A Baptist Perspective

Hitler Revisioned: A Strange Way of Demonizing One's Opponents

2012-01-20T11:15:00.004-05:00

Adolf Hitler seems to be making a political comeback of sorts: in the past several years, conservative politicians, media personalities and Baptists have increasingly invoked the Führer’s name in denouncing their opponents.

In 2009, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, caused an uproar when he denounced Health Care reform by accusing President Barack Obama and congressional Democratic leaders of attempting to do "precisely what the Nazis did."

In 2010, Delaware Republican Glen Urquhart blamed Hitler for church state separation: "Do you know, where does this phrase 'separation of church and state' come from? It was not in Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists. …The exact phrase 'separation of Church and State' came out of Adolf Hitler's mouth, that's where it comes from. So the next time your liberal friends tlk about the separation of Church and State, ask them why they're Nazis.” (Not only did Hitler not make such a statement, but he supported the marriage of church and state. Baptists, of course, were the earliest champions of church state separation. Which makes me wonder if Urquhart considers Baptists to be Nazis?)

Not to be outdone, Newt Gingrich (current Republican presidential candidate) in 2010 declared Obama, Democrats and liberalism (lumped together as the “secular socialist machine”) "as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did." In addition, media superstars Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have repeatedly equated Obama to Hitler.

This month, Timothy George, dean of Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School, equated the convictions of America’s Religious Right as similar to that of Hitler’s opponents. George’s statement was in reference to a 2009 document entitled “The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience,” a conservative rallying cry against abortion and homosexuality and for traditional (Western) marriage. Crafters of the Manhattan Declaration point to the 1934 “Theological Declaration of Barmen” (written by Karl Barth) as inspiration for the Manhattan Declaration.

Also this month, popular conservative evangelical author Andy Andrews released a new volume entitled, How do You Kill 11 Million People? Andrews equates the current political climate in America with that of Nazi Germany, warning that if American citizens continue to believe the lies of national politicians, a similar fate may await America. While not explicitly calling out politicians by name, Andrews is pitching his book by making the rounds of Right-wing talk shows and fundamentalist Baptist congregations.

Historically, the growing conservative rage against perceived Hitler-like opponents is a bit strange. During the 1930s and early 1940s, many political conservatives in America -- including the early Christian Right -- in opposition to both Franklin D. Roosevelt and communism, embraced fascism and Nazism, a story well documented by Allan J. Lichtman in White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement. William Loyd Allen, in an essay entitled “How Baptists Assessed Hitler,” documents how even some Baptists in America praised Hitler.

Strange also is the argument that the 1934 Barmen Declaration, authored by a theologian whom modern Christian conservative consider to be a liberal, is a reflection of the 21^st century agenda of the Religious Right. The Barmen declaration was a statement against church state entanglement, a position that America’s Religious Right supports (indeed, evangelical conservatives largely view church state separation as anathema, if not heresy). And while there was much discussion of conservative Christianity, abortion and homosexuality during Germany’s Nazi years, much of the rhetoric came from Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party, which proudly wore the label of Christian Nationalism and mandated conservative religious and family values.

In a 1933 radio speech, Adolf Hitler publicly stated his intention to elevate “Christianity as the basis of our [Germany’s] morality, and the family as the nucleus of our nation and our state.”

Hitler’s view of the family was that women must be subject to their husbands. In a 1934 speech to the National Socialist Women’s League he declared, "If the man's world is said to be the State . . . her world is her husband, her family, her children and her home . . . What the man gives in courage on the battlefield, the woman gives in eternal self-sacrifice, in eternal pain and suffering. Every child that a woman brings into the world is a battle, a battle waged for the existence of her people.... It is not true ... that respect depends on the overlapping of the spheres of activity of the sexes; this respect demands that neither sex should try to do that which belongs to the sphere of the other."

Of abortion, Adolf Hitler declared: "Nazi ideals demand that the practice of abortion ... shall be exterminated with a strong hand. Women inflamed by Marxist propaganda claim the right to bear children only when they desire.” He also insisted that "the use of contraceptives [by Aryan women] means a violation of nature, a degradation of womanhood, motherhood, and love." In the 1930s, the Nazis outlawed the display of contraceptives and closed all birth control clinics. In 1943, as the Nazis were seeking to conquer Europe, the Nazi Party mandated the death penalty for abortion providers.

As to homosexuality, in the early 1930s the Nazi Party began a systematic campaign of imprisoning and/or killing all homosexuals in Germany. The Gestapo on April 4, 1938 issued an order to consign convicted homosexuals to concentration camps. Altogether, the Nazis arrested over 100,000 homosexual males, most of whom served time in prison and/or concentration camps. Nazi prison guards systematically sought to cure imprisoned homosexuals of their “disease.”

The Nazi Party’s status as Germany’s Religious Right leads to the question of who resisted Hitler and the Nazis? In short, many liberal and secular scholars, as well as moderate to liberal Christian leaders, opposed the Christian Nationalist Nazi agenda. In his quest to eradicate abortion, homosexuality and secularism, Hitler did his best to purge from public life liberal scholars, politicians, religious figures and civil servants.

In short, not only did America’s early Religious Right applaud Hitler and Nazism, but today’s Religious Right seems (albeit not intentionally) to be following the same playbook that the Nazi Party utilized in order to establish (in Hitler’s words) “Christianity as the basis of our morality”: force women to be subjugated to men, criminalize abortion providers and eradicate the practice of abortion, and persecute homosexuals.

Fortunately, today’s rhetoric is not as strident as the Religious Right agenda of Germany’s Nazi Party. In addition, the American system of democracy guards against religious extremism of any stripe silencing opponents and subverting the nation in such a manner as did Germany’s Nazi Party.

Of Baptists and the American Civil War ... and More

2011-01-15T09:43:00.002-05:00

In recent months, various writing ventures have occupied my time. One project that I am immersed in is the production of a new website focused on Baptists and the Civil War. Entitled "Baptists and the American Civil War: In Their Own Words," the site is a day-by-day journal of the Baptist experience during the Civil War. As you may know, the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War begins this year, and this new site is a way to reflect upon the lessons learned (and in some cases, not yet fully learned) from a dark yet fascinating time in our nation's history.

In addition, the January edition of Baptists Today features a piece I wrote entitled, "Christ and Capitalism in the 21st Century," a brief examination of the historical background that led to the current relationship between capitalism and American Christianity.

Also, recent contributions to the Baptist Studies Bulletin have been an examination of Baptists and the Years 1830-1832 and of Baptists and Christmas.

The publication of my upcoming book, Diverging Loyalties: Baptists in Middle Georgia During the Civil War, is slated for publication by Mercer University Press later this year.

Also later this year will be the publication of my first book of Montana history (more information will be forthcoming in the coming months).

Finally, let me draw your attention to two Texas Baptist blogs produced by Bill Jones, who is doing great work in advancing the cause of our Baptist faith and heritage in the Lone Star State.

"Weighty Matters" is the blog of the TB Maston Foundation. Maston was a giant in the world of Christian ethics, and this blog, focused on current events and issues "viewed through the lens of biblical Christian ethics," carries on his legacy.

The Texas Baptists Committed blog features the work of Bill in educating Baptists (in Texas and beyond) in historical Baptist principles. An important part of the blog is "Today's Baptist Brief," a short video feature highlighting a particular aspect of Baptist history and heritage.

Being a traditional Baptist in Texas is difficult these days, as fundamentalism (claiming a long history in the state) is experiencing a renewed resurgence among Baptists. I'm thankful for the work of Bill Jones and the TB Maston Foundation and Texas Baptists Committed.

Virginia Baptists Stand Tall for Historical Truth

2010-11-10T00:18:00.002-05:00

The Baptist General Association of Virginia, in their annual meeting on Tuesday strongly affirmed their faith heritage and took a stand for historical truth:

Inaccurate history threatens religious liberty

Whereas, the Baptist principles of religious liberty and its safeguard, separation of church and state (or government neutrality toward all religions and nonreligion), are well grounded in this nation’s history, and

Whereas, the labors of Virginians, notably Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, James Madison, and the Baptist minister John Leland, were crucial in the historic events that made these two principles part of our nation’s Bill of Rights, and

Whereas, no people, Baptist or otherwise, can remain true to its principles if its knowledge or collective memory of these principles is tampered with, altered, or replaced by a false version of history, and

Whereas, the Religious Liberty Committee of the Baptist General Association of Virginia has concluded that systematic efforts have been under way in recent decades to write and teach versions of American history that minimize and sometimes deny the historic basis of one or both of the principles named above, and

Whereas, resources are available for correcting any such mistaken history, including a 1999 article by Stephen Stookey of Fort Worth, Texas,
Now therefore be it resolved, that the Baptist General Association of Virginia calls upon Virginia Baptists, and all who cherish religious liberty, (1) to redouble their efforts to know and teach the historical foundation and meaning of the two principles named above, (2) to regard it as a threat to the flourishing of religious liberty when any version of our nation’s history minimizes or denies the historical basis of either of these principles, and (3) to be diligent in resisting and correcting any such mistaken version of our history.

Thanks for Virginia Baptists for leading the way for religious liberty and separation of church and state in the 18th century, and now, again, in the 21st century.

Read the story from Associated Baptist Press.

"The Christian Right in Context"

2010-11-07T22:10:00.002-05:00

Richard T. Hughes, professor of religion at Messiah College and author of Christian America and the Kingdom of God, offers the first in a series of articles addressing "The Christian Right in Context."

In this first article, he outlines why "orthodox Christians" of America's Revolutionary era (which did not include Baptists and Quakers, both groups widely considered heretical by established colonial churches) were hostile to America's founding fathers, feared religious freedom, and "were insistent that the United States should become a Christian nation."

In short, "orthodox Christians" of the late eighteenth century considered America's founding fathers as liberals and heretics with a secular agenda; believed that government sanctioned and controlled religion was necessary for a healthy-functioning society and state; and did not want to relinguish their colonial theocracies.

By way of comparison, the modern Religious Right (orthodox evangelicals) has bestowed sainthood upon America's founding fathers, transforming them from secular, liberal heretics to orthodox Christians; believes that government sanctioned and controlled religion is the answer to modern moral and social ills; and advocates a return to a colonial theocratic model.

Whereas in the late eighteenth century, America's founding fathers (goaded by and allied with Baptists in particular) crushed orthodox dreams of a Christian nation, today's evangelicals (including far too many Baptists) have created mythical, orthodox national founders as a bridge to theocracy.

For national Baptists, the remarkable part of this whitewashing of history is that by marching backward to colonial theocracy, they are blotting out their own faith heritage that shaped their own nation.

Of Bapto-Catholics and Baptist Historians

2010-10-18T23:10:00.005-04:00

The recent public give-and-take between Bapto-Catholic theologians and Baptist historians continues.

A student from Baylor explains that he is a Baptist because of the historic Baptist commitment to individual freedom of conscience, while a self-proclaimed Baylor Bapto-Catholic professor (who denies individual freedom of conscience) explains that his mission is to turn Baptists into Catholics.

Meanwhile, a growing list of Baptist historians, theologians, ethicists and ministers from Cooperative Baptist, Southern Baptist, American Baptist USA, National Baptist USA, and Canadian Baptist life have become additional endorsers of "An Affirmation of Common Baptist Themes."

Today, Steve Harmon argues for the recitation of the ancient creeds in Baptist worship, claiming that prior to the 19th century, Baptists embraced the early Church creeds.

Here is my reply (as submitted to Steve's blog, with the assumption he will eventually approve the comment):

Baptists are certainly free to choose to recite a creed or creeds if they wish ... but one cannot in good conscience reconstruct our faith history to suit one's own agenda.

I am aware that you anchor your Baptistness on the early English Baptist confessions, which some of your colleagues claim affirm the ancient creeds of the Church. Yet, only one early English Baptist confession even mentions the ancient creeds, the Orthodox Creed (so named at a time when Baptists used the words "creed" and "confession" interchangeably when referencing their confessions of faith), a statement that was signed by 54 men and never affirmed or adopted by any Baptist community of faith.

On the other hand, early English Baptist confessions frequently affirmed that scripture alone was their source of faith and practice ... and rarely, if ever, recited the ancient creeds in worship. (Which makes me wonder why you seem to want to take Baptists to a place they have never been, historically?)

From early English Baptist confessions:

“the Holie Word off God, which onelie is our direction in al things whatsoever.” (A Declaration of Faith of English People, Remaining at Amsterdam in Holland, 1611; section 22)

“The Rule of this Knowledge, Faith, and Obedience, concerning the worship and service of God, and all other Christian duties, is not man's inventions, opinions, devices, laws, constitutions, or traditions unwritten whatsoever, but only the word of God contained in the Canonical Scriptures. In this written Word God hath plainly revealed whatsoever he hath thought needful for us to know, believe, and acknowledge, touching the Nature and Office of Christ, in whom all the promises are Yea and Amen to the praise of God.” (First London Confession, 1644, sections VII and VIII)

“The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain and infallible rule of all saving Knowledge, Faith and Obedience …. The Authority of the Holy Scripture for which it ought to be believed dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or Church …. The whole Councel of God concerning all things necessary for his own Glory, Mans Salvation, Faith and Life, is either expressely set down or necessarily contained in the Holy Scripture; unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new Revelation of the Spirit, or traditions of men …. The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: And therefore when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold by one) it must be searched by other places that speak more clearly. The supream judge by which all controversies of Religion are to be determined, and all Decrees of Councels, opinions of ancient Writers, Doctrines of men, and private Spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit, into which Scripture so delivered, our faith is finally resolved” (Second London Confession, 1677, Chapter 1)

Baptist Historians Sign "An Affirmation of Common Baptist Themes"

2010-09-27T11:14:00.007-04:00

A group of fourteen Baptist historians that for nine years has been convening annually to study primary documents in Baptist history has released a statement entitled, "An Affirmation of Common Baptist Themes." The common themes are: sola Scriptura, freedom of conscience, believer's baptism, personal experience of God, priesthood of all believers, personal and communal devotion to God, the church as the body of Christ, local church autonomy, congregational polity, two ordinances (baptism and Lord's Supper), voluntary cooperation among churches, religious liberty, and the separation of church and state.

The historians declare, "We believe these themes are still relevant and should continue to inform our Baptist heritage and witness."

I am a member of this group, which was originally convened by Walter B. Shurden under the auspices of the former Mercer University's Center for Baptist Studies. From 2004 until last year, I worked with "Buddy" Shurden as the Associate Director of the Center, and after his retirment in 2007, served as the Interim Director of the Center. Currently, Loyd Allen of Mercer's McAfee School of Theology is in charge of convening the group.

The statement includes a listing of all fourteen historians, as well as their current professional affiliations.

Bapto-Catholics Move Into the Spotlight in North Carolina

2010-09-10T12:46:00.011-04:00

Five individuals within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina are causing quite a stir: they are, in effect, calling upon North Carolina CBFers to forsake the Baptist heritage of freedom of conscience and the priesthood of all believers, while downplaying religious liberty and separation of church and state, in order to embrace and formally align themselves with ancient creedalism and the magisterium ecclesiology of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions.

The five North Carolina individuals are: Don Gordon (pastor, Yates Baptist Church), Larry Harper (Forest Hills Baptist Church), Gail Coulter (retired pastor, Providence Baptist Church, Hendersonville), Ken Massey (pastor, First Baptist Church, Greensboro, North Carolina), and Curtis Freeman (Professor of Theology, Duke Divinity School). They are the authors of a newly-proposed foundational statement for CBF North Carolina, a statement that is clearly at odds with the both the current foundational statement of CBF North Carolina and current national CBF foundational statements.

The statement is currently being circulated among North Carolina Baptists via discussion sessions.

The provenance of the document has direct roots in the 1997 Baptist Manifesto, a "Re-Visioning of Baptist Identity" by a handful of Baptist theologians that denied freedom of conscience and soul liberty as central to the Baptist narrative, rejected the priesthood of all believers and the individual's right to interpret scripture, sought a magisterium to ensure proper biblical teaching within the community of faith, and moved toward the sacramental theology of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions. Curtis Freeman was a primary author of the Manifesto document, and Ken Massey attached his signature to it.

Since the penning of the Manifesto statement, the Manifesto movement, until now largely confined to theological circles in moderate Baptist seminaries, has moved further away from Baptist history and heritage and more fully embraced ancient creedalism, magisterium ecclesiology, and sacramental theology, along the way becoming known as "Bapto-Catholicism." Freeman has written extensively along these lines (you can see his bibliography by clicking on "Publications" on this page). Freeman's Bapto-Catholic theology is front and center in the newly-proposed CBF NC founding statement.

For their part, Baptist historians have watched Bapto-Catholic theologians tread deeper into creedalism and sacramentalism, and spoken against the movement's forsaking of Baptist history and heritage in favor of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology and thought. Buddy Shurden, pre-emient Baptist historian, penned an early, widely-circulated response to Freeman and his colleagues, entitled "The Baptist Identity and the Baptist Manifesto."

Bapto-Catholics, however, largely ignored the piece, and in the ensuing years Baptist historians and Bapto-Catholic theologians have largely talked past one another, rather than to one another, as Curtis Freeman and others have noted. Ralph Wood, Bapto-Catholic theologian and professor of Theology at Baylor University, perhaps best summed up the apparent disdain that some Bapto-Catholics have for the central Baptist principle of freedom of conscience. Lamenting that Baptists never created a "rich tradition," he praises the sacramental theology of the Roman Catholic Church expressed in baptism and Eucharist, and declares: "This enormously fecund tradition helps prevent Catholics from espousing a rather pathetic do-it-yourself religion, each believer determing truth for himself." (Source: Catholic.Net) Few Baptists in North Carolina are likely aware of the extent of the disdain that some Bapto-Catholics hold toward our historical Baptist identity.

The tendency of Baptist historians and Bapto-Catholic theologians to remain in their respective corners, however, may have dissolved with the emergence of Bapto-Catholics from divinity school theology departments into the mainstream of North Carolina CBF life. The response of historians and others to the Bapto-Catholic-centric proposed NC CBF foundational statement has been swift and public.

Aaron Weaver, doctoral student at Baylor University and blogging as "The Big Daddy Weave," gets credit for breaking the story and offering an appropriate, reasoned analysis of the attempt by Bapto-Catholics to lead North Carolina moderate Baptists away from Baptist principles. Tony Cartledge, professor of Old Testament in the Campbell University Divinity School (NC) and Contributing Editor of Baptists Today, followed up with a well-written and pointed response to Freeman and his Bapto-Catholic colleages and offered a word of caution to North Carolina CBFers. Glenn Jonas, professor of history and chairman of Campbell's Department of Religion and Philosophy, speaking as a historian, has weighed in on both Weaver's and Cartledge's blogs and today penned his own blog entry. And I have also joined in the discussion on Weaver's and Cartledge's blogs. From the Bapto-Catholic side, Steve Harmon, theology professor at Gardner-Webb University's School of Divinity (NC) and vocal advocate of sacramental theology, has also joined in the blogosphere discussion.

In the coming days, we can expect other Baptist historians (within and without the state of North Carolina) to weigh in regarding this development in North Carolina, while the moderate Baptist press provides increasing coverage. The discussion sessions regarding the newly proposed Bapto-Catholic founditional document continue until early November. I am certain that North Carolina moderate Baptists will have a robust dialogue about our Baptist identity between now and then, a dialogue that will be helpful and instructive as moderate Baptists everywhere move forward in the shaping of our future as a people of faith.

