IN FOCUS: Jesus’ preeminence & public opinion

I recently read two stories that grieved me. The first was a front-page article in the Dallas Morning News, “What America believes.” The story was about recent findings from The Pew Forum about religion in America.

The survey questioned 36,000 people, asking about religious identification, beliefs and practices. Some information was confusing; 10 percent of atheists and 18 percent of agnostics say they pray every week. While I am encouraged that they pray, I wonder who or what the object of their prayers is.

Randel Everett

Other responses were troubling. Only 56 percent believe that religion is very important. Thirty-nine percent attend religious services once a week. Seventy percent believe many religions can lead to eternal life, and 61 percent of Southern Baptists share that view. It is hard to believe that almost two-thirds of Southern Baptists believe there are many roads to God. Perhaps they misunderstood the question and thought it meant other Christian denominations.

The other story that was disturbing to me was the report of a prominent theologian who shared with a group of Baptists his questions about the deity of Christ. He was reported to have said that preachers are becoming more reluctant to preach from the Gospel of John because of its emphasis on Jesus’ deity than the other gospels that emphasize his humanity.

How important is the deity and sole-sufficiency of Christ? Are there many roads that lead to God?

Scripture and historical Christianity always have asserted that the full deity and full humanity of Christ are foundational to our faith. The church has echoed the statement of Peter that “there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

In the first chapter of Colossians, we read that Jesus is the image of the invisible God (v. 15) and “it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him” (v. 19). In verse 22, we are instructed that he has reconciled us in his fleshly body through death.

It is difficult for our finite minds to understand, but the gospel does not make sense unless we accept that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. Jesus is the Logos, the pre-existent. All things were created through him and for him. “He (Father) rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”

There are many biblical issues we interpret differently; however, if Jesus were not fully God who became fully man to rescue us from our sinfulness through his death and resurrection, then Christianity is a hoax. Our faith and our preaching are in vain.

We do not have the option of creating a Jesus who reflects our personal interests and cultural acceptance. Either Jesus is who he said he is, or Christianity is just another man-made religion with empty promises and pipe dreams.

“But now Christ has been raised from the dead!” (1 Corinthians 15:20) Thanks be to God!

Randel Everett is executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board.

 




DOWN HOME: Somber, yet hopeful, Memphis afternoon

“That was somber,” my friend Brent said as we stepped out of the soft lighting of the National Civil Rights Museum into the harsh sunlight of a summer afternoon in Memphis.

For about two hours, I’d felt as if a strong hand had been planted in the small of my back, pressing me toward milestones I shouldn’t miss. When I preferred to turn away, I felt as if firm hands turned my head to fix my gaze upon signposts of shame as well as signals of strength.

Brent (who helps people every day as director of housing for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital) makes me laugh. When our children were very young, we attended the same church in Nashville and became tight friends. Even though we’ve both moved away, we’ve stayed close. And when we’re together, we usually find ways to have fun. Usually.

But that Saturday, Brent let me choose where to go sight-seeing in Memphis , his hometown. Maybe because we recently remembered the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King ’s assassination. Maybe because I’d just heard Fred Shuttlesworth , one of Dr. King’s lieutenants in the battle for civil rights. Maybe because this election year promises to reconfigure race in America. I can’t tell you why, but I chose the Civil Rights Museum over Graceland and Sun Records .

So, we turned away from rock ’n roll toward racial reconciliation. We chose King over Elvis .

Brent and I stood out in the museum crowd. Two of very few white faces in a sea of black.

I understand why every American of color would want to visit the Civil Rights Museum. It tells the story of the long, gallant, heart-breaking, courageous, violent, impassioned, noble, poignant, improbable, inexorable, valiant march from slavery to full rights at U.S. citizens.

The first panel points all the way back to 1619, when English traders began capturing Africans, shipping them to America and selling them as slaves. The last stop looks in on the very Lorraine Hotel room where King spent his last night on earth and out to the balcony where a sniper’s bullet ended his life.

In between, the museum tells the tale of a monumental struggle. In a better world, emancipation would have been the end of it, but emancipation marks only the beginning. Panel after panel details the slow crawl toward equality—from “separate but equal,” to integration and boycotts, Freedom Riders and sit-ins, marches on Washington and across Alabama.

Brent got it right. Somber. No person with a shred of compassion could read words of hope and desperation and resolve without being moved. No person with an inch of empathy could stand mere feet from where King last stood and not breathe the air of longing—not just for freedom, but for equality and respect.

I understand why every American of color would want to visit the Civil Rights Museum. And I wish every white American would go there, and simply feel. Somber. Yet hopeful.

 




2nd Opinion: Screwtape warns against idolatry

Although written during World War II, C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters has lost none of its relevance or power. Consider this passage, in which senior devil Screwtape advises his nephew Wormwood on whether it would be better to make his “patient”—the young man whom he is tempting—into a patriot or a pacifist:

“Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the patriotism or the pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the ‘Cause,’ in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war effort or of pacifism.”

