1995. Prior to that, he was a professor at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Ky. 16 years. In addition to other pastorates, he also was a professor at Hardin-Simmons University three years. He and his wife, Pat, will move to Frankfort, Ky.

• Bruce Stovall, as pastor of Friendship Church in Albany, May 2. He served the church more than 22 years. A graduate of Howard Payne University, Southwestern Theological Seminary and the Mexican Baptist Bible Institute, he has been in ministry more than 51 years and been involved in River Ministry and Mexico missions 39 years. He and his wife, Ginger, will continue to reside in Cisco.

• Dan Bagby, as the Theodore F. Adams professor of pastoral care at Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond, Va., May 31. He will continue to teach at the seminary. He has been at the seminary 17 of its 20 years of existence. Prior to that he was a professor at Baylor University and was pastor of Seventh & James Church in Waco.

Deaths

• R.C. Stewart, 91, March 26 in San Antonio. A World War II bomber pilot, he was shot down over Belguim in 1943 and was a German prisoner of war for two years before being liberated by Gen. George Patton’s ground forces. He retired from the Air Force in 1970 with the rank of colonel. He was a Bible study leader at Trinity Church in San Antonio 18 years, and was a deacon there many years. He was preceded in death by his wife of 60 years, Martha; daughter, Rebecca Stewart; and sisters, Flora Moore and Inez Stewart. He is survived by his sons, Charles and Scott; and one granddaughter.

• Catarino Romero, 100, April 8 in Mineral. He was a deacon, Sunday school teacher and charter member of Primera Iglesia in Mineral. He was preceded in death by his wife of 79 years, Margarita; and sons, Isaac and Saragoza. He is survived by his daughters, Mary Burgos, Pauline Gonzalez, Esther Watson, Frances Guajardo and Anita Loa; sons, Mike, Richard, Catarino Jr. and Ramiro; 52 grandchildren; 62 great-grandchildren; and six great-great-grandchildren.

Events

• Westland Church in Katy dedicated a new 12,000-square-foot youth building and 258-seat chapel April 11. Roy Meadows is pastor.

• The Heights Church in Richardson held a car show April 10 that raised more than $2,600 and collected more than 400 canned goods for a local food pantry. Gary Singleton is pastor.

Ordaine

• Steven Schafer to the ministry at Highland Church in Denton.

• Blake Gearhart to the ministry at First Church in Rockdale.

Revivals

• Athey Church, Harleton; April 28-May 1; evangelist, Earl Duggins; music, Mark Fried; pastor, Martin Clickard.

• First Church, Gregory; May 19-23; evangelist, Bill Lindley; pastor, Robert Lynch.

 




African-American churches see a revival of cooperation

WASHINGTON (RNS)—In Chicago, black Baptists announced they would raise $50 million for health clinics, schools and reconstructed churches in earthquake-devastated Haiti.

In South Carolina, three black Methodist denominations launched a plan to host Saturday academies nationwide to mentor young black males.

And in Miami, African-American Baptists, Methodists and Pentecostals decided to re-establish the Conference of National Black Churches to work together on health disparities, economic empowerment and social justice.

Recent months have seen a resurgence of interdenominational relations in some of the nation’s most prominent predominantly black churches.

Franklyn Richardson of Mount Vernon, N.Y., chairman of the National Action Network, exhorts his followers during an appearance at the National Baptist Convention, USA. (RNS File Photo/Aimee Jeansonne)

While some are responding to the tragedy in Haiti and others are trying to revive long-term efforts to help black communities, they all say they’ve determined they can do more together than any one group could do by itself.

“If we can make a difference with black men in our communities, it will affect the whole community,” said Carolyn Tyler Guidry, president of the Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the denominations that met at the black Methodist summit in Columbia, S.C. “It will affect families—black families in particular—when their men are not incarcerated or on drugs.”

Members of the AME Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church met in early March to plan the academies that will train youth in job preparation and study skills.

Just weeks before, leaders of those three denominations met with black Baptists and leaders of the Church of God in Christ to restart and rename the defunct Congress of National Black Churches.

The organization’s absence, combined with cyclical leadership changes, meant some black denominational leaders had lost touch with one another, said Franklyn Rich-ardson, chair of the new Conference of National Black Churches.

Now, he said, the denominations—with a combined membership of more than 21 million—hope to partner with groups like the Children’s Defense Fund and Al Sharpton’s National Action Network on AIDS, education, social justice and economic development.