The Texas War on Textbooks

2010-05-24T13:28:00.004-04:00

In the world of American education, the Texas State Board of Education has been in the spotlight in recent months. Attempts by far-right members of the Board came to a culmination last week in a decision to re-write Texas public school textbooks in a manner which downplays minorities' contributions to American history, glosses over pivotal historical themes such as slavery, and banishes Baptists' greatest contribution to American history - the separation of church and state - in favor of advocating the myth of America founded as a Christian nation.

Following is a collection of articles, editorials and commentary focused on how Christian fundamentalists, in control of the Texas State Board of Education, came to rewrite history for the state of Texas, and the implications of such historical revisionism:

American Historical Association:
The official response to the Texas State Board of Education from the American Historical Association - the response focuses on history prior to 1877 (May 24)

Associated Baptist Press:
Texas board gives final approval to controversial textbook standards (May 24)
Religious leaders decry proposed Texas textbook standards (May 13)
Gaddy urges textbook publishers to ignore new textbook standards (March 22)
Baptists decry Texas board's votes on textbook standards (March 16)

Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty:
Texas Textbook Decisions Have National Implications (April 13)

Baptist Press:
Texas School Board Members Dispute Critics' Assertions (March 29)

Baptist Studies Bulletin:
Baptist, Muslims, Atheists and the First Amendment - by Bruce Gourley (May)

Dallas Morning News:
Texas State Board of Education Approves New Textbook Standards (May 22)
At Board of Education, Church-State Fight Grows (May 15)
3 Education Board Members Take Issue With Social Studies Proposal (October 16, 2009)

Houston Chronicle:
McLeroy Offers More Shifts on Social Studies Changes (May 17)

New York Times:
Texas Approves Textbook Changes (May 22)
Textbook School Board Set to Vote Textbook Revisions (May 20)
Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change (March 12)
How Christian Were the Founders? (February 14)

San Francisco Chronicle:
Texas Skews Curriculum With New Changes, California Set to Respond (May 22)

Telegraph (U.K.):
Biblical Values and Confederates Promoted in Texas Textbook Revisions (May 21)

Wall Street Journal:
Texas Board of Education Adopts Controversial Curriculum (May 21)
Texas Syllabus: It's History (May 20)

Bloggers:
Read what bloggers are saying

An Armageddon in the Gulf ... of Mexico?

2010-05-03T06:05:00.002-04:00

While Tim LaHaye and the Council for National Policy try to arrange wars in the Middle East in order to force Christ's return, a present-day Armageddon is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico.

I have been following, from afar and in horror, the epic saga of the British Petroleum oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico (here is the moment's story from the New York Times). In short, the deepest offshore well ever drilled is now gushing as much as a million gallons of oil daily (by some estimates) into the waters of the Gulf, following an explosion on and subsequent sinking of the drilling platform on April 20. And no one really knows the upper limits of just how much oil is gushing up from the ocean floor, although it could become the greatest ocean oil disaster ever.

All efforts to stanch the oil have failed, and it may be up to three months before the flow is finally stopped. Already, the oil slick is reaching the marshlands of Louisiana, and it will soon coat the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida with oil, with the possibility that the slick will round the tip of Florida and head northward up the eastern seaboard and further into the Atlantic Ocean.

The implications are staggering. Ocean ecosystems could be wiped out, resulting in chain reactions that we cannot imagine at the moment. Entire human industries and livelihoods dependent upon the Gulf and Atlantic oceans could be destroyed for months or even years to come.

The back story is that BP earlier claimed their deep sea exploration was completely safe and that any accidents were "virtually impossible." Seriously. They actually said that.

In addition to BP's arrogance, some are blaming Halliburton (yes, the same Dick Cheney company that stole untold tens if not hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars through government contracts in Iraq they never fulfilled) for some work they did for BP on the seabed below the drilling platform that exploded. And in hindsight, some experts are saying that oil companies are drilling too far below the ocean surface to ensure safety.

It makes me cringe to think what we as humans are doing to the planet God gave us. We're poisoning the air, land and oceans with reckless abandon, for the profit of a few and the pleasures and conveniences of the masses. Rather than using our technology to be stewards of God's creation, we use it for destructive, self-serving purposes.

Perhaps this horrific tragedy will serve as a wakeup call to people of faith and our nation and world at large, concerning the dangers of abusing the earth. Or perhaps the time has already passed for a wakeup call, and the best we can hope for is to begin the long-term task of partially patching up a planet that has already been fatally wounded by human greed and callousness, of which the Gulf oil spill is the latest example.

Cecil Sherman: You Will Be Missed, But Your Presence Remains

2010-04-20T10:18:00.006-04:00

Cecil Sherman, respected pastor and denominational statesman in Baptist life, passed away April 17. Yet Sherman, to Baptists, was much more than pastor and denominational leader. Sam Hodges, Dallas Morning News religion reporter, hints at the place Sherman held in Baptist life in referring to him as the "Mount Rushmore" of moderate Baptists. At a time when the carefully-laid foundations of institutional Southern Baptist life buckled and ultimately collapsed under the weight of newly empowered legalistic, fundamentalist religion channeled into the "takeover" of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), Sherman stood tall, offering a prophetic voice that many on both the right and left did not want to hear, and blazing a trail for traditional Baptists seeking to escape the Southern Baptist wreckage.

Memorial services, including webcasts, are scheduled for today and Thursday for the man who served as the first leader of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF). The emergence of the CBF in 1990/1991, led by Sherman, signaled that for white Baptists in the South, the larger Baptist identity, distinctives, heritage and missionary impulse would remain intact at a time when a new breed of fundamentalist Baptists were trying their best to demolish centuries-old Baptist foundations of freedom of conscience, the priesthood of all believers, biblical faithfulness, religious liberty and separation of church and state.

In 2008 Cecil Sherman published his autobiography, entitled By My Own Reckoning. The volume tells the story of how a Southern Baptist pastor who in his early ministry courageously confronted the racial prejudices of white Baptists in the South, was later pushed and propelled to the forefront of national Baptist life and consciousness for the sake of Baptists everywhere. For new generations of moderate Baptists who reject legalistic religion but did not personally witness the wilderness journey that paved the way for their own spiritual birthing, By My Own Reckoning provides an invaluable account of the recent history that underlies their own faith story.

Cecil Sherman, 82 at the time of his passing, was preceded in death by his wife, Dorothy "Dot" Hair. He is survived by his daughter, Eugenia Sherman Brown, who lives in Madison, Wisconsin; his brother, Bill Sherman, of Nashville, Tennessee; his sister, Ruth, who lives in Oklahoma City, and a grandson, Nathaniel.

While Cecil Sherman will be missed by traditional Baptists everywhere, his presence in Baptist life remains with us, forever woven into the narrative of a freedom-loving people of faith.

More Links:

Associated Baptist Press obituary

News and Updates from the Cecil Sherman website

Anti-American Health Care Reform Opponents Spew Hatred and Venom

2010-03-24T11:11:00.005-04:00

Colonial Baptists, over some 150 years of bloodied backs and prison time, played an instrumental role in establishing America as the world's first nation that, through governing structures, placed primary emphasis upon human rights, freedoms and welfare. To be certain, the ideals of our nation's founding fathers - in no small part inspired by Baptists' insistence upon full religious liberty and separation of church and state - are yet being worked out in the realm of reality: slavery was legal until the 1860s, racial discrimination was legal until the 1960s, gender discrimination was long a part of our nation's history, and to this very day the anti-American spirit of inequality remains embedded within the hearts, minds and souls of many Americans.

Much of American history has revolved around a narrative of individuals who were (and are) far more concerned with their own well-being than that of their fellow Americans. This pattern began in the colonial era, when established state churches (theocracies) respected only those who were of their particular religious faith. For this reason the heretical, liberal, radical Baptists were beaten, whipped, jailed and suffered many other persecutions at the hands of theocratic colonial governments. That Baptists emerged triumphant in the Revolutionary era is a testimony to their perseverance and their unselfish commitment to the championing of equal rights for all persons: their victory in securing America's founding as a secular nation committed to religious liberty for all and separation of church and state was a victory for all Americans. The colonial theocracies lost their power and control, and state churches could no longer use government to force religious compliance, as the United States Constitution created a nation of citizens with legal equal rights and privileges (with the exception of blacks and women, admittedly, for many years).

And yet ... in addition to, and alongside of, racial and gender issues, the colonial-era legacy of power and privilege that refuses to recognize the equality of citizens remains embedded within America.

The opening years of the 20th century witnessed the ascent of corporations to the seats of power and privilege formally occupied by colonial theocrats. By the 1930s, corporate leaders, playing to fears stoked by the Great Depression, convinced many American citizens that any government policies designed to further the "general welfare" of the citizenry as stated by the U.S. Constitution, were in reality attempts to turn America into a socialist or communist nation. This perverse misuse of the Constitution, spearheaded and stoked by corporate interests and fanned into flames by many (primarily) majority white citizens (including many conservative Protestant Christians) who feared immigrants and (later) opposed equal rights for blacks, in the ensuing decades erupted into full blown rage. Opposition (often violent) to Social Security (1935), minimum wage laws (1938), the Civil Rights Act (1964), and Medicare (1965) - all of which were enacted to further the general welfare and equality of all American citizens - was led (to varying degrees) by a combination of corporate interests and white religious indignation claiming (in each instance) that the legislation was either socialist or communist (or both).

While corporate America (increasingly aligned with white conservative Protestants) proved unable to prevent the enactment of the four landmark social legislation achievements noted above, by playing upon the fears of majority whites, corporations further consolidated power and control over America under the guise of free markets (with unfettered free markets held forth as the righteous alternative to godless socialism and communism). By the early 1970s, ongoing fear-fueled fallout from three decades of social legislation reached a tipping point as unfettered free market ideology gained enough influence and power within the national political sphere and on main street to nudge government toward redistribution of the nation's wealth to the rich. And by 1980, the final marriage of corporation, white conservative Protestantism, and federal government was consummated: Ronald Reagan served in the U.S. presidency and enacted policies further transferring the nation's wealth to the rich, while Jerry Falwell formally aligned the nation's white conservative Protestants with the morality-cloaked economic agenda of Reagan Republicans (in the 1960s, Falwell had opposed civil rights as a communist agenda; now he led the rising Religious Right to oppose the "communist" agenda of Democrats and religious liberals).

For the next three decades, corporate America ruled virtually unchecked, served by government. The era of far-reaching social legislation came to an end; government's championing of the "general welfare" of the citizenry was mothballed. White conservative Christians (many increasingly voicing theocratic overtones), having been convinced of the godliness of unfettered free markets, cheered as their money was redistributed to the wealthy, convinced that their Republican allies would reward them by enacting their religious agendas into federal law. The alliance of corporation, religion and government received an additional boost when in 1996 Republican strategist Roger Ailes formed the Fox News Channel to assist in the furtherance of the Corporate/Republican/Religious Right agenda.

Under Republicans, the first decade of the 21st century witnessed an even greater acceleration of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. By 2004, the richest Americans were taxed at a federal rate well less than half of that of 1970, while the remaining population was stuck with a higher federal tax rate than in 1970. By 2007, the 400 richest Americans owned more wealth than 1/2 of the entire United States population (that is, the 150,000,000 least wealthy Americans). And at present, the United States is now the equivalent of a third-world nation in terms of the disparity between rich and poor.

And then along came Barack Obama, America's first black president, in 2009.

Immediately angry white Americans formed the "Tea Party" movement. Suddenly indignant over deficit spending (the trademark of Republican administrations from Reagan forward, and especially under George W. Bush) and tax increases (never mind that Reagan enacted the largest peacetime tax increase in American history), and claiming that Obama was a socialist and a communist - and Hitler reincarnate - and would ruin America through health care reform, the Tea Party movement set out to drive Obama out of office. The racist nature inherent within much of the white Tea Party movement is readily evident: they resort to the same arguments antebellum southern whites used in defending slavery (states rights and freedom only for themselves and like-minded persons) and they repeatedly put white supremacists front-and-center stage in their rallies (both local and national).

Now, with the passage of health care reform (a goal sought by U.S. presidents since Teddy Roosevelt), the hatred of large-scale government actions on behalf of the general welfare of the citizenry - a hatred with colonial precedent in the persecution of religious heretics such as Baptists, its antebellum expression rooted in defense of slavery, and 20th century expressions driven by corporately and religiously-stoked fears of socialism and communism - has again erupted full-scale.

Specifically, Tea Partiers and allied Republicans, serving America's corporate interests, are frenzied with rage (also see here and here) against extending health care access to all Americans, a rage that has also revitalized the Religious Right in the post-George W. Bush era. At least one Southern Baptist pastor is calling upon God to kill all the Democrat lawmakers in Congress, while another insists that in offering health care access to all Americans, the United States has become equivalent to “Nazi Germany, Communist USSR, Communist Cuba, and Iraq under Saddam.” Yet they are only following the lead of Southern Baptist leaders such as ethicist Richard Land, who back in October labeled national health care as Nazism (and continues to rage against health care access), and theologian Albert Mohler who (falsely) claims that health care reform legalizes federal funding of abortions, (falsely) claims that Christ is unconcerned with social reform, and expresses no concern for the tens of thousands of deaths and millions of ruined lives each year that result from America's current system of corporately-controlled, rationed health care.

In short, it has been a long, sordid journey to the present day where many white American Christians (including some national Southern Baptist leaders), now long married to unfettered capitalism and the extreme wing of the Republican Party and politically selfish-minded, are spewing anti-American hatred, venom and lies in their rage against health care access for all Americans.

Yet I am hopeful that David Leonhardt is right in his contention that putting an end to corporately-controlled rationed health care marks the beginning of pulling America out of its descent into third-world wealth-gap status, by reversing decades of economic stagnation and wealth redistribution to the rich, and refocusing government to serving the general welfare of all Americans.

And I want to believe that today's Baptists (in particular) who are at the moment so enraged that America once again is ready to serve all her citizens, will in a future cooler moment reflect upon their own faith heritage of championing equal rights for all, and recognize that selfish individualism is a barrier to America's greatness.

Texas Republican David Bradley: God Does Not Exist

2010-03-12T17:11:00.004-05:00

Texas conservative and self-proclaimed Christian David Bradley, a Republican on the Texas Board of Education, has decided that God does not exist.

That is, according to Mr. Bradley's own reasoning, God does not exist.

Here's the story:

Bradley and his so-called "Christian" Republicans, who control the Texas Board of Education, have led the TBE to rewrite American history and economics to suit their own personal fantasies.

And what fantasies would that be? That separation of church and state in America never happened, and unfettered free markets are to be worshiped. Bradley and his allies even managed to censure Thomas Jefferson from Texas textbooks because Jefferson dared talk about separation of church and state.

That these so-called Christians would want to remove Jefferson and Baptists - the greatest champions of separation of church and state in colonial America - out of American history is rather strange. If not for Baptists of the 17th and 18th centuries, Bradley and his allies would quite likely be living in a nation in which the government mandated their religious beliefs. Yet bizarre as it seems, that is just their point: Bradley and his ilk are theocrats who want government to cater to their personal religious views and impose them on everyone else.

Not surprisingly, historians and other observers are outraged that Bradley and his allies have emasculated American history in order to serve their own personal interests.

And what does Mr. Bradley have to say to those who object to his fantasies-in-action? “I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” he declared. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”

Mr. Bradley obviously has never heard of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which clearly establishes - thanks to the untiring efforts of our Baptist ancestors (and yes, they were liberals in their day) - the separation of church and state.

Every American who believes in the First Amendment should each claim the $1000 that Bradley offered to anyone who could locate separation of church and state in the Constitution. Beyond that, SOMEONE needs to introduce David Bradley to the U. S. Constitution, a document - his arrogant pronouncements notwithstanding - which is seemingly quite foreign to him.

"But wait," you say, Mr. Bradley? You mean that since the words "separation of church and state" are not in the Constitution, the concept does not exist? You only believe it if the exact wording is in the Constitution?

Ah, that is why you believe God does not exist! God is not mentioned in the Constitution ... and therefore God does not exist!

Well, Mr. Bradley, in secular America, you as an opponent of Baptists, worshiper of unfettered free markets, and apparent atheist, are free to practice your own peculiar fantasies, and even to label those fantasies as "Christian." And you're even free to try and draw others into your fantasy world. But if you insist on trying to force the government - local, state, or federal - to give favoritism to (and/or promote) your personal beliefs that you pass off as religion, those Baptists whom you've written out of the history books are gonna come back to haunt you one day.

And while in your constitutional world God does not exist, it is doubtful that your blindness and deafness to history is the last word about what is and what is not.

The Mount Vernon Statement: Roadmap to (Another) Civil War

2010-02-24T10:53:00.007-05:00

Last week a number of prominent religious and political conservatives (including Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) released a new statement of "Conservative Beliefs, Values and Principles." The document, entitled The Mount Vernon Statement, claims as its purpose the defense of "the high ground of America’s founding principles."

A cursory reading of the document, however, with a little knowledge of America's antebellum history, reveals the document for what it is: a modern restatement of the same political and religious arguments used by antebellum southern states in defending the rights of slaveholders to own slaves. Furthermore, the Mount Vernon pronouncement is modeled after a 1960 white conservative political call to arms - the Sharon Statement - against the liberalism of the Civil Rights movement. (The Mount Vernon Statement web site initially included a link to the Sharon Statement noting the inspiration derived from the 1960 document, but subsequently removed it.)

In short, the religious and politically conservative elites who signed the document have reclaimed the southern ideological "high ground" of states rights and freedom defined as personal liberties for select individuals (but mandated inequities in American society at large).

To this southern antebellum framework the Mount Vernon Statement adds civil privileges for Christians (does anyone doubt the reference to "faith" refers to Christians specifically?) and bows before the altar of unfettered free markets that have turned 21st-century America into the equivalent of a Third World (undeveloped) nation in regards to the astonishing inequities of our national wealth gap.

Young conservative Southern Baptists are right to criticize SBC leaders who signed this statement as persons "seduced by political idolatry." Conservative political icon Christopher Buckley is likely right that the statement more immediately originates from an innate hatred of President Obama. Other commentators are correct to point out that the Mount Vernon Statement mangles its usage of America's founding documents (not to mention the irony that the United States Constitution, which Mount Vernon signees present as of divine origin, makes no mention of God).

While likely few, if any, of the signers of the Mount Vernon Statement are racists, the statement - like the larger Tea Party movement which it parrots - is that of white conservatives devoted to antebellum southern ideology welded with modern free market extremism. The statement is not reflective of the ethnically diverse, pluralistic nation that America is, nor is it reflective of the Christ to whom some of the signees claim allegiance. Rather than a roadmap to the future, it is a desperate attempt to mandate an inequitable society ruled by an ideology that has more in common with theocracies and oligarchies than western democracy. Our colonial Baptist forefathers lived under such tyrannies, and their ongoing witness and ageless voices serve as a warning to all Americans to remain faithful to our nation's founding principles of democracy, freedom, and equality for all.

"Progressivism" is a "Disease in the Republic"?

2010-02-22T08:00:00.005-05:00

Glenn Beck, he of Tea Party fame, recently pronounced that the "progressive movement" is a "disease in the Republic" and a "cancer." He also said: "All right, now, if all of this sounds like a government out of control, go back to the progressive movement. It is not what our founders of this country intended."