Screwtape, it seems, has done little to change his tactics between the war against fascism and the war on terror. I fear there are many believers—and congregations—today who may begin by adopting their position for or against the Iraq War on the basis of their Christian convictions, but who end by bending their Christian convictions to fit their partisan beliefs. That is to say, rather than allowing their patriotism/pacifism to flow naturally out of their individual (or corporate) relationship with Christ, they find ever-ingenious—and often disingenuous—ways to “baptize” their previous political commitments.

The same slippery slope from Christian-inspired activism to Christian-validated idolatry can even occur in areas that are more specifically ecclesiastical in focus. Many congregations across the nation have sought to transform themselves from a single-ethnic, monochromatic body of believers into a multiethnic church that intentionally promotes diversity among its pastoral staff and parishioners. The desire to open one’s doors to Christ-followers of all races and ethnicities certainly is a worthy one, one that finds a biblical basis in Acts and several of the Apostle Paul’s epistles and that has the potential to bring revival to churches and cities across the country.

But a subtle danger threatens the congregation that would be overly intentional in its intention to institutionalize racial and ethnic diversity. If the church allows its multiethnic mission to define its central and sole identity, it will be tempted to mute, ignore or even revise aspects of the Bible, orthodox theology and/or sacred tradition that do not support and promote that identity. It will be tempted as well to judge other congregations and individuals, not by their adherence to the gospel message but by how they measure up against the diversity yardstick.

If such a congregation continues to slide down the slippery slope toward idolatry, it may discover, too late, that it has ceased to be a multiethnic CHURCH, and has morphed into a MULTIETHNIC church. Ethnic diversity will no longer be one of the fruits of the Great Commission; rather, Chris-tianity will have been reduced to one more helpful ally in building an egalitarian, multiethnic utopia.

I use the multiethnic church as my example, not because I think the ideals that undergird it are bad ones, but because they are so praiseworthy. But then, to paraphrase a line from Lewis, brass is more often mistaken for gold than clay is. To the modern American mind, nurtured since birth to believe that equality and inclusivism are absolute virtues on par with faith, hope and love, it is easy to so conflate the promise of ethnic diversity with that of the gospel message that the latter comes to serve the former, rather than vice versa.

During my undergraduate years, I happened upon a tract by Melody Green, Abortion: Attitudes for Action, that I have never forgotten. Although Green was and still is strongly committed to saving the unborn, her stronger and foundational commitment to Christ impelled her to add this advice to her tract:

“Christians working for pro-life must be pro-Jesus first. He must be our focus. We must be careful not to allow ourselves to be consumed by a cause, rather than consumed by Jesus. Giving even a godly cause priority above our personal relationship with God will grieve him. Jesus must be our foundation—otherwise we may see our own eternal life sacrificed on the altar of worthy causes” (www.lastdaysministries.org/articles/abortion).

Let us give the last word not to Screwtape but to the disciple whom Jesus loved: “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).

 

Louis Markos has been a professor of English at Houston Baptist University since 1991. He is the author of The Life and Writings of C. S. Lewis, Lewis Agonistes and From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics.




Analysis: Dobson confused at best about Obama speech, defenders say

WASHINGTON (ABP) — James Dobson thinks that Barack Obama holds to a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution’s religion clauses — but Dobson’s own interpretation of a two-year-old Obama speech that occasioned the critique may be far fruitier.

That’s what Obama’s defenders are saying, backed up by some journalists and experts in religion and politics. Nonetheless, some on the Religious Right have leapt to Dobson’s defense.

In his June 24 radio program, the Focus on the Family founder harshly criticized Obama’s understanding of religion’s role in American politics as well as his understanding of the Bible.

“What [Obama is] trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe,” Dobson said on the broadcast, which reportedly garners millions of daily listeners on Christian radio. “And if I can’t get everyone to agree with me, it is undemocratic to try to pass legislation that I find offensive to the Scripture. That is a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution!”

The Obama speech that Dobson used as the springboard for his criticism was delivered in June 2006 to a Washington conference of moderate and liberal Christian anti-poverty activists. In it, he addressed his view of the proper role of religion in influencing public policy.

Actually criticized liberals 

But in the speech the Illinois senator, now the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, actually criticized liberals and secularists who try to divorce religious motivations and imagery from public policy.

“At times, we try to avoid the conversation about religion altogether, afraid to offend anyone. At worst, there are some who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant [and perpetuate] a caricature of religious Americans,” he said.

But, Obama noted, “the majority of great reformers in American history were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

Nonetheless, he cautioned religious conservatives who would try to argue for a policy simply on biblical grounds, without broadening their appeal to those who might not share their faith or interpretation of Scripture.

“Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values,” Obama said. “It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”

That passage specifically provoked Dobson’s “fruitcake” comment. He said Obama was asserting an argument that would require Christians “to go to the lowest common denominator of morality” when advocating causes in the public square.