“Denominations are so absorbed in trying to sustain … their specific mission that no denomination has the resources to take on education by itself or to take on social justice by itself,” said Richardson, a Baptist pastor in Mount Vernon, N.Y., who also chairs Sharpton’s network.

Stephen Thurston, president of the National Baptist Convention of America, said the gravity of a tragedy like the earthquake in Haiti prompted the leaders of five black Baptist churches to join forces for their five-year project.

Staccato Powell, who chaired the black Methodist summit in South Carolina, said African-American faith groups are taking responsibility for the challenges in the black community in ways that might not be as effective when they work with predominantly white denominations.

“Their passion is not the same because they don’t have the same issues at stake as we do,” he said. “Their children are not being carted off to prison by busloads. … This is about the survival of our people.”

 




Obama administration to appeal ruling against National Day of Prayer

WASHINGTON (ABP) — The U.S. Justice Department announced April 22 it would appeal a federal court ruling that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional.

Attorneys for the White House filed a notice of appeal in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin of District Judge Barbara Crabb's April 15 ruling that laws by Congress establishing a National Day of Prayer endorse the Constitution's Establishment Clause by endorsing religion. Read the appeal here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/30347344/Notice-of-Appeal-Natl-Day-of-Prayer

Advocates of the separation of church and state hailed the ruling in a lawsuit filed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, while those who read the First Amendment more narrowly decried it as an attack on religion. Richard Land of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention called it an "egregious and revealing decision" that he said "shows the brooding hostility toward religion that exists at some levels of federal, state and local government in this country."
http://www.abpnews.com/content/view/5056/53/

The White House said previously that despite the ruling President Obama intends to recognize a National Day of Prayer, as every president has done since 1952, on May 6.
http://twitter.com/whitehouse/status/12239071343?loc=interstitialskip

 

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press

 




On the Move

Pete Cancino to Primera Iglesia in Mathis as interim pastor.

Drew Dowden to Texarkana College and Texas A&M University-Texarkana as interim Baptist Student Ministry director.

John Sisk has resigned as interim pastor at First Church in Three Rivers.

Frank Urias to El Buen Pastor in Beeville as interim pastor.

 




Faith Digest

British army “targeting” mosques? Muslims in England are demanding the British army apologize for using apparent replicas of mosques for target practice on a firing range. The Bradford Council for Mosques, whose area is populated heavily by Muslims, claims the Ministry of Defense has set up seven phony mosques, complete with green-domed roofs, to shoot at on its firing ground in North Yorkshire. The Muslim group wants the army to dismantle the offensive targets and apologize for using them. In a statement, the Ministry of Defense did not apologize but insisted that it had “no intention” of causing offense and that the targets were part of “providing the best training facilities” for British armed forces now operating in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Graffiti sprayed on pope’s birthplace. Vandals in southern Germany spray-painted obscene graffiti on the birthplace of Pope Benedict XVI. The graffiti, painted in foot-high blue letters, was found over the door to the house in the Bavarian village of Marktl am Inn where Joseph Ratzinger was born in 1927. Police would not release the content of the three-word phrase, which was removed the same day, but a spokesman described it to the Associated Press as a “defaming remark from the realm of the obscene” which was not specifically aimed at the pope. A police spokesman told Agence France-Presse that “one can say (the graffiti) is connected” to the spreading international scandal over the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. That scandal has focused in recent weeks on charges that Benedict, when still a cardinal, mishandled cases of pedophile priests in Germany and the United States.

Pope plummets in polls. As sex abuse scandals continue to roil the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI’s approval ratings have plummeted, according to a new study, with 44 percent of Americans saying he has done a “poor” job handling the issue. Just 12 percent of Americans say the pope has done an “excellent” (3 percent) or “fair” (9 percent) job with the scandal, a significant drop from April 2008, when the pope visited the United States. At that time, 39 percent said he had done an excellent or good job addressing clergy sex abuse. The poll, conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, was based on a national telephone survey April 1-5. The maximum margin of sampling error for the survey is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Want services in Quebec? Unveil. The Canadian province of Quebec has introduced unprecedented legislation that effectively would bar Muslim women from receiving or delivering public services while wearing a niqab, or face-covering veil. According to the draft law, Muslim women’s faces would have to be visible in all publicly funded locations, including government offices, schools, hospitals and daycare centers. Fully veiled women in the niqab or burqa, for example, would not be able to consult a doctor in a hospital or attend classes at public schools or a university. The province will hold public hearings on the draft legislation, but it is widely expected to pass.