One thing Tea Partiers consistently ignore is history. Despite their moniker, the movement bears no resemblance to the revolutionary-era Boston Tea Party. And despite Beck's rantings, progressivism has always been at the core of the American nation.

Baptists in the colonial era were the progressives of the day (alongside smaller groups like Quakers), fighting for freedom of conscience, religious liberty, pluralism, and separation of church and state. The Baptist vision - for some 150 years considered heretical and subversive by conservative, theocratic colonial church states - finally won out in the founding of the new American nation, a nation founded upon the liberal, progressive principles of freedom, justice, secular government, human equality, and human rights.

In the decades and centuries following, it fell upon successive generations to further advance the nation's expressed commitment to freedom and human rights. The story of America from the late 18th century to the present is a narrative of a nation fleshing out the substance of these founding principles, ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution in terms of America as a people who are committed to human equality, "justice," "domestic tranquility", "common defence," "the general welfare" of all citizens, "the blessings of liberty," and First Amendment rights of separation of church and state and freedom of expression. It is a story yet unfinished, and pockmarked with plenty of warts. But it is the story of the unfolding of the ideals voiced by our nation's founding fathers.

Yet demagogues like Glenn Beck have little use for truth or for America's liberal, progressive founding principles. Rather, their concern is their own personal welfare at the expense of those with whom they disagree. Their rhetorical demands are for a country in which there is essentially no federal government, taxes are virtually non-existent, life and death and wealth and poverty are willed by the profit-driven dictates of large corporations, freedom of conscience is restricted (if not illegal), diversity does not exist, the full rights of citizenship are limited to ideologically-pure persons (and maybe even ethnically pure), and freedom exists only within the parameters of approved group-think.

In short, the world of Glenn Beck and his loyalists is a world opposed to historical American principles and ideals. And while America's liberal, progressive foundations allow Beck the freedom to express his subversive views, if Beck and his followers were to succeed in abolishing America's historical identity, their ideological triumph would seal the destruction of the nation they love to hate.

A CAPSULE HISTORY OF BAPTISTS to be Released March 1

2010-02-10T08:00:00.001-05:00

My newest book, entitled A Capsule History of Baptists, published by the Baptist History and Heritage Society, is scheduled for release March 1. Early reviews are available here. Pricing is 20% off for pre-orders placed prior to March 1.

As a teaser, here are the opening paragraphs of the volume:

"Prison bars and hostile courts on two continents during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fueled a freedom movement unlike any the world had never known: the liberation of human conscience and the separation of church and state. Political and religious authorities in Britain tried mightily to repress the little religious sect that refused to be silenced.

Theocrats in the colonies sought to eradicate the troublesome dissenters from the New World. The religious and political establishment, in short, denied earthly citizenship and shut the gates of heaven in order to silence dissident cries for freedom. And yet the small, persecuted sect that came to be known as Baptists persevered.

Against all odds, the freedom fighters slowly, relentlessly gnawed the cords that had bound human conscience for over twelve hundred years. They endured death, beatings, whippings, and stonings. Wafting from dank jails, back alleys, and dark forests, the Baptist cry of freedom perplexed the powerful and inspired other dissenters.

From their beginnings, Baptists were the subject of an eradication campaign directed by the most powerful figures in Europe. Thomas Helwys (c. 1575-1616), a wealthy and respected layman who cast his lot with the first Baptist congregation in 1609 in Amsterdam, was jailed in 1612 in Newgate, the most loathsome and feared prison in England. Within four years of his incarceration, at about the age of forty, Helwys became the first Baptist martyr. The story of his faith and death defined the narrative of the people called Baptists until the late eighteenth century, while his personal convictions grounded the Baptist nexus and ethos for over four centuries."

Did I mention that the price of the book is 20% off until March 1? :-)

Howard Zinn: A Legacy of a Journey Unfinished

2010-01-30T10:05:00.002-05:00

Howard Zinn died this week. While his death did not generate headline status, his legacy - that of telling the stories of common people who changed a nation - daily pulses on the front pages of American newspapers large and small, digital and print, that chronicle the struggles of a country in cultural upheaval. It is a legacy yet straining toward a distant finish line, halting and paradoxical, inching forward despite hurricane-force corporate headwinds generated by powerful and wealthy elites.

While Zinn's rise from a modest background to World War II bomber pilot to Civil Rights activist to world-acclaimed historian spanned most of the 20th century, his contribution to the American narrative found expression with the 1980 publication of A People's History of the United States, a volume that changed the telling of history. Prior to Zinn's People's History, the story of America as told in the nation's classrooms was from the perspective of political and wealthy white elites, past and present.

Departing from the status quo of sanitized public history, Zinn offered a bold - and radical - new look at the American story through the eyes and lives of working people, the disenfranchised, and overlooked minorities. Controversial to this day due to its examination of the long-ignored dark underside of American heroes (Thomas Jefferson the salveholder, or Andrew Jackson's harsh campaign to remove Native Americans, for example), A People's History (undergoing numerous editions since 1980) nonetheless transformed history classrooms by summoning the voices of minorities and common folk to tell their version of U.S. history.

Ironically, Zinn's public call to remember history from a common-folk and minority perspective began even as American politics entered into what became a three-decade effort to position history more firmly into the domain of powerful elites at the expense of everyone else. With a wink at working families and religious conservatives, the affable Ronald Reagan and his Republican allies began to systematically redistribute wealth from the pocketbooks of the poor to the already-bulging bank accounts of the richest of the rich. Remarkably, the victims of Reaganomics smiled and praised the "great communicator" as he talked of tax cuts for the poor and middle class (while in reality cutting the taxes of the richest of Americans and enacting the largest tax increase in American history in order to finance his redistribution of wealth) and restoration of America's moral, "Christian" heritage (while his promises of "restoring prayer" in public schools and anti-abortion rhetoric prompted the formation of the Religious Right and brought about the marriage of religious conservatives and the Republican Party, he never delivered on his words).

Thirty years later, the ideological warfare between elites and common folk rages unabated. Under George W. Bush, the redistribution of wealth to the rich reached historical proportions, with the 400 richest Americans worth more than the 150,000,000 million poorest (that's almost half the U.S. population, and here is a perspective on the numbers). The disparity is now so great that the United States is the equivalent of a Third World (undeveloped) nation in regards to the nation's wealth gap. Yet many poor and middle class religious conservatives continue defending wealth redistribution to the rich, convinced that the Republican Party is their friend, and that their freedom is somehow tied to tax cuts for the rich and a government subservient to big corporations (further evidenced in the recent Supreme Court campaign finance decision revoking a century of precedents in allowing corporations to usurp the voice of American citizens in matters of politics).

Thus, Zinn's unfinished legacy is more critical than ever as America of the 21st century is in ever-greater danger of succumbing to a religiously-yoked devotion to rule by the rich through capitalism unfettered. The irony of Zinn's legacy at this moment is that many members of the poor and middle class whom the historian long championed yet remain prostrated before the narrative of the powerful and wealthy elites (and their big corporations) that Zinn spent his life battling. The final chapter of Zinn's legacy, however, will not fully unfold until mid-century, at which time today's ethnic minorities will be the national majority.

While few Baptists have noticed the passing of Howard Zinn, we of all people would do well to remember the lessons of our own past as a persecuted and hated religious minority during the 17th and 18th centuries. Although white fundamentalists demonize the diversity that characterizes Baptists today, our diversity - theological, ethnic, political, cultural, social, global - is our strength and the key to our future. The public voices of Baptists in America in 2050 will not be white, male, Republican, capitalistic-demagoguing, fundamentalists like Al Mohler and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention. Rather, they will be the voices of ethnic, gender, political, economic and theological diversity already present in today's Baptist World Alliance. And somewhere buried within will be the still-pulsating legacy of Howard Zinn.

Theology Amidst the Rubble (of Earthquakes and Human Minds)

2010-01-26T07:31:00.006-05:00

The New York Times on Monday ran a feature story about the devastation on one particular street, Avenue Poupelard, in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. The documentary provides a snapshot of life in Haiti's largest city following the earthquake, a narrative of human suffering, survival, perseverance, creativity, and halting attempts to re-image the future.

There is an evangelical church on Avenue Poupelard - at least, there was a church. Prior to the earthquake, Pastor Enso Sylvert preached to hundreds of worshipers, crowds so large that many stood on the sidewalk outside the church doors, straining to hear his sermons. Now, according to the Times, Sylvert preaches outdoors within a makeshift camp of homeless neighborhood residents adjacent to the church grounds, and he is as zealous as ever, preaching that "our only hope lies with God."

Yet not all the homeless on Avenue Poupeland apparently share that sentiment. Within the camp, according to one resident, "We are trying to stay on friendly terms, but sometimes there are disputes." And what are those disputes? Food, water, clothing, or perhaps shelter? No. Rather, as the Times writer summarizes, "a theological debate about exactly what God was trying to say when he shook Haiti to its core."

At the time of one of the greatest natural disasters and human sufferings of recent decades, in the midst of a lack of the basic necessities required to sustain human life - theology divides the victims.

Some preachers, whether it be Sylvert standing atop the rubble of the Haiti earthquake or Pat Robertson speaking from atop the throne of his television empire, know and declare the mind of God, passing it along to lesser mortals. Meanwhile, among persons in the pews and streets, and even amidst calamitous ruins, God's mind is much less certain.

"Why can't we all just get along?" said Rodney King, an African-American beaten by white police offers in Los Angeles in 1991. It's as good a question as any that gets to the heart of an unresolvable human problem: theology.

Ultimately, God is what humans say God is. Despite religious fundamentalists' claims to the textual perfection of their respective holy books (whether it be imaginary original autographs of a particular Christian canon, the preserved text of the 7th century Islamic scriptures penned from Mohammad's visions, the translated text of Joseph Smith's visions in the early 19th century, etc.) that forever settle questions about God, all religious expressions - from the most conservative to the most liberal - in reality place their respective faiths in a mental vision of who God is and an interpretation of what God does and says.

In short, apart from the human mind, there is no theology ("God-talk"). Absent theology, there is no God. God exists because we talk about God (or, if you wish, since we talk about God, God exists). If this sounds outrageous, consider that if no one in human history had ever thought or said anything about God (whether singular or plural), religion would not exist. Majestic mountains, fertile valleys and teeming wildlife on planet earth (not to mention the incomprehensible breadth and scope and diversity of the universe) may reflect the imaginative and unsurpassed power of a Creator who exists beyond time and space, but the frail and fickle human mind is the prism through which the Creator is imaged as God.

And so we return to the ruins of Avenue Poupelard in Haiti. Amidst the rubble, theology divides. Minds grasp for God, shaping and re-shaping God as personal circumstances, desires and environment warrant. God is who we say God is. And we too often choose a God who reflects the rumbling discontent of our own minds. Therein lies the danger of crusaders - preachers, priests, prophets, politicians, pundits and even pew-sitters - who devote their energies to conquering all Gods who exist apart from their own respective minds.

From Iraq to Haiti: Jesus the Terminator

2010-01-19T07:01:00.003-05:00

Jesus must no longer recognize himself.

By now the world knows that the Bush administration turned to a militant Christian fundamentalist -- Erik Prince, the son of a major bank-roller of the right-wing Family Research Council and Focus on the Family -- for private security operations in Iraq. Prince viewed his private military firm, Blackwater, as doing the work of Christ in killing Iraqies. These modern Christian crusades must be understood in the context of the fundamentalist belief that Christ will very soon return in military triumph in the Middle East, an Armageddon for which Prince seemingly understood himself as blazing the way.

But there is more. This week another story of militant crusading Christians broke into the mainstream news: a military contractor claims that their mission is "spiritually transformed firearm[s] of Jesus Christ." A Michigan-based company, Trijicon, has long supplied high-powered rifle sights to the U.S. military, sights inscribed with Bible verses. Although Trijicon's actions have been known for years, until now the government has ignored this violation of church and state. The verses about Jesus, describing him as the light of the world and extolling his love, encourage U.S. service members to kill the enemy, transforming warfare into a "spiritual" mission.

For those who wish to understand why some followers of Christ believe they are called to kill and even murder fellow human beings in the name of Christ, the backstory leads (at least in part) to the Council for National Policy, a politically-influential behind-the-scenes organization comprised of well-known and powerful social conservatives, who for years have been trying to maneuver the United States down the road to Armageddon. Members of the CNP are convinced the end of the world is predestined, with a theocratic-America playing a special role in ushering in the world war to end all wars. Founded by Baptist pastor Tim LaHaye (author of the apocalyptic Left Behind book series based on a particular interpretation of the biblical book of Revelation) and bankrolled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon (founder of the Unification Church and self-declared second incarnation of Christ), members include/have included virtually all of the elite of the far right-wing movement in America, such as: James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Phyllis Schlafly, Paul Weyrich, Edwin J. Feulner Jr (Heritage Foundation), Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Senator Trent Lott, Senator Don Nickles, former United States Attornies General Ed Meese and John Ashcroft, gun-rights activist Larry Pratt, Col. Oliver North, and philanthropist Else Prince (mother of the afore-mentioned Erik Prince).

Place these militant, crusading fundamentalist agendas against the backdrop of the current tragedy in Haiti. Council for National Policy member Pat Robertson blamed the earthquake-produced humanitarian disaster on Haiti being allied with Satan (a remark that refers to the historical presence of voodoo practices within Haiti, and that is merely the latest in a string of such Jesus-hates-you statements from Robertson and, before his death, Jerry Falwell). This week another Baptist pastor chimed in to echo Robertson.

Despite Robertson's dismissal of Haiti as a land of Satan-worshipers, many Haitians are Christians, and many earthquake survivors are relying on their faith (and here) to sustain them at a time of death, destruction and chaos. Yet amidst the narratives of Robertson's God of hate; the Terminator Jesus of military contractor Trijicon and Erik Prince's Blackwater; the easily-manipulated God of the Council For National Policy; and (conversely) the never-say-die faith of some Haitians on the scale of an Old Testament saga -- is a gaping, haunting, horrendous reminder that we live in a broken world that at any moment is only seconds away from unimaginable human death and suffering on a vast scale, and ever in need of a love and hope that transcends the brokenness.

While a camouflaged, militant 21st century Jesus may roam in the minds, hearts, corporate boardrooms, churches, and foxholes of many Christian fundamentalists who project their Christ's anger and hatred upon their present (ethnic, national, doctrinal, etc.) enemy, the biblical Jesus quietly offers his presence of love, hope and grace to all who suffer and hurt.

NOTE: Donations to the Haiti relief and recovery efforts can be made through the Baptist World Alliance and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, among other organizations.

The Scope of God: Boxed Up, Armed to the Teeth, or Far Out?

2010-01-13T10:59:00.005-05:00

Theology is by definition deity-talk, and lots of deity believers (Christians or otherwise) are pretty well convinced they have a lock on who God/god/gods is/are. Not surprisingly, however, God/god/gods identity(s) is/are quite confusing in religious circles, much less from the perspective of outsiders.

Within the Christian world, myth-maker David Barton has reconstructed history and God to make the Creator an American deity who crafted America as his very own special nation. Barton and his followers are now intent on forcing Texas to teach their version of God in Texas public schools, a step along the way to creating a theocracy in America.

Among monotheists alone, many religious versions of God are quite bloody. In an earlier era, colonial theocracies in America persecuted and killed secularists and Christian dissenters (including Baptists). Later, many American white Christians worshiped a God who had chosen white people over black people - and they were willing to kill fellow Christians and others who refused to accept their racially-divisive God and his divinely sanctioned racially-structured society; the killings continued into the 1960s as some white Christians turned to terrorism to prevent racial integration. Today, some American Christians believe the war in Iraq was mandated by God. In Ireland, Protestants and Catholics have long waged deadly warfare against one another. In the Islamic world, some Muslims worship a God who demands that his followers kill "infidels." And the bloody warfare between Jews and Arabs may never end, as each side claims the will of God in killing the other. Other examples could be offered from the world of polytheists/etc., but the listing above is representative of theologies that incorporate holy killing.

So just who is/are God/god/gods and what is/are God/god/gods really about? While the Bartons of the world carry God around in a box of their own making, and many God/god/gods believers express their faith through machine guns, grenades and bombs (of the home-made or industrial variety), many others find peace and harmony within the same religious traditions that too often breed violence and murder. Religious insiders turn to various formulas to try and explain the hate vs. peace elements of their own religion, and some contemporary outside observers have offered detached answers, including Robert Wright in his fascinating volume, The Evolution of God.

And yet all of this divergent God/god/gods talk and too-often-deadly God/god/gods action tends to focus on the human level of existence. But is there a more universal (literally) scope to the God/god/gods equation?

In very recent years, astronomers have come to realize that there are large numbers of planets in the universe. Today's planet count is 424, but within a decade it may well be in the tens of thousands (or more), as our scientific planet-hunting technologies mushroom. It is a matter of years, maybe even months, until astronomers identify an "earthlike" planet. Scientists have already determined that the conditions for life exist in other places in the universe; the question for 2010 is, "when (not if) will other intelligent life be found" on an earthlike planet? That is, more and more scientists are convinced that in an infinite universe inhabited by many planets, other intelligent life must exist somewhere.

So what will happen to God/god/gods talk when other intelligent life is discovered? What theologies will be able to accommodate such a discovery, and what theologies will be most threatened? How will God/god/gods be redefined and reshaped? How will our religious history be rewritten?

And perhaps even more interestingly: how will religious beings (if there are any) existing among other intelligent life be forced to rethink their images and definitions of God/god/gods? Or are they already aware of us, and wonder why we do the things we do in the name of our God/god/gods? For that matter, do they kill one another in pursuit of and devotion to their God/god/gods?

While the discovery of other intelligent life will change the thinking and course of humanity on a vast scale broad and deep, to religious thinkers will fall the debate over whether to craft a narrative of an earth-centric God/god/gods or a more universal deity or deities and a somewhat-displaced earth. Although this task may seem distant and far-fetched to many, the Catholic Church is already addressing it. In addition, the David Barton's of today's planet earth may offer some insight into how religious earthlings will one day be forced to reshape earthly religious foundations. And one might dare hope that discovery of other intelligent life will nudge humankind to abandon violent expressions of religious faith.

Tea Parties and Obama Effigy in Jimmy Carter's Hometown of Plains, GA

2010-01-04T14:59:00.006-05:00

Early Saturday morning an effigy of President Obama was found hanging on a storefront, in front of a large Jimmy Carter sign, in Carter's hometown of Plains, Georgia. Watch this video: the store owner says it is "not a story" and refuses to talk; only black citizens seem willing to talk.

That this cowardly event took place in Carter's hometown is evidence that racism in America, and politics, is far from over.

On July 4, 2009, some 400 persons attended an anti-government, anti-Obama Tea Party rally held in Plains (photos). Among the sponsors was FreedomWorks, a conservative political organization devoted to small government and unfettered capitalism, and who promotes the Tea Party movement on racist online forums (whether this is done by FreedomWorks members or paid staffers is unclear; be aware that the forums link contains some graphic language, but also note the enthusiasm of racists for the Tea Party). The money trail reveals that FreedomWorks is the joint intertwining of radical Republicans, anti-government forces, racists, and certain big corporations.

Speakers at the Tea Party rally in Plains included an attorney speaking against separation of church and state, and Baptist pastor James Brown from Barnesville who spoke on behalf of states-right, Baptist, candidate-for-governor Ray McBerry. McBerry is the Georgia Chapter Chairman of the League of the South, a racist, southern nationalist organization. Brown (who in October started a small, strict Calvinist church comprised of two families with lots of kids) is also a member of the League of the South, as well as the racist-affiliated neo-confederate organization Sons of Confederate Veterans, and is the author of the Southern Resurgence blog and the Baptist Vision Web site.