Wallis: Dobson attack "off-base"

That attack is utterly off-base, said one Christian leader whose organization sponsored the conference at which Obama delivered the speech in question. “There’s certainly a misunderstanding, a misreading of what Barack said,” said Jim Wallis, head of the Call to Renewal/Sojourners organization. “If anything, he was defending the right of people of faith to bring their religious understandings into the public square; the question was, ‘how we do that?’”

A group of Christian pastors, led by Houston minister Kirbyjon Caldwell, has launched a site – jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme.com – for other Christians to sign a statement denouncing Dobson’s attack. Caldwell, a United Methodist, has endorsed Obama, but has supported President Bush in the past.

Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family’s vice-president for public policy, appeared on the show with Dobson and echoed many of his criticisms. In a June 27 telephone interview, he said that the criticism was valid because Obama was trying to have it both ways in the speech.

“The speech has a very inconsistent message – he flip-flops back and forth; he says, ‘Of course we can bring religious speech into the debate,’ but then he says elsewhere in the speech that you have to define our arguments in universal terms,” Minnery said.

“When people do express beliefs in language accessible to all, many times the secular left discounts them — for example, on the intelligent-design argument,” he continued, referencing attempts by many conservative Christians in recent years to influence the way evolution is taught. Intelligent-design theory teaches that some life forms are so naturally complex that they could not have evolved spontaneously without the help of some unseen architect or designer. Most mainstream scientists and educators counter that it is simply creationism in disguise.

But one expert journalist said Minnery and Dobson were distorting the candidate’s argument. “What Obama said was that in a pluralistic America, religious believers cannot reasonably expect to create majorities for their favorite policy prescriptions — ‘moral principles’ in Dobson's terms — unless they couch their arguments in terms that can be understood and appreciated by and persuasive to people other than believers,” wrote Don Wycliff, a Notre Dame University journalism professor, in a June 27 opinion piece for the Chicago Tribune. “There's nothing complicated about that — unless your purpose is not to understand but to play politics.”

Theocratic undertones

Wallis said Dobson’s argument has theocratic undertones.

“It assumes, underneath, that perhaps Dobson is kind of supporting a notion of Christian theocracy where, in fact, Christians – by just appealing to their revelation, their Bible – [that] their view has to prevail. And what I say is that those Christians don’t get to win just because they’re Christians.” He said. “So, you have to argue about the common good. That’s what Barack said, ant that’s why I also say that you have to frame your religious convictions in moral terms that are accessible to more people.”

But Minnery contended that that makes no sense in a country whose founding principles, he believes, are inextricably linked with Christianity.

“Let’s just think about something here: ‘Thou shalt not commit murder.’ That’s a very religious statement — and that was affirmed in the Old Testament and reaffirmed in the New Testament. That’s the law of the land. Murder is illegal; should we get rid of the laws against murder because they originate in a religious document?” he asked.

Minnery noted that many of the nation’s monuments contain references to God as the source of law and human rights. “When Sen. Obama says that we have to make our case in universal language that is accessible by all by those who believe and those who don’t believe, I say that you can’t do that in this country — especially when you’ve got so many of these statements carved in stone in the U.S. Capitol.”

Dobson and Minnery also expressed great offense at another passage of the speech in which Obama dismisses the idea that the nation’s laws can, in any substantial way, be based on a generic Christianity.

Not a Christian nation

“Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation. At least not just [Christians]. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers,” Obama said. “And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would it be James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton’s?”

On the program, Minnery said that Obama, in that passage, “diminished” both Christianity and Dobson.

“Well, I say, ‘Excuse me?’ Seventy-six percent of the people identify themselves as Christian. There are only six-tenths of 1 percent who are Muslim, seven-tenths of 1 percent who are Buddhist, four-tenths of 1 percent who are Hindu…. So he's diminishing the idea that people of Christian faith have anything to say. And then he begins to diminish you,” Minnery said.

Asked if he believes non-Christians are somehow less American than Christians, Minnery said, “Nobody’s saying that — in fact, Christians are the first to believe that we operate under a civil government, not a Christian government, not a theocracy. But it’s a civil government, meaning all have an equal right to participate, and sometimes the charge comes from the left that Christians want to impose their government on all.”

But that’s not the case, Minnery said. “We want to have an equal access to the ballot box.”

On the show, Minnery and Dobson took particular umbrage at what they perceived as Obama’s equation of Dobson with Sharpton, the controversial Baptist minister and civil-rights leader.

Equating Dobson and Sharpton

“[H]e has compared you somehow as being on the right what Al Sharpton is on the left. Al Sharpton achieved his notoriety in the '80s and '90s by engaging in racial bigotry, and many people have called him a black racist,” Minnery said. “And he is somehow equating you with that and racial bigotry.”

Dobson seemed to think Obama had implied that he wanted to eject non-Christians from the country. “Obviously, that is offensive to me,” Dobson said. “I mean, who wants to expel people who are not Christians? Expel them from what? From the country? Deprive them of constitutional rights? Is that what he thinks I want to do? Why'd this man jump on me? I haven't said anything anywhere near that.”