In other words, back in July, the good - probably mostly church-going - white folks who turned out for the Plains Tea Party (note that while Plains is 60% African-American, the Plains Tea Party photos above are only of whites) got a good dose of southern racism (inferred or spoken, or perhaps both) from preacher and politician alike. In addition, here's the kind of anti-Obama posters that have appeared at Georgia Tea Parties such as the one in Plains.

Consider the July event in the context of this statement from Dr. Anthony Samad, an associate professor of African American studies at East Los Angeles College: "I think there's this notion that we're in a post-racial period in America because of the election of the first African American president. However, this president has received more death threats than any other president in the history of America."

Southern Baptist Heresy: Rapture and Premillennial Dispensationalism

2009-12-31T07:05:00.002-05:00

This week Baptist Press, the public relations / promotion arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, explores and explains why Southern Baptists must place their faith in the 1830s-era religious heresies of Rapture and Premillennial Dispensationalism.

Almost all Southern Baptist college and seminary professors believe in Dispensationalism and Rapture, with variance on minor details, according to Baptist Press. Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, declares thus: "The truth of the rapture is not up for debate, but its timing is something we can graciously disagree on." Lamar Cooper, the interim president of Criswell College in Dallas, insists "premillennial dispensationalism is a logical conclusion from the simple exegesis of the inerrant Word of God."

For the uninitiated, the theories of the Rapture and Premillennial Dispensationalism were created in the 1830s by John Nelson Darby, a renegade minister in the (Anglican) Church of Ireland. A few historians also credit a contemporary of Darby's, and a handful of obscure individuals in the decades prior to Darby wrote vaguely of a secret coming of Christ for the faithful. But to Darby goes the public credit for the concepts, for which he is justly known as the "father of premillennial dispensationalism." In short, while most Christians prior to Darby believed that Christ would one day return and judge the world, Darby crafted the formal theory of a "second coming": a "secret rapture" of believers from earth that would precede the traditional second coming.

But Darby did not stop there. He also invented an entirely new system of eschatology (a word that means "end times") based upon his creation of a seven-age "dispensationalism" of world history (in effect, a dividing of human history into seven periods of time, each characterized by a different manner in which God interacted with humanity, and culminating in the Rapture, followed by a seven-year period of intense tribulation on earth and the final second coming of Christ in triumph). Although neither dispensationalism nor rapture were biblical concepts, Darby taught that the Bible must be interpreted in light of his personal theories.

Collectively, Darby's theories became known as premillennial dispensationalism ... and outside of his little circle of followers, were immediately dismissed by Christians as heresy.

But then a very strange thing happened: Darby's heresy began a slow journey to orthodoxy. His followship grew slowly but steadily, and although Darby died in 1882, in the early 20th century his heretical creations were blessed by Christian fundamentalists (who arose in the late 19th century, but that's another story!) as ... biblical truth. The final seal of approval arrived in the form of C. I. Schofield's Study Bible, which in 1917 presented Darbyism as orthodoxy.

Yet the transition from heresy to truth must be understood against the backdrop of history. In the first half of the 19th century, many Western Christians believed that world conditions were getting better, and therefore the (one) second coming of Christ would come after a thousand year period of peace and prosperity (a view known as "postmillennialism"). By the early 20th century, however, many fundamentalist Christians were convinced that the world was succumbing to evil, and the concept of a pre-second coming Rapture to rescue Christians from the evil world seemed rather appealing.

Now, almost a century after the transformation of Darby's heresies into orthodoxy, fundamentalist Southern Baptist theologians and leaders pledge almost universal allegiance to an 1830s fabrication. Yet this is simply another example of the post-biblical nature - if not simple biblical illiteracy - of fundamentalism in the upper echelons of Southern Baptist life.

Do Corporate Feudal Lords Own America?

2009-12-21T09:26:00.005-05:00

The impending Senate passage of a health reform bill hopefully (further congressional wrangling lies ahead) marks the beginning of a new era of respect for humanity and ethics in America (here's the rundown of the bill). Sadly, however, unified Republican opposition indicates that the GOP is determined to maintain its status quo as the lap dog of big corporations. (Not that Democrats haven't caved to corporate masters on some points.)

This most recent hurdle surmounted in the ongoing health care debate takes place against the backdrop of a larger question: What does the current health care debate reveal about modern America?

Here's a brief review of my earlier blogs regarding free market health care: As a nation, we (now) willingly allow the free market health insurance industry to kill 40,000 or more people a year by denying coverage or claims; force hundreds of thousands of insurance customers into medical bankruptcy; and destroy lives and families at will. And we allow these things for what reason? In order that more of the nation's wealth will be redistributed to multi-millionaire insurance industry executives, according to a former insurance industry insider. Doctors are also well aware of the evils of today's skewed free market health care system.

In short, the status quo is that of greed and disregard for human life (i.e., your insurance company is concerned only with your money, not your life).

And sadly, many Christians (including many self-described pro-lifers) so worship capitalism that they defend our current free market health care system that kills Americans, destroys families, and robs the poor in order to give more money to big corporations and wealthy executives.

So who owns America? If health care reform ultimately fails, or if only the most modest of steps forward are achieved in the next few months, big corporations may yet be allowed to continue hoarding even more of our nation's wealth. The richest 1% of citizens own about 40% of the nation's wealth, while the bottom 40% of American's citizens in terms of wealth, own .2% of the nation's wealth. (Click here to see a listing of studies on wealth distribution in America.) This disparity has resulted in America being near the bottom of the list in terms of "income inequality and poverty" among large nations. Furthermore, American wealth distribution has degenerated to such a degree that we are now on par with the Third World (undeveloped) nations in terms of the amount of national wealth controlled by a few rich citizens.

Is America, now mired in Third World status in terms of wealth distribution, destined, for the foreseeable future, to be owned by a handful of big corporations and wealthy individuals who in effect are feudal lords? Will our free market system continue to value greed over life, perhaps to an ever-greater degree?

The end result of the current health care debate may well answer these questions. America's corporate feudal lords of the health insurance industry variety do not want the citizenry to view well-being and life as a human right, for should we ever, as a nation, arrive at such a conclusion with conviction, the trajectory of power and freedom just might restored to the citizens.

In at least one city in America (Vallejo, California), human life is valued more than corporate profits. One can only hope that this revolutionary idea will spread to other locales, should national health care reform fail.

As Adam Smith noted in his Wealth of Nations: "Servants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged." - Bk. 1, Ch.8, Par. 36

There was a time in American history when Baptists - outcasts, impoverished, and considered religious heretics - fought for equal treatment of all citizens in matters of religion. They insisted upon pluralism, religious liberty, and separation of church and state. Perhaps there are a few Christians - Baptist or otherwise - who will not rest until twenty-first century Americans realize the fuller dream of human equality expressed in well-being and life as more important than greed. We do have a 20th century example: Baptist Tommy Douglas, recognized by his fellow citizens as the greatest Canadian of All Time because of his creation of Canada's public health care system, understood this most basic of moral principles.

The primacy of life and well-being, after all, is a core conviction not only of democracy, but also of the founder of the Christian faith, the One whose birth - and the hope and joy it represents - we celebrate this Christmas season. My prayer this holiday season is that all who claim the name of Christ will embrace His call to life, rather than find no room for Him in hearts devoted to corporate America.

Tea Party Gains Momentum, Fertile Ground For White Supremacists

2009-12-15T14:19:00.004-05:00

The Anti-Obama Tea Party movement in America continues to gain ground. Some polls now suggest that the movement has made significant inroads into the heart of the Republican Party, which itself is increasingly right-wing, eschewing any middle ground.

Bill Berkowitz offers a good analysis of the inherent racist dynamic of the Tea Party movement, a topic I've discussed before in historical perspective. In short, Berkowitz notes that although not all Tea Partiers are racist, the movement is the new ideological home of the white supremacist movement.

Will the racist-infused Tea Party movement capture the Republican Party, or perhaps even relegate the Republican Party to second-class status among conservatives? Maybe. While turnout at one recent rally suggests the movement is losing momentum, at least one poll indicates political conservative are more attracted to the Tea Party than to the Republican Party. Meanwhile, some Florida Republicans are horrified at the civil war among conservatives. Speaking to the Tea Party movement: "'If you tried to devise a strategy for destroying the Republican Party in Florida, you couldn't do much better than this,' said retired University of South Florida political scientist Darryl Paulson, a Republican and a former Heritage Foundation fellow."

Speaking to the big picture of Republican woes, Republican and former George W. Bush administration appointee Michael Petrilli, writing for the Wall Street Journal, argues that Republicans need to reach out to non-racist "Whole Foods Republicans"—independent-minded voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics.

While the final dimensions of the Tea Party movement's impact upon the Republican Party are not yet known, it seems certain that the Tea Party will figure prominently in both the 2010 congressional elections and the 2012 presidential election. Unknown at this time is which conservative political faction the Religious Right (in effect, social conservatives) will throw their weight behind in the coming three years. While many conservative Christians are enthusiastically involved in (or are cheering for) the Tea Party movement, whether or not they largely abandon the Republican Party for the Tea Party has yet to be determined. If there is one person who holds the key to the Religious Right vote, it is likely Tea Party-favorite Sarah Palin, who some are calling the next James Dobson.

Wherever one stands on the political spectrum, next year promises more political fireworks, while the voice of white supremacists grow increasingly prominent in American politics.

Huckabee, Palin and God's Will For America

2009-12-02T09:42:00.005-05:00

In the face of a clemency scandal, Mike Huckabee's prospects in the 2012 presidential election are quickly fading. Sarah Palin appears to be a likely beneficiary. Indeed, some analysts suggest she is posed to become the new figurehead of the Religious Right even as Tea Partiers and the Religious Right are allying to push the Republican Party into embracing an ideological purity test.

Could Palin become the next James Dobson or Jerry Falwell? An October 16, 2005 worship service at her home church in Alaska, the Wasilla Assemblies of God, offers insight into this question.

During the worship service, Pentecostal pastor Thomas Muthee (the man who ran a woman out of her hometown because Muthee claimed she was supernaturally causing car crashes) christened Palin as America's savior, with the approval of Palin's congregation and Palin herself.

Muthee declared that God had called Palin as His instrument for transforming American society, bringing God and the 10 Commandments back into public schools, combating the forces of witchcraft, and abolishing the separation of church and state.

See the video for yourself. Is this the future that the Religious Right envisions for America?

The Manhattan Declaration: A New Revelation and A False Gospel?

2009-11-26T07:00:00.013-05:00

What if some of the most prominent Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant leaders in the world reduced the Christian faith to three tenets absent from the Bible ... and then announced to the world that the fate of Christianity will stand or fall based on these three (non-biblical) tenets?

Imagine no more. It has happened.

This past Friday a coalition of fundamentalist Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants (Timothy George, Tony Perkins, James Dobson and Al Mohler are among the Protestant signers) staked Christianity on "the three most important issues" (according to Chuck Colson) in the world (the "first principles," according to Southern Baptist leader Richard Land), none of which are even referenced in the Bible:

1) Opposition to "abortion, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide, and euthanasia."

2) Homosexual marriage, because "marriage is the original and most important institution for sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all."

3) Freedom of religion and rights of conscience for conservative Christians above all others.

You can put down your Bibles now. Faithful Christianity, according to the Manhattan Declaration, is summed up in the three non-negotiable, non-biblical statements listed above. That abortion (and modern end-of-life issues), homosexual marriage, and special rights for conservative Christians are not even mentioned in scripture is irrelevant. The Manhattan authors have replaced the Bible with their own scripture.

Perhaps a new "god" has emerged in the 21st century, and we are now blessed to hear his spokespersons offer a new revelation? Perhaps "Manhattan" is an apt metaphor for this new revelation? Whereas the Manhattan Project of the last century ushered in the very real prospect of global annihilation, perhaps the Manhattan Declaration ushers in the era of a new, politically correct deity whose job is to "unify" Christians around ... what?

If the creators and signers of the Manhattan Declaration had chosen to use the Bible as their moral and ethical guidebook, they could have easily done so.

The Bible is quite clear, for example, that championing and advocating justice for the poor, oppressed, marginalized, and sick is the very essence of the valuing of "human life," as thousands of scripture verses testify. However, the Manhattan Declaration pays lip service to "special concern for the poor and vulnerable" while arguing, at length, that a zygote cell is a human being. Declaring the meeting of sperm and egg to be a human person does injustice to the serious ethical and moral dimensions of abortion and the sacredness of humanness.

In terms of marriage, instead of sticking with the whole story of what the Bible says about homosexuality (unfavorable by most interpretations) and marriage (arranged nuptials, polygamy sometimes allowed, childless widows commanded to bear children by their brother-in-laws, Paul's admonition that singleness is better than marriage, etc.), the Manhattan folk fuse contemporary Western marriage norms with covenantal, full-quiver theology as validated by "vast human experience", philosophy, and rationalism. Furthermore, civil unions between homosexuals will (it would seem) destroy the world, and clearly violate the religious liberty of conservative Christians.

Speaking of religious liberty, the Manhattan signers insist that those who oppose their religio-political views are not deserving of equal rights under the law.

In short, the Manhattan Declaration's willful ignoring (if not disrespect) of scripture is breathtaking. But why? What do the authors of the Manhattan Declaration want? To whom is their self-righteous anger directed?

For starters, the Manhattan signers proclaim themselves the saviors of society, the defenders of life and truth in the face of barbarianism that is threatening today's Western world. Who are these modern "barbarians"? The Obama administration ("present administration" within the Declaration) and Democrats at large ("secularists" according to Chuck Colson), it seems, aided unwittingly by many young evangelicals whose holistic views of justice are ... well ... too biblical (not to mention that many voted for Obama).

One Manhattan supporter explains the political nature of the Manhattan Declaration this way: "It is very well written and calls out many of the liberal policies our current administration is pushing on us." In a similar fashion, one supporter labels the statement simply as a "political Christian declaration."

Another supporter goes into more detail regarding what he views as the political underpinnings of the Declaration: "We are at a tipping point and that something needs to be done to bring about a renewed spirit within our culture and Nation for the very survival of our culture and Nation. Obama has acted as a lightning rod for these new movements and phenomenon and as well he should. He is a man completely divorced from American tradition, culture, history as well as its Constitutional values ... a believer of a grotesque and miserable radical left wing Marxist philosophy and must be stopped before he can implement any more of it on this great Nation any further. These new and non-violent revolutionary movements are exactly what we need at this point in time. American’s realize now that unless we unify and confront this attempt by Obama and this Congress to launch America 50 years further down the path towards a final socialist utopia over the next 1 year, which is what they are trying to do, that something needs to be done."

For the record, many fundamentalist Christians (individuals and organizations) refused to sign the Manhattan Declaration. John MacArthur refused to sign, noting that "The Gospel is barely mentioned in the Declaration." Another conservative sees the Declaration as "blurring the Gospel." And a few signers, such as Ron Sider, are not fundamentalists.

Sider aside, some non-fundamentalist Baptists are criticizing the Declaration, their observations regarding the political nature of the document mirroring that of many supporters:

Bruce Prescott notes that the Manhattan signers claim a lock on God and reserve full religious liberty only for Christians. He also suggests that the signers view a democratic, pluralistic society as "heresy."

Aaron Weaver (The Big Daddy Weave), after noting the Christian nationalistic underpinnings of the Manhattan Declaration, finds "Noticeably absent ... any real concern for the poor and oppressed in society" ... and "Some legitimate concerns mixed in with a bit of fear-mongering, vivid imagery, hyperbole, and apples and oranges comparisons."

In summary, there is little to be thankful for in regards to the politically-oriented Manhattan Declaration. The few helpful portions of the statement (well-noted by Brian McLaren) are overshadowed by the over-arching non-biblical construct, approval of Christian nationalism, and enmity toward religious and political pluralism.

Well, on second thought, maybe the colonial Puritan theocrats would approve.

But one cannot help but wonder: Is this "Christian" response to Obama and the Democrat Party the best that today's religious fundamentalists can put forth? Sure, the Tea Partiers will love it. But where is the Bible, not to mention Jesus?

Perhaps we are witnessing the dawning of Christian Atheism. What term better describes self-proclaimed Christians whose world view is primarily political and self-serving, and exists independent of scripture and Christ?

Jesus in America

2009-11-20T06:10:00.005-05:00

A story from Matthew 25, placed within a modern context:

When Jesus comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. Twenty-first century Americans will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then Jesus will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was an immigrant and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you made certain I had access to health care, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

Jesus reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did for me.'

Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed. For I was hungry and you told me to get off food stamps and get a job, I was thirsty and you called me a welfare queen, I was an immigrant and you drove me out of your country, I needed clothes and you called the police to get me off your street, I was sick and you spent your time and energy defending free market health care rationing and death panels and multi-millionaire CEOs, and on death row and your pro-life views did not apply to me.'

They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or an immigrant or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

Have too many American Christians lost sight of Jesus?

Why Are Pro-Lifers Praying for the Deaths of American Citizens?

2009-11-09T07:00:00.008-05:00

This past weekend the House of Representatives passed a comprehensive health care bill that extends health insurance to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and begins reigning in an industry that kills tens of thousands of Americans each year: private (free market) health insurance corporations. Whether through health care rationing (by denying health care insurance to tens of millions of poor and middle class families who are deemed to sick for health insurance or are unable to pay the exorbitant premiums demanded by insurance corporations) or death panels (administrators who decide whether or not to honor claims filed by health insurance customers), the free market health insurance industry prefers to let Americans die rather than selling affordable policies and honoring life-saving policy claims from their own customers in order to insure that industry CEOs collectively pocket billions of dollars.

The bill passed by the House, however, has not yet become law. The coming weeks and months will determine the fate of health care in America. To be certain, the final version of the health care bill will almost certainly not be enough to significantly reign in runaway health care costs anytime soon. Rather, it will likely be just the first step of many required to truly transition the American political establishment from viewing basic health care as a privilege for those who have enough money or the right kind of job or are appropriately healthy, rather than as an inherent human right.

Thus we now face a critical point in the history of America: are we as a nation going to continue to allow health insurance companies to kill more Americans in order to create yet more billions of dollars in blood-money profits for corporate CEOs, or do we as a nation have enough moral courage and ethical backbone to stop the greed-driven deaths of innocent Americans? Bizarrely enough, many religious persons who have long claimed to be "pro-life" want the killing to continue: they are championing the current free market health care industry with a zeal of biblical proportions.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a pro-life Baptist and otherwise seemingly-reasonable guy, said of the prospect of eventual enactment of the House's health care reform: “I hope and pray it doesn’t [pass], because it would be a disaster for the economy and health care.”

God forbid that America should choose life for her poor and middle class citizens over exorbitant profits for a handful of health insurance industry CEOs!

Graham's anti-health care reform, pro-profits-over-human-life position is the party line of all Republicans in the House save one (more on the lone dissenter later).

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader of the House and supposedly a pro-lifer, insists that the House's health care reform is the “greatest threat to freedom that I have seen in the 19 years I’ve been in Washington.”

For Boehner to equate the saving of American lives as the "greatest threat to freedom" in America exemplifies the type of desperate, ludicrous lies that extremist free market apologists are now resorting to in defense of America's wealthy elite.

At the same time, some so-called Christian ethicists such as Southern Baptist's Richard Land are providing alleged theological cover for free market health care rationing and death panels. According to Land (yet another self-proclaimed pro-lifer), God has no problem with health care rationing and death panels within a free market, capitalist health care system, while the possibility of health care rationing underneath a government system is nothing more than Nazism.

So-called pro-lifers who staunchly defend a free market constructed upon the deaths of innocent American citizens, however, would do well to listen to Representative Anh Cao of Louisiana, seemingly the lone Republican in the House who realizes that human life truly is more important than corporate profits. A self-proclaimed pro-life Catholic, he supported the health care reform bill for the very reason that many of his constituents are poor and uninsured, and thus face the prospect of untimely death in America's current free market health care system. Cao, in short, remained true to his proclaimed pro-life convictions.

So why are so many self-proclaimed pro-lifers (and Christians!) praying and advocating for the continuation of a health care system that kills tens of thousands of Americans annually?

Jesus declared that one cannot serve both God and money (Luke 16:13), while the Apostle Paul (1 Timothy 6:10) asserted that money is the root of all evil.

It would seem, scripturally speaking, that the pro-life demonizers of government health care / ceaseless defenders of free market capitalism have (knowingly or not) chosen to worship wealth over God, and, at least in some instances, opted for evil over good (expressed in willing the death of innocent people in order to preserve corporate profits).

Indeed, the future of Christianity in America may be shaped immensely by the ongoing battle between allegiance to Christ and allegiance to capitalism. Although Christ and capitalism can certainly co-exist together if the latter is kept in a proper context, the growing American evangelical propensity to force Christianity into a free market straitjacket must be resisted by followers of Christ, for the sake of everyone.

Biblical Atheism: The Real "New Atheists"?

2009-11-04T10:36:00.017-05:00

Much has been made in recent years of the emergence of "New Atheists," outspoken disbelievers of deity and deities who relentlessly excoriate religion. Popular and seemingly everywhere now, these new atheists - led by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett - are outraged over faith-based science and violence. Targeting fundamentalist religion expressed in creationist theology and violent tendencies, they find no evidence of a deity or deities within or alongside biological processes, and argue that religion itself is dangerous to the human race.

While fundamentalist Christians dismiss New Atheism, other critics (such as Karen Armstrong) contend that New Atheists are arguing against modern religious fundamentalism, rather than religion at large. Creationism, for instance, is a product of the 1960s, receiving thinly-veiled upgrades in the 1990s ("scientific creationism") and the first decade of this century ("intelligent design"). Today's popular conservative Christian view of an earth no older than 10,000 years is a phenomenon of the past 100 years. Only since the late 19th century have many Christians adhered firmly to a literalist biblical interpretative methodology constructed upon modern rationalism, embraced the modern theory about the Bible (yet absent from the Bible) dubbed "biblical inerrancy," and placed their faith in John Nelson Darby's 1820s end-times theological scheme commonly referred to as "the Rapture." In short, fundamentalism (built upon these three modern contrivances) is a novelty of modern religion, not the norm of historical Christianity. In this sense, the New Atheists are indeed swinging their rhetorical blades at modern religion.

We are witnessing, in other words, a battle over who controls scientific truth in the twenty-first century: religious fundamentalists who wish to conform science to faith, or God-disbelievers who are determined to disentangle fundamentalist religious faith from science. As for me, I side with the New Atheists in this particular battle, while nonetheless agreeing with Karen Armstrong that they are mistaken in assuming fundamentalism is representative of religion at large.

Yet there is another dimension of this battle waged on a different playing field. While many fundamentalists dismiss the New Atheists (and atheism at large) as believing in nothing, the biblical foundation of fundamentalism - biblical inerrancy - is arguably (and literally?) nothing more than religious atheism. In short, although biblical inerrancy rhetorically advocates a perfect biblical text, biblical inerrantists apply textual perfection to ... nothing.

For the biblical inerrantist, there is not a biblical text in existence that is perfect. No one has ever held a perfect biblical text, no one has ever read from a perfect biblical text, and no one has ever preached from a perfect biblical text. For the biblical inerrantist, only the non-existent original fragments of biblical writing (referred to as "autographs") are inerrant, or perfect.

In reality, the origins of any once-existent, primary-composed ancient bits and pieces of writing that reflected the original spoken (oral) traditions handed down for generations, are clouded in mystery and speculative at best. In addition, textual original autograph inerrantists do not view as authoritative the ancient, multi-generational oral traditions from which the "original" text came, begging the question of how a theoretical text can be theoretically perfect if the words put into writing where themselves imperfect? (Many inerrantists do an end run around this problem by asserting that there was no oral tradition, and that instead God spoke directly and verbally to the biblical "writers" and forced them to record his dictated utterances verbatim, a theory referred to as "verbal-plenary dictation". The Biblical writers speak against such a view, however; see Luke 1:1-4, for example).

Furthermore, the larger dynamic of biblical "inspiration" (that is, the belief that the written text is derived from God in some fashion, whether inerrant or not; historically, Christians have affirmed various formulations of biblical inspiration, but not biblical inerrancy) "strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture" (according to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, the creed of inerrantists).

What do biblical inerrantists actually believe about the Bibles in their hands and pulpits? They "affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original" (see link above). Not only are their Bibles not inerrant, but they are the "Word of God" only if they "faithfully reflect" ... that which does not exist.

Biblical inerrancy, in short, is much ado about nothing.

Placing blind faith in a non-existent text could reasonably be referred to as "Biblical Atheism," not unlike traditional atheists whose belief system is predicated upon the non-existence of a god or gods.

On the other hand, the New Atheists do believe in that which science has revealed. That is, they believe in that which is scientifically verifiable.

Likewise, contemporary Christians would do well to seek to understand the message of the imperfect (according to biblical inerrantists) but existent Bibles in our hands and in our homes and in our pulpits, rather than the inerrantist's faith in nothing (and instead of inerrantist's efforts, in the face of nothing, to control the message of the actual Bibles we do have).

Our actual Bibles do not claim textual perfection nor do they posit a corner on all truth, but they do tell the stories of imperfect people (foibles and all) seeking (at times!) to understand God-centric truth in a pre-scientific era. The person of Christ is the focal point of Christian scripture. To our historical shame, those who claim to be followers of Christ have often abandoned his teachings against violence, greed, and religious legalism (fundamentalism, in contemporary terms). The New Atheists are thus right in pushing back against such perversions of Christ in particular, and religion in general. Yet let us not respond as Biblical Atheists who place their faith in that which does not exist. Instead, let us reflect Christ by following his teachings and example revealed in the scripture we do have at hand, and by welcoming truth wherever truth is revealed.

The Religious Right, Civil Rights and Obama: Wisdom From 1998

2009-10-28T10:40:00.008-04:00

Long before Barack Obama became a household name, in only the second year of his political career (at that time, the Illinois Senate), two respected historians writing for The Journal of Southern Religion in 1998 warned of the trajectory of the fundamentalist Religious Right as "a movement of white reaction" against Civil Rights that excluded African-Americans. Noting the spread of such fundamentalism nationwide, one of the two historians summarized ascendant, southern white reactionary culture as "General Lee's revenge," and noted the accompanying spread of states' rights and hatred of federal government ideologies, both the overriding themes of today's anti-Obama, white "tea parties."

One historian argued that modern fundamentalism has transformed the South to a larger degree than did Civil Rights. His thesis was: "At the deepest levels, the change in racial and biracial affairs brought about as a result of the Civil Rights Movement was less disruptive of historic Southern culture than the Baptist, Presbyterian, and "third force" fundamentalist uprisings have turned out to be."

Realizing that such an argument was counter-intuitive to many, he continued: "we are afforded more than a hint into the interpretation that the fundamentalist movement is more disruptive than was the Civil Rights Movement; or, it will have proven to be so if its effect is as comprehensive and enduring as was that of its predecessor. The Civil Rights Movement reconfigured all the existing parts of Southern society and culture by insisting that all be considered equal partners, by law and, desirably, in informal practice. Fundamentalism insists on establishing public policy for the entire public whether most, many, or only a few subscribe."

These two 1998 essays are well-worth a read today in the light of the current white, southern, reactionary conservatism that characterizes Fox News-driven Christian fundamentalism and the Republican Party.

See Fundamentalism in Recent Southern Culture: Has it Done What the Civil Rights Movement Couldn't Do? - by Sam Hill, Professor Emeritus, University of Florida (more information about Sam Hill)

And "Response to Sam Hill, 'Fundamentalism in Recent Southern Culture'" - by Betty A. DeBerg, University of Northern Iowa

Baptist Battles: Richard Land and Richard Pierard

2009-10-23T10:51:00.008-04:00

Richard Land, Ethics spokesperson for the SBC leadership, continues to spread lies about government health reform "death panels" and continues to equate theoretical government health care rationing with Nazism, although he refuses to equate current free market health care rationing as Nazism.

And now a battle has erupted between two Baptist Richards.

In the one corner, Richard Land, free market champion and anti-Obama crusader, seems oblivious to the fact the the Nazi movement was in large part a product of, and equated itself with, right-wing Christianity. Aligned with right-wing Christians, the Nazi Party advocated Christian Nationalism, sought to kill homosexuals, remove liberal intellectuals from universities, promote a pure Christian faith, join state with God, and enforce Christian morality consistent with Martin Luther's antisemitism.

In the other corner is Richard Pierard, renowned Baptist historian whose area of expertise is modern German history, particularly Nazism from 1933-1945. Pierard has lived and taught in Germany, and he denounced Richard Land's statements as bunk: "The effort to reform health care in the United States has absolutely nothing in common with the events of 70 years ago."

Who are we to believe? The Richard who is one of the most 25 influential Republicans in America and who claims to be an ethicist yet intentionally perpetuates lies about the British Health Care System and death panels that have long been proven to be lies (and turns to the cult leader Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times to prove the death panel lies are true)?

Or, are we to believe the Richard who is a Baptist historian and German historian and knows Nazi history, and recognizes lies for what they are?

Richard Land is now trying to dismiss Richard Pierard as an alarmist, while at the same time Land is using the First Amendment as a cover for his lies.

As Pierard notes, Land's lies have "brought reproach upon the good name of Baptists."

On the other hand, Land's ranking among the nation's 25 Most Influential Republicans may be moving upward, as he has squarely positioned himself as a loyal Right-Wing Republican rather than a truth-telling ethicist.

1000 Miles, 3 Baptist Churches

2009-10-19T08:45:00.005-04:00

A few weeks ago, I embarked on an autumn photography driving tour of portions of Montana, Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho, starting from my home near Bozeman. The 1000 mile trip, a loop, traversed a cross-section of the Rocky Mountain West: state roads, county roads, tiny communities, small towns, larger towns, one very large city (Salt Lake), back streets, city streets, and interstate highways. As in most road trips, my antenna was attuned to noticing church buildings (I can't seem to help myself!). On autumn road trips of the past in the Southeast, I recall seeing so many church buildings that the ratio must have been in the neighborhood of one per mile! And a fall tour of New England a few years ago resulted in numerous church sightings, although admittedly many were old buildings sitting alongside country roads and seemed little-used.

The Rocky Mountain West, however, is a different animal. In a thousand miles of driving, I spotted dozens of Mormon wards, tabernacles, and temples; exactly three Baptist churches; and no more than twelve Christian churches total (primarily Lutheran, which is to be expected in this part of the country).

American Baptists arrived early in the Rockies region, and have a nominal presence today; there are three in a fifty mile radius - 100 miles east to west or north to south - of my house. Southern Baptist congregations trace their origins to the 1950s, as oil workers from Texas and Oklahoma, some Southern Baptist, landed in the area as a result of job transfers; still struggling, there are four SBC churches within a fifty mile radius of my house. I know of one independent Baptist congregation in the same area, although I'm guessing there may be one or two of which I know not. And, as of this year, Cooperative Baptists have one congregation (The Well at Billings, Montana) in about a four hundred mile radius, if not more, of my house (see the map here); the Billings congregation is the first of five churches we plan to plant in Montana.

Sure, there are plenty of Lutherans and Catholics (the dominant faith of the region's early settlers), a sprinkling of other mainline Protestants (Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians), and a number of non-denominational congregations, a few of which are fairly large - not to mention LOTS of Mormons and quite a few Jehovah's Witnesses. All told, though, very few folks (less than 1 in 3) who collectively live in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada claim to be in church (or synagogue or other house of worship) any given week, among the lowest number in the nation (along with some New England states). Even so, self-reported religious surveys tend to result in inflated numbers, and my guess is that less than half of the one-third actually attend church at any given time.

And so I wonder: why aren't Cooperative Baptists paying more attention to the unchurched West (and, for that matter, unchurched New England?). I wonder, but in reality I already know the answer: we CBF Baptists thus far refuse to take church planting seriously. We incessantly talk missions (this is good!), yet despite the fact that our moderate Baptist seminaries are now turning out hundreds of graduates annually, we're doing very little to establish new congregations in which they might serve.

Montana might not be the most obvious place from which to try to raise CBF consciousness about church planting, but then again, maybe it does make sense: the unchurched nature of much of the American West rivals that of many mission fields worldwide, and missions is the heartbeat of CBF.

1000 miles, 3 Baptist churches. That's the same distance as driving from the southern coastal city of Charleston, SC to the mid-western town of Jefferson City, Missouri.

We can do better than this. If we only try.

Roasted Bible and Fried Chicken for Halloween

2009-10-14T07:05:00.001-04:00

I nominate this story as the Baptist story of the year:

The Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, N.C. will celebrate Halloween by burning Bibles that aren’t the King James Version, as well as music and books and anything else Pastor Marc Grizzard says is a satanic influence ... During the book burning, according to the Web site, barbecued chicken fried chicken and “all the sides” will be served. (See full story)

I wonder what they would say if they knew King Jimmie was gay? Or that he hated and even killed Christian dissenters (Wightman is identified by Baptist historian Thomas Crosby as a Baptist; History of the English Baptists, Volume 1, 108-109)

Richard Land Calls Free Market Health Care Rationing "Nazism"

2009-10-09T06:05:00.005-04:00

Yes, Richard Land (executive director of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention) recently declared that health care rationing is "precisely what the Nazis did."

Problem is (aside from the obvious historical misunderstanding or wilfull distortion), he ignores today's free market health care death panels for the insured and the holocaust of the uninsured ... collectively in which tens if not hundreds of thousands die unnecessarily each year ... and focuses instead on the possibility that health care reform might ration health care (and builds his case for this possibility based on blatant falsehoods regarding health care reform).

Yet when Land labels health care rationing as "Nazism," he condemns the free market system which he and the Religious Right have long decreed as holy.

The failure of Land and his fellow Religious Righters to live in or even acknowledge the world of reality in favor of living in a fantasy world of untruths and Wall Street religion is a sign of just how far away from Christ and integrity they have removed themselves.

Ethics? It seems that Richard Land long ago forgot what the word means, for if he took the concept seriously, he would condemn today's free market health care rationing and demand change, instead of hawking the religion of free market capitalism.

Political Conservatism Trumps Biblical Inerrancy

2009-10-08T06:50:00.000-04:00

Today's Southern Baptist Convention - failing, flailing and essentially wandering in the wilderness - is the product of blind faith in a modern, human theory about the Bible: inerrancy.

Birthed in the 20th century from the background of the strict Calvinistic Old School Presbyterianism of Charles Hodge (the theological grandfather of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) that needed a literal Bible in order to defend southern slavery, textual inerrancy has always been about revisioning biblical authority to make the Bible seem authoritative on the playing field of modern (scientific, quantifiable, factual) truth. Neither biblical (the Bible itself does not claim textual perfection) nor quantifiable (the orginial "autographs" of the Bible do not exist, and in fact the text was predated by oral tradition), inerrancy is fundamentalist Christians' ultimate weapon for attacking "liberalism" and a bold attempt at justifiying religious legalism.

Ironically (or perhaps not, for fundamentalists) inerrancy denegrates and displaces the biblical Jesus, simply because he is too liberal for fundamentalists.

So, sooner or later the inevitable had to happen: the Bible formally succombing to the onslaught of Western political conservatism. Surely enough, a conservative political group has now publicly announced that they are rewriting the Bible in order to remove its "liberal bias." The political activist, Religious Right Schlafly family is the founder of the "Conservative Bible Project," based on the following guidelines:

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias

2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity

3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]

4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".

5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[5] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census

6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels

10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."

In short, inerrancy, nothing more than a modern ploy to start with, is being laid to rest by that which drives inerrantists: contemporary Western political conservatism.

Baptist Women in Ministry: A Journey Unfinished

2009-09-28T07:10:00.003-04:00

Last month conservative-turning-moderate Southern Baptist Wade Burleson, pastor in Oklahoma, spoke of his newfound acceptance of women as full partners in ministry. This month, the moderate-turning-conservative Baptist General Convention of Texas retreated from open organizational support of women as full partners in ministry. Meanwhile, a Barna survey indicates that 10% of churches in the United States now have women senior pastors.

While the number of senior women pastors in Baptist churches is far fewer than in many other denominations, the numbers are growing.

Baptist Women in Ministry (BWIM), founded in 1983 "to be change-agents… to empower women to hear God’s call and to have the courage to respond… to bless the ministries of all women… to encourage churches to enter into dialogue and to listen for the discerning voice of God who calls both men and women," serves as a regional, southern barometer for Baptist women in ministry. (Many American Baptist congregations have long accepted women in ministry.)

Earlier this year, BWIM hired Pamela Durso as its first full-time director in six years. BWIM is in better financial and organizational shape than ever, at a time when the numbers of Baptist women in ministry in the South are steadily growing, with the exception of Texas. Whereas Texas Baptists in the past have stood at the forefront of some Baptist trends - including early resistance to fundamentalism in the 1980s and 1990s - prophetic voices in Texas Baptist life in recent years have been increasingly muted by ascendant fundamentalists and internal controversies within the BGCT. Church historian Rosalie Beck suggests that full support of women in ministry has been historically sacrificed in order to broker peace among Texas Baptists, who as a whole lean more to the right than left (moderate Texas Baptists tend to be more conservative than moderate Baptists in other states).

At this point in the modern saga of Baptists in the South, it is quite apparent that even moderate Baptist statewide organizations (whether traditional conventions or more recently-formed state CBF organizations), grappling with a wide diversity of views among the local congregations from whence their support comes, are not in a position to fully exercise the freedom of conscience that is the historical hallmark of Baptists. While an inherent conservative bias in Texas Baptist life disallows full support of women in ministry, emotional attachments to SBC mission agencies on the part of many older members of openly moderate congregations prevent many churches in the southeastern states from aligning solely with CBF. In addition, the modern Baptist confusion over the historical Baptist positions of full religious liberty and separation of church and state poses an ongoing challenge. In short, traditional and moderate state Baptist organizations are often pushed or pulled down a path of political and/or pragmatic reality that results in incremental changes, or in some cases little change at all.

The sometimes-slow change taking place at the state level means that specific advocacy-focused moderate, independent Baptist organizations, such as Baptist Women in Ministry, are vital to the shaping of contemporary Baptist thought and life.

Update on Christian Capitalists

2009-09-17T11:07:00.003-04:00

Religion Dispatches offers a first hand account of the recent Tea Party protest (dubbed the 9/12 Coalition) in Washington D.C., organized by health insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, and the Freedom Federation (see below for a longer list of sponsoring corporations and organizations), a consortium of Religious Right organizations that advocates for limited government, free enterprise, and free markets (no word on how these agendas fit in the Gospels).