But to one student of religion and politics, any fair reading of Obama’s speech shows that Dobson is taking offense at something that isn’t there. “I mean, was Obama launching any kind of ad hominem attack against Dobson? I really don’t think so,” said Laura Olson, a Clemson University political scientist and expert in the Religious Right. “In a way, Dobson could read the fact that Obama mentioned him as a compliment because he is the most obvious person right now to attach to that political movement.”

On the obvious level, Olson said, Dobson’s understanding of Obama’s comments represents two vastly different ways of looking at the world. “Obama’s interpretation of religion and the proper place of religion and the public square is fundamentally different than that of Dobson,” she said.

But, on a deeper level, Olson added, “what makes this interesting is, you know, why is Dobson … talking about it now? Why is he choosing to make this an issue?

“The way I’m interpreting this is that,….Dobson is, I’m sure, a little bit — if a not a lot — concerned.”

That’s because of the host of younger evangelical leaders who have begun to embrace a broader political agenda than the anti-abortion, anti-gay positions that have been the hallmarks of the Religious Right, Olson said.

“Dobson obviously has inserted himself into politics in recent times — endorsing [President] Bush the last time — so what’ he’s doing now, I think, you know is a continuation of that and perhaps kind of a defensive move to suggest to his listeners, ‘Hey, I bet there’s some of you out there in my listening public who might be attracted to Sen. Obama, who might be swayed by his rhetoric which is, at minimum, a lot better than the religious rhetoric that we’ve seen from a Democratic candidate in a long time.’”

Wallis said that was exactly what Dobson was trying to do. “This speech is two years old, it got lots of publicity at the time, and I can’t imagine that Dobson didn’t hear about it at the time, because it got a lot of attention,” he said. “So, all I can conclude is that really the issue here is indeed political — that James Dobson and other members of the Religious Right are really threatened by the changing agenda of evangelicals.”

However, Dobson has also been critical of Arizona Sen. John McCain, Obama’s Republican rival. Minnery said that the speech had only come to his attention in recent weeks due to Focus on the Family staffers. On the program, Dobson said video clips of Obama’s speech have “gone viral” in Christian circles on the Internet.

“So little is known about Sen. Barack Obama that every public speech like this of his is significant simply because we have not heard many of his speeches like this prior to the presidential campaign,” Minnery said in the interview.

Asked about the assessment that the incident shows Dobson is worried that his influence over the Religious Right — and politics as a whole — is slipping away, Minnery said that didn’t matter.

“Whether he is a leader or not is up to God.” He said. “God has directed this ministry for many years. And we don’t decide those things.”

Read more

Dobson’s program attacking Obama’s speech
http://www.citizenlink.org/content/A000007665.cfm

Text of original Obama speech
http://obama.senate.gov/speech/060628-call_to_renewal/




Opinion: America’s moral center says ‘no’ to torture

(ABP) – An unprecedented bipartisan coalition of religious, political, and military leaders recently released a document expressing our shared rejection of torture and prisoner mistreatment by — or in the name of — the United States.

The signatories include former secretaries of state George Shultz, Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher, former defense secretaries Harold Brown, William Perry, and William Cohen, four former members of the Defense Department’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, and dozens of other flag officers of the U.S. armed forces, along with former senators Sam Nunn, John Glenn, and others. Religious leaders include top Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, mainline Protestant and evangelical leaders.

I have also signed the document.

David Gushee

Our “Declaration of Principles for a Presidential Executive Order on Prisoner Treatment, Torture and Cruelty” affirms six key principles that we believe must govern U.S. policy on prisoner treatment, and asks President Bush to issue an executive order based on them. The principles are the Golden Rule, a single national standard, the rule of law, the duty to protect, checks and balances, and clarity and accountability.

— The Golden Rule principle affirms that our nation will not use any methods of interrogation that we would not find acceptable if used against Americans.

— The one national standard principle means that all U.S. personnel and agencies will apply the same standards for interrogation, with no exceptions for the CIA or any other agency. Currently, the best expression of a reasonably humane standard is found in the U.S. Army Field Manual, which explicitly bans a number of cruel interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding.

— Adherence to the rule of law requires that the United States will acknowledge all prisoners to our courts and the Red Cross, rejects any use of secret prisons or the mysterious disappearance of prisoners, and requires fully adequate judicial processes for detainees to prove their innocence.

— The duty to protect means a reaffirmation not just of our own rejection of torture, but of our responsibility to protect people in our custody from being tortured by other countries after transfer from our government.

— The principle of checks and balances reaffirms the legitimate role of the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government in understanding, reviewing, and — in some cases — setting detention policies.

— Finally, the emphasis on clarity and accountability means that all U.S. personnel involved in relating to prisoners must operate with total clarity as to the legal rules under which they do so and with full understanding that all who violate those rules will be held accountable, regardless of rank or position.