More on the Freedom Federation, founded this summer in opposition to President Obama and Health Care Reform:

Among the groups represented are the American Association of Christian Counselors, the American Family Association, Catholic Online, Family Research Council, High Impact Leadership Coalition, Strang Communications, Traditional Values Coalition, Teen Mania, and Vision America. (see recent Christianity Today story)

Vision America (a theocratic-leaning organization) gushes about the Freedom Federation. Note Southern Baptist involvement.

Another article about the Freedom Federation.

And here is the website of Freedom Federation, which was initially envisioned by Liberty University's Liberty Counsel, a theocratic-leaning organization.

Supporting corporations and organizations of the 9/12 Tea Party protest (source is Veterans Today, which has a rather strong article against 9/12; also, visit the the 9/12 Coalition site):

* AETNA (Insurance)
* AFIPAC (American Family Insurance)
* Alexis de Tocqueville Institution
* Allied Pilots Association (pilots union which includes many VT supporters)
* American Association of Health Plans (Insurance)
* American Association of Political Consultants
* American Conservative Union
* Americans for Hope, Growth & Opportunity
* American Policy Center
* American Public Philosophy Institute
* The American Spectator
* Australian Barley Board (Australian govt's "beer lobby")
* Black America's Political Action Committee
* Blackwell Corporation (Finance/Stocks/Insurance)
* Bruce W. Eberle & Associates (Republican fundraiser)
* Business Mail Express ("direct mailer")
* Campaign Solutions
* Canadian MG Lewis MacKenzie (Ret.)
* CapitolWatch
* The Carmen Group (healthcare lobbyists)
* Carrying Capacity Network
* Center for Individual Freedom
* CIGNA (insurance_
* Citizens for State Power
* Citizens United
* Club for Growth
* Collegiate Network[1]
* Conservative Political Action Conference
* Ann Coulter
* Crown Publishing (Coulter's publisher)
* Davis, Manafort & Freedman, Inc. (very dirty lottery lobby firm)
* The Honorable Pete DuPont
* Employee Benefits Associates (insurance)
* Energy Freedom Alliance (oil lobby group tied to Tom Delay)
* Federalist Society
* Flickers Films
* Free Enterprise Fund
* Free Speech Coalition
* Freedom Alliance
* Foley & Lardner (lawfirm for the Coors family and the Heritage Foundation)
* Forbes for President 2000
* The Galen Institute
* Grassfire.org
* The Hawthorn Group
* Heritage Foundation
* Institute for Legal Reform
* Institute for Policy Innovation
* Institute for Socio-Economic Studies
* The Keene Report
* Law Enforcement Alliance of America
* The Limited
* The Manhattan Institute
* McDonnell Douglas (defense contractor)
* McGuire/Woods Consulting, LLC.
* National Audit Defense Network
* National Center for Policy Analysis
* National Farmers Federation of Australia
* National Rifle Association
* National Rifle Association-ILA
* National Taxpayers Union
* News World Communications
* Nuclear Energy Institute (producers of depleted uranium)
* The O'Leary/Kamber Report
* Playcare Incorporated
* PM Consulting Corporation
* Prima Publishing
* Progress & Freedom Foundation
* Prudential (insurance)
* Public Safety Systems
* Republican Majority Coalition
* Republican National Committee
* Natan Sharansky (pro-Russian Israeli activist)
* Small Business Survival Committee
* Southeastern Legal Foundation
* Starboard Response
* Stevens & Schriefer
* United Seniors Association
* University of Phoenix
* USA Weekend
* U.S. Chamber of Commerce (anti-union/pro-illegal immigration org)
* U.S. English
* Washington Times Foundation
* Westinghouse Corporation
* The Winston Group
* WND Books

Religious Right Becomes Anti-Life, Pro-Death

2009-09-09T07:06:00.005-04:00

In recent months, the Religious Right has been in a funk. With hero George W. Bush out of office and a popular Democratic president in office who has the support of many Christians, Focus on the Family was forced to lay off much of its work force.

But salvation has arrived from an unexpected quarter: the Religious Right, according to the Washington Post, has found a new cause - opposition to Health Care Reform.

Once an advocate of so-called "pro-life" policies (more properly, "anti-abortion" policies), the Religious Right is now openly defending insurance companies in a battle against political reforms that would extend medical care and a lifeline to the tens of millions who, for lack of money, endure pain and suffering while facing the ever-present prospect of financial ruin and even death, simply because they cannot afford exorbitant insurance policies, or, in the case of the insured, have no assurance that their insurance company will pay for critical, life-saving treatments and medications.

While it is true that the Religious Right has long advocated for Republican "trickle-down" tax policies that favor the wealthy over the poor, now these religious crusaders have seemingly come out of the closet altogether in championing corporate America and advocating anti-life, pro-death policies.

Why? Because the prospect of government intervening to save the lives of sick and dying citizens is ... well ... ungodly, according to the Religious Right. Only the Church has a right to take care of those persons who cannot afford medical care, after all (not that it will). Unless, of course, the subject is persons-not-yet ... then it is the government's duty to protect sperm and egg, even at the risk of maiming and killing living human beings.

Anyway ... Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention (see Washington Post link) seems quite happy about the new anti-life, pro-death stance of the Religious Right: "Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Henry Waxman have done more to energize Christian conservatives than any conservative leader could have done with this health-care package," said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. "I, who never believed that we were dead, did not believe that it would happen this quickly."

How many millions will suffer, and how many thousands needlessly die, in order to fulfill the Religious Right vision of a nation that values corporate profits over human life?

Is FOX News the New Voice of the Religious Right?

2009-08-26T07:00:00.009-04:00

Thirty years ago Christian fundamentalists (taking the name "Moral Majority" but loosely known as the "Religious Right") allied with the Republican Party in an effort to "return" America to its "Christian roots." From the beginning the effort was built upon historical myths and ideological-driven lies. America has never been a Christian nation; the "past" the Religious Right has sought for three decades is that of theocratic colonial America. The degree of theocracy that many within the Religious Right wish to force upon the nation is a matter of debate within the movement, ranging from government and judicial favoritism of (the right kind of) Christians to implementation of Old Testament laws requiring death to adulterers and homosexuals.

Fortunately, theocratic ambitions of the Religious Right have not been fully realized. On the other hand, the Religious Right helped create an atmosphere of Christian nationalism that bred a Christian patriot movement (here is one example) that itself is quasi-theocratic (and racist).

Long-time observers of the Religious Right know that the movement's most visible early public figureheads - those persons to whom many conservative/fundamentalist Christians consistently turned to for instructions on what to believe and for "proofs" to buttress religious and political prejudices - are gone or are on the way out the door. No one conservative Christian leader commands the public rhetorical spotlight as did the late Jerry Falwell or the semi-retired Pat Robertson or the retired James Dobson. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council , while quite influential among fundamentalist Christians, is not a household name along the lines of Falwell, Robertson and Dobson. Al Mohler and Richard Land have loyal followings in fundamentalist Southern Baptist circles, but are not nearly as well known outside Southern Baptist life. Religious Right leaders who today openly advocate theocracy - couched in terms such as "biblical worldview" and "Christian worldview" (see link above) - such as Gary DeMar, Gary North, Rick Scarborough, and David Barton, while popular in many conservative Christian circles (particularly the Christian homeschooling movement), are also far from household names. Tim LaHaye, a co-founder of the Moral Majority, Republican Party insider and famous as the co-author of the popular "Left Behind" novels, is probably the most well-known Religious Right theocratic advocate. Yet even so, his name is associated, publicly, with his novels, rather than his politics and theocratic-leanings.

So who do many conservative/fundamentalist Christians by and large now turn to on an everyday basis for instructions on what to believe and ammunition to support their religious and political prejudices?

Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh (the latter an ally of Fox News): far right political provocateurs with extremist viewpoints who also claim to be Christians.

In other words, while the Religious Right has succeeded in duping many Christians about our nation's history, perhaps the real legacy of the thirty year-old movement is the creation of a culture of Christian lies and myths that in turn produced a news media empire (FOX News) tailored to and targeted at conservative/fundamentalist Christians who are eager to embrace any falsehood that serves their selfish interests or gores their enemies.

The most untruthful and biased news channel on television, FOX News is hands-down the favored news channel of conservative/fundamentalist Christians, mostly Republicans and typically Southerners "who almost completely shut out any news source other than Fox News." (In a similar fashion, religious fundamentalists and many religious conservatives tend to "shut out" any religious views differing from their own.)

Echoing the Religious Right, FOX News is an advocate for the Republican Party and anti-big government Libertarians. Currently, many of the lies about President Obama and the Health Care Reform debate that are circulating by email within the conservative/fundamentalist Christian community, are also propagated by FOX News.

Brian McLaren, addressing the love affair between "conservative Christians" and FOX News, puts it this way:

"My concern is that many of my sisters and brothers, without realizing it, have begun seeing Jesus and the faith through the lens of a neo-conservative political framework, thus reducing their vision of Jesus and his essential message of the kingdom of God. As a result, too many of us are becoming more and more zealous conservatives, but less and less Christ-like Christians, and many don't seem to notice the difference." McLaren goes on to express dismay at the FOX-fueled lies about Obama and Health Care Reform that are dutifully spread through conservative Christian email networks.

Frank Schaeffer offers his own insider observations about the FOX-fueled Religious Right's assault on health care reform, which you can read here.

In short, I cannot help but wonder if the new FOX News-directed Limbaugh/Hannity/O'Reilly/Beck Religious Right is much more dangerous than the "old" Religious Right of Falwell/Robertson/Dobson. Whereas Religious Right version 1.0 (so to speak) wrapped nationalism around conservative Christianity through the use of historical myths and lies in a quasi-theocratic quest destined to ultimately fail in a pluralistic society, version 2.0 wraps conservative/fundamentalist Christianity around political neo-conservatism/nationalism/patriotism (and even facism according to some analysts), a marriage currently expressed in tea parties, angry town hall meetings (more), an endless stream of lies about Obama and his policies, including the claim that Obama is the next Hitler, and talk of secession, all in an effort to eradicate "liberals" from the halls of political power.

If the FOX News-driven Religious Right proves to be a long-term trend, the foreseeable future of American Christianity, and America as a nation, may be one of increasing cultural fragmentation and alienation, social civil warfare, or even a violent movement that seeks to restore so-called "justice" under the belief that it is the "sacred duty" of white patriots "to change the government."

Lest we dismiss the latter possibility, the history of the violent wing of the anti-abortion movement (more) offers a clue as to just how far "Christian" patriots will go if their hatred is left unchecked.

More "Civil War" Rumblings

2009-08-24T10:54:00.007-04:00

A week ago I asked if the health care debate is turning into a reenactment of the American Civil War.

Now some within the Fox News-fueled far right are openly warning that a new Civil War is indeed fomenting,and they're pinning the blame on Obama.

The Second American Revolution Has Begun! - "The natives are restless .... America is seething. Not since the Civil War has anything like this happened .... A series of gigantic, unpopular government-imposed (but taxpayer-financed) bailouts, buyouts, rescue and stimulus packages have been stuffed down the gullet of Americans. With no public platform to voice their opposition, options for citizens have been limited to fruitless petitions, e-mails and phone calls to Congress all fielded by anonymous staff underlings .... the public is exploding .... Conditions will continue to deteriorate .... A false flag attempt, a genuine crisis, or a declaration of war, may slow the momentum of the “Second American Revolution,” but nothing will stop it."

Voight: Is Obama Creating a Civil War in America? - Courtesy of the Moonies' rag, the Washington Times.

Today's angry far right claims the label of "freedom fighters" in suggesting that a Civil War is at hand. Antebellum and Civil War era southerners (including Southern Baptists) utilized the same language in defending their rights to own slaves: should the United States outlaw slavery, they reasoned, whites would be victimized. Today's self-proclaimed freedom fighters likewise limit freedom to their own self-interests (to the point where they bristle at the suggestion of "messing with" their socialized health care - Medicare - AND become livid at the thought of extending socialized medicine to "others").

Observers of the current health care debate would be better served by examining Baptist freedom fighters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In an era of genuine persecution (Baptists were beaten, whipped, jailed and even stoned for their faith - at the hands of theocractic colonial governments), Baptists fought for freedom of conscience and freedom of religion for all citizens, religious or not.

Is America a land of self-serving, self-righteous individuals who despise the "other" and will go to war against a democracy that champions equality and justice? Or are we a nation of citizens united in the common interest of freedom expressed in the attainment of general welfare and domestic tranquility?

Health Care Debate: Reenacting the American Civil War?

2009-08-14T07:00:00.007-04:00

Although post-Civil War Southern Baptists largely denied it until recent decades, slavery was the overriding cause of the American Civil War. Only in recent years have contemporary Southern Baptists by and large admitted what their white faith forebears in the antebellum South openly declared: the defense of slavery was the reason for the formation of the Confederacy.

Upon the defense of slavery white antebellum southerners constructed an argument of freedom: if the United States government denied whites the right to own black slaves, they reasoned, then the government was intruding upon their personal liberties and freedoms. In defending white liberty and freedom (it did not occur to most white southerners that blacks might also be humans deserving of equal rights), southerners argued, they were standing up for states' rights and against the federal government (although the same southerners quickly argued for federal centralization when it could be used to advance slavery).

By the end of the war, unrepentant southerners (Baptist and otherwise) reconstructed their arguments into the myth of the Lost Cause. Gone was slavery as the primary reason, or even a real reason at all, for the war. Instead, southerners had warred against the North in a valiant effort to preserve personal freedom and liberty and states' rights. The honorable and righteous South had been defeated only because unholy and unjust northern forces marshaled overwhelming military might against noble but overwhelmed white southerners.

For nearly 100 years after the Civil War, racist white southerners ensured that blacks, although now free according to the United States Constitution, were kept in subjugation to whites through intimidation and violence (the Ku Klux Klan) and oppressive laws (Jim Crow and segregation), means sanctioned (openly or quietly) by most white Christians. True freedom for blacks in the South came only in the 1950s and 1960s when the federal government forced the old Confederate states to integrate schools and other public institutions. Even then, most whites, including many if not most self-proclaimed Christians, resented integration and federal intervention - and many resisted with anger and violence. Many white Christians, refusing to recognize blacks as equals and angry over the intervention of the federal government, pulled their children out of public schools and enrolled them in the new white private schools that suddenly sprung up in an effort to keep white children from being contaminated by contact with black children.

Integration, in short, vividly opened old wounds of white southern defeat and challenged the cherished mythical narrative of the civility, righteousness and godliness of white supremacy. While memories of Civil War and Reconstruction injustices remained anchored in the minds of indignant white southerners, this new intrusion of the federal government upon white southerners' liberties and freedoms reheated inherent racism and anger.

When the Supreme Court in 1963 (Abington Township School District v. Schempp) ruled that the government could neither promote nor denigrate religion (but instead must maintain neutrality) in public school classrooms - a court decision that Baptists, historic champions of the freedom of church and state, lauded and supported - it added fuel to the anti-federal government anger already boiling in a religion-saturated South. The boiling anti-federal government anger among white conservative Christians, however, did not reach critical mass until the late 1970s, following the growing pluralism of the 1960s, the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, and the 1976 Internal Revenue Service ruling revoking the tax exempt status of Bob Jones University because the school openly discriminated against African Americans (a decision upheld by a 1983 Supreme Court decision).

The Religious Right was formally birthed in 1979 from (primarily) white southern anger over pluralism and the 1963, 1973 and 1976 federal decisions. Rallying Christian fundamentalists and taking the name "Moral Majority" for their movement, they claimed to represent the voice of God in a nation that had forsaken God and turned to "human secularism." Falsely claiming that America at its founding had been a "Christian nation," they rejected the historical Baptist struggle for separation of church and state that culminated in the creation of the world's first secular nation, and instead created historical myths in which to anchor their desire for an American theocracy.

From 1979 to 2009, the Religious Right allied itself closely with a Republican Party that - proclaiming a moral and religious mandate - glorified unfettered capitalism, stoked public anger at the image of an intrusive "big government," passed laws that publicly benefited the wealthy while quietly stepping on the poor and middle classes, alienated minorities through party policies, cut the taxes of the wealthy and produced unequaled federal debt and an unparalleled wealth gap between rich and poor, warred against other nations on false pretenses, proclaimed opposition to Roe v. Wade (but did nothing to overturn it), fought against separation of church and state, and used evangelical language and theocratic imagery to continually co-opt fundamentalist Christians.

Then, in February 2009, the nation's first black president took office, and the mostly white Republican Party found itself largely confined to the states of the Old Confederacy, rejected soundly by voters under 40 nationwide, and decidedly thrown out of national power for the foreseeable future.

In response, white Republicans and Libertarians began holding "tea parties" protesting "big government," both in terms of growing debt (Obama inherited an economic disaster from the Bush administration, and government efforts to shore up the economy violated the god of capitalism which many conservatives worship - never mind that runaway capitalism got the country into our current mess) and intrusion upon personal "liberties" and "freedoms." Both the imagery (Revolutionary War) and language ("freedom," "liberty," "patriots") echo arguments used by white antebellum southerners in their defense of slavery.

This month, enraged tea partiers have transferred their anger (and hatred) to congressional town hall meetings focused on the moment's issue: health care reform. Conservative white Republicans and Libertarians are now channeling their anti-government anger against health care reform.

Yesterday's edition of National Public Radio's To the Point, a panel discussion of health care and religion, summed up the anger-laden health care reform debate. A spokesman for the Christian Coalition (an arm of the Religious Right) cut through the clutter in the current debate. Health care is not the real issue, he insisted. The real issue is that "the government will control everything," beginning with health care. He later continued, "public health care will destroy our democracy." A representative of the conservative Cato Institute added that "government operates through violence or threats of violence" and insisted that if health care reform is enacted, "the government will put you in jail or shoot you if you don't buy health care insurance." The Christian Coalition spokesman rejected any concept of universal health care as a moral issue, insisted that one of the current health care reform proposals includes the words "rationed care" (and then had to recant when it was pointed out that he was not telling the truth), and defended capitalism as biblical. Another guest, an American health care scholar originally from Canada, remembered that upon moving to the United States, she was stunned to observe that some conservatives "believe in markets the way some people believe in God or Christ." Jim Wallis of Sojourners calmly and systematically pointed out the falsehoods propagated by the Christian Coalition and Cato Institute, while a Catholic scholar outlined the moral, ethical and Christian imperative of universal health care.

To the ears of one who has spent much of the past few years writing on the subject of religion and the American Civil War (the focus of my dissertation), the rhetoric and language of yesterday's NPR health care debate resonated closely with the rhetoric and language of the antebellum and Civil War era debates concerning slavery: white religious conservatives selfishly defended their personal "freedoms" and "liberties" and "rights", while religious liberals argued for the biblical, moral and ethical imperative of equal rights and justice for all persons. Ironically, however, the conservative slavery-defenders of old had a much more solid biblical case than today's religiously conservative opponents of health care reform: slavery is a biblical theme and as a practice is not explicitly condemned in the Bible, while there is no biblical basis for free markets and capitalism; in fact, the New Testament repeatedly condemns the pursuit of individual wealth and warns against the corrupting influence of money.