The over 50 evangelical leaders who signed this declaration of principles along with 150 other national leaders represent many of our country’s leading Christian institutions. They are academics, denominational leaders, pastors, writers, activists, evangelists and missionaries. In obedience to Christ, they give each day to the work of loving God and loving neighbor as they have been commanded in Scripture. They are theologically orthodox and most are not particularly politically inclined, though undoubtedly they represent Republicans and Democrats and independents.

None of us who have become involved in this fight expected or wanted to have to engage the issue of prisoner treatment and torture in the war on terror.

But when we discovered to our horror that our nation had slipped into policies permitting torture and cruelty in our name, and related policies that involved the systematic mistreatment of prisoners and denial of their basic human rights, we had to respond. My own group, Evangelicals for Human Rights, began offering such a response in the summer of 2006 and we have been working to help evangelicals bear a clear Christian witness on this issue since that time. Participation in the development of this declaration of principles represents a high-water mark for our efforts, which will continue until policies that reflect the six principles of this document have become the policies of the United States.

Everyone who signed this document did so for their own reasons. But the evangelical signatories probably all share in common this basic cluster of motivations: We have all committed our lives to be faithful followers of Christ; he comes first, and we must do what he wants us to do. We have all come to believe that a follower of the Jesus who came as an expression of God’s great love for humanity cannot endorse or accept the torture or cruel treatment of any human being. Torture, like terrorism itself, is a grotesque violation of everything Jesus represents and that we have committed to be about in the world.

I personally believe that the statement — and the nature and quality of the signatories from so many sectors of American society — marks a decisive moral rejection of torture from what might be called the moral center of American culture. It is, of course, deeply encouraging that people whose lives have been devoted to protecting our nation’s security and advancing our interests in military and government service also agree that torture and cruelty do not make our nation safer or stronger. Together, then, we are saying that we must recover our moral bearings as a nation and reject policies that have both degraded us morally and harmed our national interest.

Fear, anger, and grief after 9/11 sent us off-course. But now our nation is recovering its moral compass once again.

To learn more about how the United States descended into torture and how we can get past it, come to our conference on “Religious Faith, Torture, and Our National Soul” at Mercer University September 11th and 12th.  Information is available at www.evangelicalsforhumanrights.org .

David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. (www.davidpgushee.com )

Read more

Campaign to Ban Torture website:
http://www.campaigntobantorture.org




OPINION: Lawley’s Chapel and the communion of saints

By Beth Newman, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond

(ABP) — One a recent Saturday afternoon, I gathered with a small group of family and friends around the graveside of my mother-in-law. The burial ground of Lawley’s Chapel United Methodist Church sits atop one of the gentle hills of north central Alabama, looking across a farmer’s pastureland to a tree-lined creek bottom.

Beth Newman

The oldest, central section of graves are marked by nothing but stones, probably carried up from that creek. Any names that they might have borne are long since gone. The landscape probably remains fairly unchanged, however, since those first bodies had been buried by the Methodist circuit riders in the 1840’s.

Certainly, it had not changed much during my mother-in-law’s life of almost 90 years. Nor had her life taken her far away from that place. She had never traveled farther away than Georgia, having spent most of her life along that creek and among those hills.

Leaving the graveside to return to our cars, my husband noticed a relatively new headstone bearing, of all things, the seal of Harvard University — the three open books bearing the word VERITAS shining in the slanting sunlight of an Alabama afternoon. A husband and wife were buried there. The inscriptions on the stone described him as a dedicated teacher and her as a nurse, but added that she had been born in Budapest. No one in our party recognized the names. Our lives had taken us far from that place, but she had come a long way to find a resting place.

I know that with the multitude of serious political, economic and social problems pressing on us today, phrases such as “the communion of the saints” or “the mystical Body of Christ” can seem fuzzy or remote or pointless. I know also the responses that anything creedal draws from some of my readers. But it is my profound conviction that all of our discussion must be informed this aspect of eternity.

The divisions that separate the Body of Christ today — whether “fundamentalist,” or “liberal,” Democrat or Republican, or even Protestant or Catholic — as real and painful as these might be, are nonetheless not eternal or ultimate distinctions. The world that produced the woman from Budapest married to a Harvard Ph.D. could not, I imagine, have been more different from that of my mother-in-law. And yet, they were buried within a stone’s throw of one another, to become a part of that grand communion of saints about which we sing: “Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee, casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea….”

No doubt we are tempted to magnify the divisions of our own time and place, seeing the past and even the future in light of our present time. And yet, a dichotomy such as fundamentalism/liberalism is itself a recent one, with both sides being a product of modernity. An individual reading a biblical text for him or herself (whether literally or liberally) was not a concept our early brothers and sisters in Christ would have known. They knew Scripture by hearing it spoken, most of all in the context of worship.

It is this gathered communion of saints that we also join when we, through the power of the Holy Spirit, are gathered before the throne of God in worship. This eternal reality transcends our parochial divisions and enables us to look upon one another — no matter which “side” the person is on — as also someone worthy of the blood of Christ and the love of God.

In a small cemetery on the back roads of rural Alabama rests not only loved ones, but also a profound truth: The love and grace of Christ make our communion possible.

Beth Newman is professor of theology and ethics at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond.

 




DOWN HOME: Through the years, God still weaves

Grammar saw me coming. By the time I parked my rented car, she had pushed her walker across the parking lot, a big smile on her face.

Grammar is my mother’s mother, and she lives in Roswell, N.M. Since Roswell isn’t exactly on the way to many places I ordinarily travel, we don’t get to visit as often as we would like.

So, when my friends at First Baptist Church in Plains, Texas, asked me to come out and preach for them, my grandmother came immediately to mind. “As long as I’m traveling that far anyway, I might as well go out there a day early and drive over to see Grammar,” I thought.

Since my preaching assignment landed on the Sunday between the annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (journalists lead surreal lives this time of year), and since Plains is, oh, about a zillion miles from my home in North Texas, I decided to fly. And since you can’t fly to Plains without a pilot’s license, I flew to Lubbock, rented a car and drove. And then drove some more.

But all that travel in the middle of “Baptist convention season” was worth it as I scooped Grammar in my arms and hugged this woman, whom I have loved all my life.

Grammar won’t mind if I tell you she’s closer to 100 than 90. And since people that age don’t get out and about all that much, Grammar and I enjoyed spending a day sitting and visiting.

We ate lunch in the cafeteria, and she introduced me to some of her friends in the assisted-living complex she now calls home. But mostly, we sat and talked.

Much of what we talked about was personal and private. But Grammar won’t mind if I tell you we talked about the Lord, and what it feels like to live to be almost 100 years old.

Here’s something I hadn’t thought all that much about until I listened carefully to Grammar: Living to be very old demands patience and faith.

Patience is important because, when you’re that old and a body that old limits what you can do, you spend a lot of time waiting. In Grammar’s case, she’s waiting to see Popo, my grandfather, again, along with her parents and family who have gone before her to be with the Lord.

And that brings us to faith. It’s always been a bright thread that runs through the fabric of Grammar’s life. Now, it dominates the pattern. Looking down from her perch atop almost 10 decades, she sees the clear handiwork of God, shaping the patterns of family, and church, and work and friendships. She sees God’s handiwork in designs that represent heartache, sorrow and loss, but also joy, gladness and peace. And even though that cloth is old and fraying in places, it is at once still useful and beautiful.

Age tells Grammar she’s ready to go Someplace else. Faith reminds her God still has a plan for her life.

She’s not finished yet. God still weaves.

–Marv Knox

 




IN FOCUS: One thing we do best: Sunday school

Jim Collins studied companies that were good but became great and shared his findings in the classic book Good to Great.

“They took a complex world and simplified it,” Collins says. “In a world overrun by management faddists, brilliant visionaries, ranting futurists, fearmongers, motivational gurus and all of the rest, it’s refreshing to see a company succeed so brilliantly by taking one simple concept and just doing it with excellence and imagination.”

Collins and his team of researchers developed the “Hedgehog Concept” to describe the process these great companies used to clearly define their mission. They asked three questions: What are we deeply passionate about? What are we best in the world at? What drives our resource engine?

Randel Everett

“This is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at. The distinction is absolutely crucial,” he explains.

When we ask these questions of our churches, how do we answer the question, “What do we do best?”

One answer is Sunday school. Baptists have made many significant contributions to the church in America, but one of the most unique is Sunday school, and Texas Baptists often have led the way. David Strawn of First Baptist Church in College Station, wrote, “Texas Baptists contributed the work of men like William P. Phillips, John Sizemore, Harry Piland and Bernie Spooner to the greater constellation of churches.”

Sunday school always has been at the heart of the churches where I have served. It has provided the basic biblical preparation for our preschoolers, children, youth and adults. But it also has been the organization that facilitated fellowship, outreach and ministry.

I have served churches with strong deacon family ministry programs and trained professional staff. Yet when a family was in crisis, it was the Sunday school class that provided the context for ministry. Meals were served, grieving family members were consoled and the sick were visited. Families who only attended worship might have needs that were completely overlooked by the church, but that was seldom the case with those who were active in Sunday school.

It also has been our greatest outreach tool. I learned to share my faith when my sixth-grade Sunday school teacher from James Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth took me to my friends and asked me to tell them how they can come to know Christ. This allowed me to see many of my friends come to know the Lord.

Of course, we need innovation. Call them life groups, cell groups, Bible studies or whatever; small groups are essential for growing effective churches.

When I listen to the generation younger than 35, they insist they are looking for authenticity and community. Texas Baptist churches have had a model for this for more than 100 years. As we search for exciting and innovative ways to reach and disciple our communities for Christ, let’s not be too quick to overlook one of the things we have done best.

Randel Everett is executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board.

 




RIGHT or WRONG? Living together

My widowed mother is retired and survives on Social Security. After many years of living alone, she met a wonderful man she loves dearly. They want to marry, but because of potential loss of Social Security income, they are thinking of living together instead. Is this OK?