The white anger over Obama's presidency and health care reform, in the words of protesters, ultimately rests in claims that the federal government is plotting to take away their freedoms and liberties. Video clips of this month's town hall meetings across the nation include angry senior citizens living on socialized medicine (Medicare) ranting against ... socialized medicine. The video clips also reveal claims that the government "outlawed prayer and legalized abortion" and now wants to take away the right to decide one's own health care, and "we're not gonna take it anymore!"

It is well documented that most of the health care reform claims of the angry white crowds of protesters are not true; they are simply repeating lies. But the anger is real, and it is strikingly similar in tone, language and content to that used by white southerners who defended slavery and railed against big government in the antebellum South. Whereas slavery was the real issue and antebellum white southerners used the pretext of an intrusive big government interfering with their personal freedoms and liberties in order to wage war on the North, today's angry white conservatives who constitute the base of a Republican Party anchored in the Old Confederacy have reversed the pattern: having convinced themselves (in the years since the Civil War, stoked in the modern era by Reagan) that federal government is determined to take away their personal freedoms and liberties (while at the same time unconcerned about the rights, freedoms and liberties of minorities and those who disagree with them), they are attacking an egalitarian-focused government by taking a very public and abrasive stand against a black president who is committed to ensuring that all Americans have adequate health care.

In other words, to a previous generation of white southerners, the campaign to abolish slavery became the pretext for constructing a narrative of an intrusive federal government denying personal freedom and liberty to the racially privileged, while universal health care today has become ground zero of the antebellum/Civil War era racially-infused "intrusive federal government" narrative that never died.

Who will win in this modern reenactment of the American Civil War? Big government has never been the real problem. In 1861 and today, the real issues entail human rights, morality and ethics. And in both instances, certain privileged classes (whether by power, socio-economic position, religion, wealth, and/or race) ignore the real issues in order to preserve the status quo that favors them.

The American ideal, encapsulated in our nation's founding documents although not always fully realized, is a nation of persons enjoying equal rights, freedoms and liberties. Emancipation of blacks moved America closer to these ideals; enactment of universal health care is a step that would move us yet closer to the American ideal. It is time to put to rest the self-serving and racially-laden myths that took root in the antebellum South and have poisoned public discourse and civility ever since, and move a step closer to the American ideal that encompasses all persons, by enacting universal health care. I can only hope that today's Obama town hall meeting here in Bozeman , and others that follow in the coming days and weeks, will help move us closer toward the American ideal.

Notes:

Here is a beginning point in terms of a bibliography of the American Civil War.

Survey of Religion and the American Civil War

Baptists and Socialized Medicine

2009-08-13T07:00:00.003-04:00

John Leland, the famed revolutionary era Baptist evangelist who championed religious freedom, was adament about separation of church and state: he even insisted that the state should not grant ministers and congregations tax breaks.

Leland would be probably be appaled if he were alive today and could see the tax favoritisms granted to ministers and congregations by the U.S. government. Yet the tax favoritism does not come without strings: for instance, in addition to not being taxed on housing, an ordained minister may opt of paying Social Security and Medicare if he or she has moral, ethical or religious objections to participating in socialized medicine and retirement.

While some Baptist ministers do opt out of socialized medicine and retirement (or so I am told), most apparently do not. In fact, when I recently queried some minister friends about their participation in socialized medicine and retirement, several otherwise conservative Baptists defended their own involvement in socialism.

At the same time, some of these very same conservative Baptists insist that socialized medicine, while fine for them, should not be made available to their fellow Americans. This attitude of "socialized medicine is fine for me but allowing my fellow Americans to have it will ruin the country" seems to be the same attitude that is playing out in tea parties and anger-ridden town hall health care meetings: a lot of (primarily) senior citizens (and all white, I might add) on socialized medicine are ticked off that Americans at large may be allowed to also receive socialized medicine.

What does it say for Baptists (and other clergy) and senior citizens (and conservatives at that) who refuse to give up their socialized medicine, to insist that their fellow Americans not be allowed into their socialist club? Perhaps this is just a little snapshot of how America has become a nation of selfish individuals (including religious folk) who are only concerned with their own interests and who have little to no compassion for their fellow Americans. I'd like to think this is not the case, but I'm not so sure anymore.

Baptist History Tidbits

2009-08-12T10:05:00.004-04:00

R.L. Vaughn of Texas recently posted his survey of Landmark Baptist churches. Vaughn estimates that approximately 1300 Landmark Baptist congregations exist, with total membership of about 200,000. In addition, he identifies 35 Landmark associations. He also divides the congregations into types of Landmarkers.

More and more colleges and universities are turning to online resources in the classroom. A Baptist history course taught at Williams Baptist College in Arkansas is one example of how the online world is changing the higher education classroom.

The Baptist History and Heritage Society recently added new articles to its "History Speaks to Hard Questions Baptists Ask" and "Baptist Heritage Bulletin Insert" series.

Health Care and Christians: Forsaking Jesus

2009-08-07T08:21:00.005-04:00

Right now in America, a paradoxical scene is playing out: millions of so-called Christians are mad as hell that our president and the Congress is proposing a health care overhaul that will allow all Americans access to basic health care. For many of these millions of Christians, their pro-life agenda begins and ends with abortion; the fact that America's current for-profit health care industry puts profits before life (and in the process leads to thousands if not tens of thousands of deaths each year) means nothing to them. And beyond defending an industry that kills people in order to pad the pockets of billionaires, these same so-called Christians have seemingly forsaken any interest in truth and instead worship Fox News, the most untruthful and hate-filled news network on television.

But don't take my word for it. Religious Right insider Frank Schaeffer, whose father was a founder of the Religious Right, provides the inside scoop on why conservative Christians are lying about the proposed health care proposal and orchestrating a campaign of deception and fear in the current town hall meetings. (Schaeffer uses the term "conservative Christians," although not all conservative Christians are of the caliber he describes.)

And here's more of the inside story of Republican and Christian Right lies.

For Jesus' sake, it would be best if these so-called Christians simply stopped calling themselves Christians (Foxians would certainly be a more appropriate label).

Fortunately, some Christians are actually acting like followers of Jesus by advocating for life and compassion the way Christ did in the Bible:

Health Care Debate Comes to the Church

Christians Weigh In On Health Care Reform

Thinking of Health Care as a Moral Issue

Has the Religious Right Totally Discredited Itself?

2009-08-04T07:00:00.000-04:00

As Frank Schaeffer summarizes, rar right evangelicals are gnashing their teeth over Obama, labeling him as the next Hitler and the AntiChrist; refusing to believe he is an American citizen; insisting he is a Muslim; and declaring that he has a secret campaign to kill old people through health care reform.

That people who call themselves Christians can so readily resort to ludicrious lies is beyond pale. But as Brent Walker, Executive Director for the Baptist Joint Committee For Religious Liberty reminds us, lies have become the public calling card of the Religious Right. And if Texas Governor Rick Perry has his way, our American government should operate according to the beliefs of Christian who lie about our nation's history.

The foundation of lies upon which the Religious Right is based is so obvious and so blatant that one wonders if far right evangelicals have so far removed themselves from reality and truth that they have sealed their own demise.

400th Anniversary of Baptists: Selected Articles

2009-08-01T07:00:00.001-04:00

Following is a selected list of online resources related to the 400th anniversary celebration of Baptists this year.

Baptists Celebrate 400th Anniversary Near Site of Movement's Origin (Associated Baptist Press)

Commentary on Baptists 400th Anniversary by Gary Burton, pastor of Pintlala Baptist Church, Alabama.

Celebrating 400 Years of Baptist Heritage (Resources, including free Bulletin inserts, by the Baptist History and Heritage Society)

First Baptist Church Huntsville, Alabama: 200th Anniversary Year

2009-07-31T07:00:00.002-04:00

This year the First Baptist Church of Huntsville, Alabama, is celebrating their 200th anniversary. The celebration has been taking place since January, and will continue through the remainder of the year. I was privileged to write the 200th anniversary history volume for the congregation. Entitled LEADING THE WAY FOR 200 YEARS: THE STORY OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA, the volume is available to the general Baptist public, and ordering information can be found online here.

Here is the text of an article published in the March 2009 issue of Baptists Today which provides an overview of FBC Huntsville's place in Baptist history:

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Some congregations claim lofty ambitions. Members of First Baptist Church of Huntsville, Alabama, ascended to unprecedented heights, sending the first Americans into outer space, landing the first men on the moon, and hurling satellites into the outer reaches of the universe.

First-time visitors to FBC would never imagine that the church is two centuries old, and could be forgiven for being confused upon turning into the church parking lot. An enormous tower first attracts the eye, reminiscent of a rocket awaiting liftoff. In the shadows of the rocket-like tower, an enormous mural occupies the entire front of the sanctuary, recessed within what appears to be a 1960s-era pavilion. Only when one’s eye focuses on an image of Jesus holding a cross, circled by the planets of our universe, does one’s mind register that this might be a church.

Uniquely interesting, the buildings housing FBC hint at the composition of the membership, which includes many rocket scientists and engineers, employees and contractors of Huntsville’s NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and the U.S. Army. Yet Journeying to the moon and beyond was far beyond the imagination of the original members of today’s FBC. Arriving in present-day northern Alabama in the early nineteenth century, the charter members of the church feared attacks from Cherokees and Chickasaws. Founded in 1809 about six miles north of present-day downtown Huntsville near the West Fork of the Flint River, and soon named “Enon” (renamed First Baptist at the turn of the next century), the little frontier congregation slowly grew as more settlers filtered into the area.

From the untamed wildlands of northern Alabama, the unfolding story of the Enon church proved to be a reflection of the progressive journey of some Baptists in the South. Birthed at beginning of the modern missions movement, Enon, comprised of white and black members, wrestled with the Baptist missions controversy of the 1820s and 1830s, eventually siding with missionary forces and earning the distinction as the oldest missionary Baptist congregation in the state. In the 1840s, the congregation affiliated with the newly-formed Southern Baptist Convention. During the Civil War, the church moved to the city of Huntsville and congregational records fell silent, the latter reflective of a large scale shortage of Baptist church records during the war. Struggling during Reconstruction and now a white-only congregation, women emerged as a pivotal force in terms of mission support, church finances, and an emerging temperance movement. Discipline practices during the second half of the nineteenth century mirrored a widespread decline in local church life throughout the South.

The city of Huntsville entered the twentieth century as a growing city in a re-emerging South, and First Baptist grew as the city blossomed. As the SBC consolidated denominational structures, First Baptist increasingly adopted convention-sponsored programs from Sunday School to Baptist Young People’s Union. Surviving the Great Depression, the late 1940s and the 1950s witnessed congregational growth that paralleled the golden years of the SBC.

Following World War II, the U.S. Army chose Huntsville as a research and design facility for the newly emerging field of rocket science, and in the 1960s NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center led the city into a period of unparalleled growth. Scientists and engineers from throughout the nation and world moved to Huntsville, and many joined the congregation of FBC. While First Baptist, like many other city congregations, struggled with the cultural and societal changes that swept the South in the sixties, for FBC the decade also witnessed new building programs, membership growth, and the emergence of a hands-on missions focus that hinted of an emerging post-denominational missions approach.

New challenges confronted the congregation in ensuing decades. As a fundamentalist controversy consumed Southern Baptist life in the eighties, FBC became one of the earliest supporters of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and allowed members the freedom of conscience in supporting various Baptist organizations and endeavors. While some historical Baptist congregations throughout the South fled downtown for the suburbs, First Baptist chose to remain in the heart of Huntsville and minister to the needs of the community. And while many established churches experienced decline as younger generations flocked to megachurches or forsook church altogether, First Baptist retooled itself to better reach students and young families in Huntsville.

In short, the story of the FBC of Huntsville is both the story of Baptists in the South over the past two centuries, as well as the story of the modern space age. Within the walls of FBC, faith and science co-exist in harmony as members worship a God who both cares for the hungry child down the street and is Lord of the vastness of the universe.

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The Health Care Debate and Tommy Douglas, Greatest Canadian of All Time

2009-07-30T07:00:00.009-04:00

Few Americans may realize that a Baptist minister is recognized by Canadians as the "Greatest Canadian of All Time." Tommy Douglas, who died in 1986, is one of history's most influential Baptists that few outside of Canada know. And here in the summer of 2009, Douglas' legacy is extremely relevant to the biggest issue facing Americans: health care.

Tommy Douglas, you see, was the man who brought about Canada's universal public health care system, a health care system which Canadians for several generations now have chosen to pay extra taxes to operate and maintain, and a health care system which 91% of Canadians today view as superior to America's health care system. Furthermore, Douglas set Canada on the road to universal health care during the Great Depression, while here in America today President Obama is seeking to do the very same thing during the current Great Recession.

Douglas, a minister turned politician, first became personally aware of the moral imperative of health care when as a child he almost lost his leg to a disease because his family could not pay for treatment; only by the good graces of a doctor, who offered his medical services for free, was Douglas' leg saved. Influenced by the Christian principles of the Social Gospel while in college, Douglas pastored for several years before entering politics during the Depression in 1935, becoming the Premier of Saskatchewan in 1944. He remained a leading politician in Canada for many years, consistently advocating for universal health care and basic human rights. Under his leadership, the Saskatchewan Bill of Rights was enacted. And while securing public health care for all citizens, Douglas paid off government debt and created a surplus.

Although today most Americans want a public health care option, we as a nation are slow to the table in responding to the moral imperative of basic universal public health care (although a number of presidents, beginning with Teddy Roosevelt, have personally supported public health care). If Americans in 2009 do manage to place human life above the greed-driven free market health insurance industry by enacting a public health care option, we have Tommy Douglas to thank, one of the greatest Baptists of the past century.

Friends Who Need Your Prayers

2009-07-29T07:00:00.004-04:00

Last Monday, four friends, young men who are Baptist missionaries here in Montana this summer, were in a terrible car wreck. Three of the four are brothers, and three of the four (including two of the brothers) remain hospitalized: Jeremy and Dan Vangsnes (from South Carolina) and Scott Minear (from Georgia). Jeremy and Scott remain in very critical condition, while Dan is in stable condition but has a long road of healing ahead. All three are men of faith and all need lots of prayer, as do their families, who are here in Montana with them. Also, today is Dan's birthday, and a reminder of how precious life is.

Strangest News Story: Blue M&Ms Reduce Spinal Injury

2009-07-28T12:56:00.003-04:00

This has nothing to do with Baptists per se, but I just now read one of the strangest news stories I've seen in a long time: Blue M&Ms Linked to Reducing Spinal Injury.

I wonder if Mars Candy will soon start packaging and selling blue M&Ms on their own?

A Day Worth Celebrating

2008-11-04T23:54:00.005-05:00

Minutes ago Barack Obama was elected as the first African American president of the United States. Congregates gathered at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church are celebrating a coming of age of Martin Luther-King's dream of racial blindness in America. Obama is now addressing the nation. Moments ago I watched the wonder in the eyes of his two children as they gazed upon the crowd gathered in Chicago, while many in the crowd shed tears. May God grant Barack Obama wisdom and protect him and his family as he leads our nation.

New Baptist Covenent Appealing to Southern Baptists?

2008-02-04T11:49:00.000-05:00

I don't know that a statistical breakdown will ever be available, but I suspect a lot of Southern Baptists were present at the New Baptist Covenant. Indeed, many CBF churches in the South are dual SBC/CBF congregations. And many, many Southern Baptists have no interest in the direction the fundamentalist denominational leadership is moving.

An article by the New York Times, while not the final word, offers an indirect but intriguing take on the Covenant meeting: of four persons quoted, one is a young women with no stated affiliation; one is a layman in a National Baptist Convention (African-American) congregation; and the remaining two are Southern Baptist ministers - both of whom spoke glowingly of the Covenant meeting. There was no mention of either the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship or American Baptist Convention.

Many Southern Baptists have remained on the sidelines while theological fundamentalists have taken over and restructured the SBC in their own image. I wonder if issues such as racial unity, environmental concerns, and healing/social ministries might be enough to finally move some of these disenfranchised-yet-still-Southern-Baptists from the SBC side of the Baptist ledger to the broader, larger world of Baptists as represented by the New Baptist Covenant Celebration?

The Beginnings of a "Baptist World Movement?"

2008-02-01T17:38:00.000-05:00

A short while ago, New Baptist Covenant organizers reflected on the Celebration meeting. Expressing excitement at working across racial, gender and ethnic lines, organizers praised the meeting as a success, and are eager to see what lasting results might materialize. You can read a summary of President Carter's remarks, in particular, here.

Collectively, conference organizers noted that small group followup meetings and future strategies are already being discussed. Some participants in some states will meet next week to discuss what lies ahead; several hundred seminary students have been tasked with generating follow up ideas from input received this week.

Noting that a groundswell for Baptist unity had been gathering for several years prior to the Covenant meeting, Dr. David Goatley, executive secretary-treasurer of the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention, called this week's gathering "very visual and demonstrative" for Baptists of North America. Recent joint endeavors by major African-American Baptist conventions and a heightened awareness within the North American Baptist Fellowship, a regional expression of the Baptist World Alliance, preceded the visioning of the New Baptist Covenant Celebration.

In 1814 Baptists in America formally entered the era of institutional denominationalism with the formation of a national Baptist convention. Today, the old structures are being challenged as never before. "There is a breakdown in trust of institutions," Jimmy Allen, Celebration leader and former Southern Baptist Convention president Dr. Jimmy Allen noted. Indeed, no one here is talking about the formation of another convention. Rather, 2008 may be remembered in Baptist circles as the year in which Baptists in America moved beyond the era of institutional denominationalism and entered into the stream of a "Baptist World Movement," in the words of Goatley.

Rather than institutional muscle, Dr. William Shaw, president of the National Baptist Convention, pointed to the "Spirit of God" as enabling a new era of Baptist unity. Jimmy Allen declared that modern "communication systems" will play an instrumental role in the future as the diverse Baptists represented in the Covenant meeting move forward together.

A non-institutional Baptist World Movement among Baptists of North America, guided by the spirit of God and enabled by modern communications systems? It could happen. Long-time Baptist historian Buddy Shurden earlier today summed up this week's events as "the most significant Baptist meeting I have ever been to." Many present at this gathering look forward to the next chapter in this unfolding drama.

John Grisham Speaking to His Fellow Baptists

2008-01-31T20:48:00.000-05:00

Although all of the speakers today have been excellent, the most anticipated Baptist speaker tonight - and yet another layman - is now at the podium. John Grisham, famous author of legal novels, is a longtime Baptist laymen who is very active in church and mission activities, is offering his own observations about the place and need for diversity in Baptist life. He has a rapt audience.

Other quick observations: Kyle Matthews, a wonderful musician who performed special music earlier tonight, is a wonderful songwriter, singer and storyteller. Earlier in this service, Jimmy Carter asked participants to share their personal thoughts about "where do we go next" (by dropping suggestions in the offering plates). Now that is a very Baptist thing to do!

16,000 Registered for New Baptist Covenant, More Expected

2008-01-31T19:18:00.001-05:00

According to Mercer University president Bill Underwood, registration for the New Baptist Covenant Celebration reached 16,000 this morning. Hundreds, if not thousands more, were expected to register throughout the day Thursday. Many from Atlanta area churches are expected to arrive in time to participate in this evening's plenary session.

"We Need a Civil Rights Movement": Caring for the Sick

2008-01-31T14:59:00.001-05:00

I am sitting in the special interest session devoted to "Reaching Out to the Sick." Panelist Fleda Mask Jackson a few minutes ago put things in perspective: "We need a civil rights movement for the health of everyone," she declared. Jackson, the Rollins School of Public Health’s Women and Children’s Center at Emory University, is emphatic that Christians have a responsibility to minister to the basic needs of humanity that today go unmet in our society.