 

Tell them to schedule a date for the wedding. If your mother is more than 60 years old, she has no need to worry about loss of income from Social Security. Many people still are unaware the so-called remarriage penalty was totally eliminated in 1979. The Social Security Administration and Congress have been addressing the issue that the remarriage penalty created difficulties for widowed spouses, usually women, since at least 1958.

The financial impact of remarriage continues to affect the perceptions of some older Americans, and, in some cases still, actual income as well. I realize the benefits some widows/widowers receive from their spouse’s employers end when the survivor remarries. You need to check with the Social Security Administration or with the benefits department of the spouse’s employer. For more complete and up-to-date information, you can access the Social Security Administration’s website at www.socialsecurity.gov, contact your local Social Security office or call (800) 772-1213.

Your question highlights the tension senior adults face between remarriage and financial security. I encourage you to work with your church, your government representatives and other advocates for senior adults to eliminate all penalties associated with widowed spouses remarrying.

Many older Americans continue to prefer marriage over simply living together. They realize a relationship sealed by marriage offers them something that living together cannot provide. God created man and woman to have a one-flesh relationship with each other (Genesis 2:24).

Many older adults recognize the importance of commitment. They understand marriage is not simply an economic arrangement or an outlet for passion. Marriage is a covenant between a man and woman that opens the door for intimacy. This covenant fosters the community aspect of being created in God’s image. Married couples see more clearly, I believe, that the helper-companion part of relationship is realized most between married partners. Marriage also creates the atmosphere of permanence, whereas living together often carries the connotation that one can easily get out of the arrangement.

I celebrate with you and your mother as you look to the future. I celebrate her commitment to marriage. May she and her wonderful man model for us that relationship God established at creation and seeks today with his creation.

David Morgan, pastor

Trinity Baptist Church

Harker Heights

Right or Wrong? is sponsored by the T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon School of Theology. Send your questions about how to apply your faith to btillman@hsutx.edu.

 




2nd Opinion: Celebrate religious liberty July 4

The Fourth of July! This unique, and perhaps most popular, American holiday conjures up visions of fireworks, political speeches, baseball games and backyard barbecues.

This holiday provides an opportunity for Americans to express our patriotism, celebrate what is good about this country and redouble our efforts to fix what is not.

For example, whether one is Republican, Democrat or Independent, we should take pride in knowing an African-American will be nominated by a major American political party for the presidency only 45 years (to the day) after Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the National Mall. We have made remarkable progress in race relations and civil rights, but we still have a lot to do to eradicate bigotry from our nation. Although we have provided a standard of living that is the envy of most of the world, we still have much to do to right the economy, fight poverty and improve health care.

As we observe the Fourth of July, it also is appropriate to express gratitude for our freedom, especially our religious liberty, which the Baptist Joint Committee works every day to defend and extend for all Americans.

First, we should pause to thank God. All freedom starts with God. The Bible teaches us in Genesis that the sovereign God of the universe created you and me in God’s image. This means we were made to have a relationship with God. For that relationship to be genuine, it must be voluntary, entered into freely and based on love, not in any way compelled or based on fear. It means each of us has free will and is competent to respond to God as our conscience dictates, unimpeded and uncoerced by earthly authorities. The Apostle Paul carries this theme forward in his letter to the Galatians when he writes that for freedom Christ has set us free; do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. Yes, religious liberty is a right—a natural, inalienable right—that we receive as a gift from God. Thanks be to God.

Second, it is appropriate to give thanks to our nation’s founders. They took the bold, radical step of separating church and state in civil society. They provided in Article VI of the Constitution that there would be no religious test or requirement for public office. One’s status in the civil community simply would not depend on the willingness to espouse any particular religion. These architects of the new nation decided the government would not be permitted, in the words of the First Amendment, to make any law “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Our founders protected our God-given freedom by barring government from meddling in religion or taking sides in religious disputes. As a result, and as a consequence of their foresight and wisdom, America is one of the most religious and most religiously diverse nations on the face of the earth. Despite our religious passion and pluralism, we have been able to avoid, for the most part, the religious conflicts and wars that have punctuated history and continue to plague much of the world today.

Yes, most of our founders were Christians of various ilk, but they were committed to ensuring religious liberty for all, not enshrining their own particular religious views in our founding documents. Thanks be to God for Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and other founders of this great nation.

Third, we should acknowledge our debt to our Baptist ancestors. Next year, Baptists will celebrate our 400th anniversary. For nearly four centuries, Baptists have fought for, and in some cases died, to protect religious liberty—not just for themselves, but for everyone else, as well. Roger Williams, the great apostle of religious liberty and founder of the first Baptist church in America, called it soul freedom, a God-infused liberty of conscience. And Baptists over the ensuing centuries have taken up the cause and fought to turn that heritage into a legacy for future generations.

I also think of many Texas Baptists who have advanced religious liberty, much to the benefit of Texans and all Americans. George W. Truett, longtime pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, comes immediately to mind. His storied 1920 speech on religious liberty from the steps of the U.S. Capitol has inspired generations of Baptists and members of Congress to stand up for religious liberty at all cost.

How about J.M. Dawson and James M. Dunn—the first and fourth executive directors of the Baptist Joint Committee—carrying forward Truett’s truisms and fighting for religious liberty, both here and abroad? And who can forget Phil Strickland, Texas’ Christian Life Commission director, who fought for social justice, the well-being of children and religious liberty for all of God’s children? That Texans enjoy heightened religious liberty protections—beyond what even the U.S. Constitution provides—is due to Phil’s indefatigable efforts. What a legacy he has left all of us. I’m sure other Texans deserve similar accolades. Maybe you can thank a few for me. Thanks be to God for our Baptist forbears and modern-day advocates for religious liberty.

This year as you celebrate our nation’s birth and enjoy this quintessential American holiday, pause to give gratitude to these whose efforts have made America a land of liberty and a place where religious freedom is cherished.

 

Brent Walker is executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in Washington.

 




Quotes in the News

“I tell our new members: You don’t join a preacher; you join the church. And you join the church for one reason—because you believe that God told you to plant your life there. If you join because of a style of preaching, that can change. If you join for the facilities or the programs, that can change. You’ve got to ask, ‘Where does God want me to invest my life?’ We don’t welcome spectators.”

Dan Yeary

Pastor of North Phoenix Baptist Church, attended by presidential candidate John McCain (The Christian Century / Dallas Morning News)

 

“A faithful pastor cannot preach the gospel to unbelievers, let alone exhort and, dare I say, rebuke, backslidden and unregenerate church members, while satisfying a politically correct standard of niceness. This is the sort of niceness we could do with less of in our churches and nation. I pray ‘Say Something Nice Sunday’ does not spread to Florida and the Southern Baptist Convention. I fear participating churches may be unwittingly promoting something eternally harmful—a gospel-free Sunday.”

Jim Smith

Editor of the Florida Baptist Witness

 

“The church is not reducible to the flaws and the futilities and the fragilities of one’s human capacity. We’re all human and fragile.”

Michael Eric Dyson

Author and Georgetown University professor, speaking about why black members don’t leave churches when they disagree with their ministers, and why Catholics didn’t leave their parishes at the height of the sexual abuse scandal (RNS)

 

“The Conservative Resurgence failed to produce a Great Commission Resurgence.”

Ed Stetzer

Director of LifeWay Research for LifeWay Christian Resources, writing about the “decline” of the Southern Baptist Convention (www.lifeway.com)

 

 




RIGHT or WRONG? Separation of church & state

I’ve attempted to teach Baptist distinctives, particularly religious liberty, to my Sunday school class. But some members reject the importance of separation of church and state. Don’t Baptists have a moral obligation to understand the place of religious liberty?

 

In April 2005, Baptist church historian Walter Shurden asserted: “Our denominational vision, once crystal clear on First Amendment issues, today is opaque. Impervious to the light of our denominational history and family commitments, we have blocked out heroic chapters of our very own story.”

Those heroic chapters of our Baptist story contain valuable lessons about the Baptist commitment to religious liberty. Learning about 17th- and 18th-century Baptists has convinced me Baptists have an obligation to understand and champion religious liberty.

Yet many Baptists are unfamiliar with their history. They do not know about early Baptists who endured oppression, discrimination and persecution, who courageously confronted the established churches and the governments, and who tirelessly worked for religious freedom for all people.

Stories of those early Baptists need to be told, including stories about early English Baptists like Vavasor Powell, a Welshman who preached two or three times a day, rarely going two days without preaching. Because of his commitment to Baptist beliefs and his determination to preach the gospel, Powell was arrested in 1653, and over the course of the next 17 years, he was arrested numerous times. By the time of his death, he had spent a total of 11 years, or 21 percent of his life, in prison for preaching the gospel.

Baptists in the New England colonies also faced persecution. They often were fined, whipped and/or imprisoned. Their land sometimes was confiscated and sold. One Baptist, Thomas Painter, was whipped in 1644 for refusing to have his child baptized.

In Virginia, where the Anglican Church was the established church, Baptists had to register their meetinghouses and to support the Anglican clergy with their finances. In 1771, several Baptists, including John Waller, were arrested. The magistrate had two of those Baptists whipped, one severely, and he sent Waller and a few others to jail. Imprisonment, however, did not silence these Baptists. They spent their days in jail preaching the gospel to all who would listen.

Preachers, teachers and church leaders ought to tell these stories in their sermons, Sunday school lessons, newsletter columns and Bible studies, and as a result, the “opaque” Baptist vision would quickly clear and would once again be “crystal clear” on the value of religious liberty, one of our great historic Baptist distinctives.

Pamela R. Durso, associate executive director

Baptist History and Heritage Society

Atlanta

Right or Wrong? is sponsored by the T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon School of Theology. Send your questions about how to apply your faith to btillman@hsutx.edu.