Al Cadenhead,pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, shared his church's initiative in founding a free medical clinic. Discussions by participants explored the depth of the health care crisis and offered resource suggetions.

The Earth is the Lord's: Al Gore and the Climate Crisis

2008-01-31T14:33:00.000-05:00

Have you heard the story of the two planets? Both are about the same size and both contain roughly the same total concentration of carbon dioxide. One has an average daily temperature of 833 degrees Fahrenheit, while the other averages 59 degrees. And humans can live only on one of these two planets: Earth. Venus, on the other hand, is inhospitable because most of the carbon dioxide resides in the atmosphere. And incidentally, Mercury is much closer to the sun than Venus, yet has average temperatures in the 300 degree range - thanks to lower levels of carbon dioxide.

"The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof," former Vice-President Al Gore quoted from Psalm 24:1 as he gave a special, scripture-saturated presentation of his well known slideshow-turned-movie, An Inconvenient Truth.

The 2500 Baptists attending the Gore luncheon during the New Baptist Covenant Celebration witnessed a solid biblical argument for why Christians must be concerned about God's creation.

Overwhelming scientific evidence has revealed that humans are severely damaging God's creation, and now the discussion is whether or not humans will destroy both God's earth as well as the whole of humanity. Thankfully, most evangelicals today now understand that God's creation is teetering on the brink of disaster. In our corner is Baptist layman Al Gore, whose tireless and highly visible advocacy on behalf of God's creation is motivating people worldwide. He is passionate, has a great sense of humor, and believes that "the earth is the Lord's" and that humans have a responsibility to be good stewards of that which is Gods. And 2500 Baptists just gave him a standing ovation.

Tonight Venus will be visible in the night sky. Take a hard look at it. Atmospheric carbon dioxide makes it a death star. And that could be the future of the earth, unless we as Christians take the Bible seriously enough to invest ourselves in the care of God's creation.

Grimacing and Grinning

2008-01-31T09:41:00.001-05:00

"We all talk about believing the words of Jesus," Tony Campolo declared just a few moments ago. But talk is cheap for Christians, he continued. "To be a follower of Jesus is to question every expenditure of your life."

Citing Bono as the "only good songwriter" these days, the well-known Baptist sociologist is challenging thousands of Baptists in the audience to a radical life lived for Christ. Consumerism and materialism have no place in Christianity, he preaches. Campolo is known for evoking grimaces and grins at the same time. I can't see the faces of the thousands sitting and listening to him right now, but I suspect there are a few pursed lips and furrowed brows as Campolo calls upon the followers of Jesus to ditch personal luxury purchases and instead use our resources to save the lives of children in Sudan.

We Baptists are usually more polite among ourselves than to seriously discuss the uncomfortable commands of Jesus to forsake our own comforts for the sake of the needy. Yet much of this New Baptist Covenant meeting is devoted to facing these uncomfortable demands.

"The same spirit that is in Christ Jesus can be in your mortal bodies," Campolo quotes from the Bible. "Rise up you suckers and go out and do the work of Jesus!" (not a quote from the Bible) he almost shouts as the camera pans to former U.S. President Carter, a Baptist layman who has devoted much of his life to helping the needy.

It's a hard message. Yet if Baptists can't come together in unity around the words of Jesus ... where is unity to be found?

Synergy and Connectivity in Atlanta

2008-01-30T19:08:00.000-05:00

What religious event in Atlanta could possibly bring together journalists from throughout the United States, including the Boston Globe and New York Times, and a representative from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops?

A meeting devoted to Baptist unity.

That's right, unity - as opposed to the divisiveness and exclusiveness that usually characterizes Baptist meetings covered by secular newspapers.

"Together, we all sit down together at the table of Christian brotherhood and sisterhood," Mercer University President Bill Underwood just declared in the opening session of the New Baptist Covenant Celebration.

Declaring his desire that this meeting will create "more synergy and connectivity" among Baptists, David Goatley, president of the North American Baptist Fellowship, earlier expressed the hopes of thousands of diverse Baptists now gathered in worship and prayer in the World Congress Center.

Jimmy Carter this afternoon shared his belief that this meeting is an "element of God's will" for Baptists.

Could it be that God yet has plans for a people known more for divisions than unity? The Boston Globe and New York Times are perhaps wondering the same thing.

From 1814 to 2008

2008-01-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

Nearly two centuries ago (1814 to be precise), white Baptists in America, embracing a new movement - "missions" - came together in unity in the form of what became known as the Triennial Convention (it met every three years). Of course, the unity was limited to whites, and even then it did not last long; three decades after forming, Baptists in the South separated from their northern counterparts over the issue of slavery.

One could well argue that this week signals the first substantial attempt at Baptist unity in America since 1814 - and this time the unity is truly inclusive. In fact, this time African American and other non-white Baptists are at the forefront of the movement toward unity.

In this modern era, no new conventions or structures will come of the New Baptist Covenant Celebration. However, look for unprecedented partnerships in the wake of this meeting, efforts that move beyond long-standing superficial barriers in working together to take the love of Christ to those who most need it.

In short, look for a new era in Baptist life.

Today in Atlanta

2008-01-28T10:49:00.000-05:00

Today in Atlanta four major African-American Baptist conventions are convening: the National Baptist Convention of America, the National Baptist Convention USA, the Progressive National Baptist Convention and the National Missionary Baptist Convention of America. Collectively, these four groups represent some 10 million Baptists, and roughly 10,000 of that total are expected in Atlanta today. The four groups will meet separately for business sessions, but will join together to discuss cooperation in common ministries such as disaster relief, evangelism and social issues.

While Southern Baptist troubles (and statistical declines) of recent decades have received the bulk of news coverage, African-American Baptists continue to grow numerically and in terms of missions and ministry. Last month a single African-American Baptist congregation, Fountain Baptist Church in Summit, N.J., reached a goal of raising $1,000,0000 for Hurricane Katrina relief. Collectively, African-American Baptists have pledged $1,000,0000,0000 for Katrina relief. No other group of Baptists in America can come close to touching that figure.

For the next three days in Atlanta, African-American Baptists will discuss ways they can better meet human needs around the nation and world, in the name of Jesus. Afterwards, thousands of other Baptists from throughout the nation will sit down with thousands of African-America Baptists for the New Baptist Covenant Celebration and talk about ways North American Baptists at large can work together to fulfill the commands of Jesus in ministering to the poor, sick and marginalized.

If you want to see the beginnings of a 21st-century Gospel revival, drop by the World Congress Center in Atlanta this week.

Tim LaHaye's Credibility Problem

2008-01-23T12:40:00.000-05:00

Tim LaHaye (the Reconstructionist-friendly author of the Left Behind fiction series; he is also a Baptist) wrote a ludicrous letter to the editor of USA Today, published in the Monday, January 21 print edition. He basically said he had never supported the Republican Party or encouraged anyone else to do so, and that Liberty University represents mainstream evangelical thought in America. His claims were so far outside the bounds of credibility that I penned a response to him. "Educating Tim LaHaye" is online at EthicsDaily.Com.

The God-Forsaken American Health Care System

2008-01-17T11:42:00.001-05:00

Last night, upon the insistence of my hospital pharmacist brother, I watched Michael Moore's most recent film, Sicko. The film truthfully depicts the American health care system (hospitals, insurance providers and pharmaceuticals) and that of other countries, my brother had assured me.

So I (finally) watched the film.

And it made me very, very angry.

The film received good reviews across the ideological spectrum, from Fox News to the New York Times. AlterNet credits the film with pushing Universal Health Care to the forefront of American politics during the presidential campaign season.

And did I mention that the film makes me very, very angry?

Canadian acquaintances have long told me they love their health care system, and wonder why citizens of the United States, which has one of worst-ranked health care system in the Western world and the worst ranking (among industrialized nations) in terms of preventable deaths, don't insist upon a humane system.

Sicko really brought the disparities to the forefront, and highlighted the lies that American politicians and the health care industry spread concerning socialized medicine. Moore allowed health care insiders, politicians and patients to speak for themselves. And speak they did.

How can it be that countries like Canada, Britain, France and even Cuba value human life enough to treat their citizens as human beings when it comes to health care ... while the American government in collusion with the health care industry is only interested in persons as a source of financial revenue?

How can anyone calling himself or herself "pro-life" oppose a health care system that treats human beings as persons with intrinsic value? How can anyone who values human life insist that poor people don't deserve adequate medical treatment, or support a system that routinely denies coverage for needed (even life-saving) drugs and medical treatment for citizens who do have insurance?

If there is an unethical and immoral medical system in the world today, it is that of the United States, a system based on greed rather than humanity.

As someone who pays (a lot!) for my own health insurance, I was forced to sign a waiver with my insurance company exempting them from paying for any future claims for a certain condition that my wife has, a condition which the insurance company feared they might (one day) have to fork over too much money for drugs or medical procedures. My family is treated like a cash machine from which the insurance corporation is determined to extract as much profit as possible, to line the pockets of rich executives and big shareholders.

And this morning I read the story of a CNN news anchor's awful experience in a hospital's emergency room.

In Canada, former Baptist pastor Tommy Douglas, named the greatest Canadian ever, led Canadians to an understanding that human life is more important than corporate profits.

In Canada, Britain and France, citizens pay taxes to support police departments, fire departments, libraries, parks, education, road improvements ... and health care. We as Americans pay taxes to support most all of the same social services ... except for health care.

It is time we Americans stop believing the lies of politicians and the health care industry concerning socialized medicine.

The truth is that our health care system is an immoral industry that values greed over human life (that there are many good, honest, ethical individuals and organizations within the industry I do not dispute; the industry, however, is not pro-life).

The truth is that socialized medicine as practiced in countries like Canada, Britain and France, while not perfect, is vastly superior to the current American health care industry.

Why? Because socialized medicine respects human life over and above material wealth.

Isn't it time that America stands up to be counted as a nation that values human life?

Excellent Resources From a Local Church Website

2008-01-13T18:12:00.000-05:00

I recently discovered the website of Central Baptist Church of Lowesville, VA, which is co-pastored by seminary friends, and former international missionaries, Chris and Karen Harbin. I recommend to any local Baptist church the excellent resources that the Harbins have assembled on their church's website.

The words below are found on the site's homepage, and are a marvelous statement about the transformational journey upon which faith thrusts us:

Like this site, faith is more than a static goal for which we yearn. Faith is a journey in which we experience God and seek to surrender our lives to God's will. Join with us on this journey of faith. We will attempt to dialogue about issues that make faith more than a static recitation of facts. We will question how the gospel impacts our lives, sharing that journey of grappling with the issues of faith.

We hope to raise questions, struggle with issues, and seek relevance in our experiential journey of faith. Bear with us as we structure this site, even as God continues to mold our lives.

Faith, after all, concerns things like character, dependence, and interdependence. It is so much more than a goal we might reach. It is more like the very journey itself—the experience of letting go of self in order for God to live through our lives.

We invite you to journey with us. We hope it will challenge you. We hope it will encourage you. We hope it will stretch you. The path we will take will not be without its bumps, twists, and turns. It will not all be easy going. If it were so, it would make no difference in our lives. As we journey together in this venture called faith, we should all be transformed.

Are you up to the challenge of living life on the edge of eternity? Real faith is not for the faint of heart. We will not know where the journey will take us. We are committed to the trek. Will you join us?
—Christopher B. Harbin, pastor

Update on the New Baptist Covenant

2008-01-12T14:17:00.000-05:00

The upcoming New Baptist Covenant Celebration is receiving more publicity than any Baptist event in recent times. The attention given to the January 30 - February 1 event event is deserved, as it will be the most diverse gathering of North American Baptists since the days of the Triennial Convention in the early 19th century. African-American Baptists, a fast growing segment of Baptist life in America, may well outnumber all others. Baptist layman Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, John Grisham, Chuck Grassley and Lindsay Graham will speak alongside well-known ministers such as Tony Campolo, William Shaw, Julie-Pennington Russell and Joel Gregory in a show of Gospel unity.

The theme of the event is the Gospel itself: Bringing Good News to the Poor, Respecting Diversity, Seeking Peace with Justice, Welcoming the Stranger and Setting the Captive Free. Baptists are unfortunately known more for their disagreements than commonalities, but in this instance, all Baptists should be able to agree on the central tenets of Jesus' teachings in the Gospels.

Grisham is the latest speaker to be announced. The novelist rarely gives speeches these days, but his Baptist convictions led him to accept the invitation.

If Baptists took Jesus' own words to heart, what would it look like? Come to Atlanta on January 30 to find out!

Young People: Christianity Not Like Jesus

2007-10-10T22:59:00.000-04:00

According to Barna Research, Christianity has a huge black eye.

Among non-Christian young people aged 16-29:

91% say Christianity is Anti-Gay
87% say Christianity is judgmental
85% say Christianity is hypocritical

And among Christians aged 16-29:

80% say Christianity is Anti-Gay
52% say Christianity is judgmental
47% say Christianity is hypocritical

And 25% of non-Christians perceive Christianity as unlike Jesus.

In response, Andy Stanley, son of Charles Stanley, dares to speak against a sacred cow among evangelical Christians.

Andy Stanley, senior pastor of North Point Ministries in Atlanta, suggested that churches should not focus solely on converting people, as has been the emphasis for generations.

"If we were able to rewrite the script for the reputation of Christianity, I think we would put the emphasis on developing relationships with non-believers, serving them, loving them, and making them feel accepted," he wrote.

"Only then would we earn the right to share the gospel."

To which some of us who are former campus ministers would say, "Duh!"

Thou Shalt Kill ... in Church

2007-10-07T01:13:00.000-04:00

From the New York Times comes a deadly story: some churches are so desperate to reach young people that they are holding Halo 3 parties.

Halo 3 is a wildly popular, and very bloody, video game in which the goal is to kill as many of your enemies as possible. Some churches seem convinced that they can reach young people for Jesus by sanctioning video game violence. So much for all the previous Christian resistance to violent video games.

The American Psychological Association, in a review of studies on the effects of violent video games, concluded that such games result in aggressive, hostile and violent behavior in young people. However, fundamentalist evangelicals ignored that finding in embracing the Left Behind video game, in which killing is glorified as the will of God in an apocalyptic world. So perhaps it is no surprise that some Christians, now hip on video violence, are turning sanctuaries into virtual killing fields, all for the glory of God.

Al Mohler the Cry Baby?

2007-09-21T11:10:00.001-04:00

Chalk this one up in the category of strange but sweet. Al Mohler is whining that he and the other Southern Baptist Seminary presidents are being criticized by fellow Southern Baptists.

Here's the quote, as lifted from a September 19 story in Baptist Press:

R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, speaking on behalf of the presidents of the SBC's various entities, noted to the Executive Committee that "there is an unprecedented level of attack upon some of our own leaders ... in the form of innuendo and smear and caricature and character assassination." Mohler also noted, "Two of our own have suffered in particular along these lines," referencing Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and his wife Dorothy.

Mohler stated that the SBC entity presidents have committed "that we will not ourselves tolerate personal attacks upon one of our colleagues," and Jerry Rankin, president of the International Mission Board, then led in a time of prayer for the Pattersons.

Mohler's fundamentalist comrades, especially Paige Patterson, spent two decades plus (1970s through the 1990s) slandering, smearing, employing character assassination, and telling outright and repeated lies about the former - non-fundamentalist - presidents of SBC seminaries, in a power play to gain control of the seminaries. Now that they have gained undisputed control of the reins of the seminaries, they are whining that some of their fellow conservative Southern Baptists (read: young SBC bloggers) are criticizing them ... and they are not going to take it!

Shakespeare, anyone?

Evangelicals: Children, Education and the Poor are Not Priorities

2007-08-22T09:00:00.000-04:00

According to the latest survey from the Barna Group, evangelicals in America do not consider children, education and poor people as priorities ... while non-evangelical Americans consider these three issues as the most important issues facing America over the next decade.

The top priorities for evangelicals? The health of Christian churches, "upgrading the state of marriage and families," and improving spiritual conditions in America.

Jesus himself taught that his followers are to care for children and the poor. Are evangelicals too consumed with themselves to the point of being unable to see the needs of people around them? Are non-Christians in America more in tune with Jesus' worldview than are many Christians?

Faith and Money

2007-08-20T10:28:00.000-04:00

Recently Colorado Christian University fired a professor for daring to question free enterprise. The school's president, Bill Armstrong, explained the firing by essentially declaring that Jesus teaches free enterprise, and therefore free enterprise is a foundational principle of the school.

Of course, a private school can do as they wish. But ironically, Colorado Christian's claim to be based on a biblical foundation references the following verse:

"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - His good, pleasing and perfect will." Romans 12:2 (NIV)

For some odd reason, school administration does not seem to recognize that capitalism - merits notwithstanding - is one of those worldly "patterns" that Paul refers to.

Today's young generation, on the other hand, seem to realize the fallacy of placing one's faith in the accumulation of money and things. A nationwide survey of college students conducted by the Associated Press and MTV, reveals that youths care more about family and religion than sex and materialism. In what may be surprising to many Americans, "almost no one replied 'money' when young people were asked what makes them happy." Instead, young people pointed primarily to relationships with family and friends as their source of happiness. Religion also ranked high as a source of happiness.

Perhaps Bill Armstrong should listen to his students. They just might be able to teach him a thing or two about not conforming to our materialistic - and worldly - culture.

Separating Marriage from Government

2007-08-08T09:03:00.000-04:00

It is now old news (from a 2000 Barna survey) that conservative Christians have higher divorce rates than any other religious groups, atheists and agnostics. And it is also old news that Baptists have higher divorce rates than any other established denomination.

While Southern Baptists continue to deny their high divorce rates, Ron Barrier, Spokesperson for American Atheists, declared of the Barna survey: "These findings confirm what I have been saying these last five years. Since Atheist ethics are of a higher caliber than religious morals, it stands to reason that our families would be dedicated more to each other than to some invisible monitor in the sky. With Atheism, women and men are equally responsible for a healthy marriage. There is no room in Atheist ethics for the type of 'submissive' nonsense preached by Baptists and other Christian and/or Jewish groups. Atheists reject, and rightly so, the primitive patriarchal attitudes so prevalent in many religions with respect to marriage."

Fast forward seven years, to the present. Baptist Press, the promotion arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, is now publishing about one story a day that deals with the topic of marriage. Southern Baptist leaders, in short, seem to be infatuated with their own "sins," condemning others for what their own are extremely guilty of. Or perhaps they are trying to be disingenuous, hopeful that their rhetoric will blind the world to the sins of Baptists.

Yet there is another dimension to the Southern Baptist marriage propaganda, as Southern Baptist leaders routinely seek to use government money and muscle to force others to do that of which their own are the worst offenders. For Southern Baptist leaders to claim that they are the champions and guardians of traditional marriage is like a fox claiming to be the champion and guardian of the hen house. But at least the fox doesn't solicit tax dollars to cover his dirty deeds.

John Fife, a retired Presbyterian minister from Tucson, Arizona, suggests that the time has come to separate marriage from government by recognizing only civil unions, and leaving marriage to the church:

So how do we begin to clean up this marriage mess?

How about going back to a basic American value and tradition - the separation of church and state?

The state should confine its interest to the legal registration of couples in civil unions. Those couples would then avail themselves of all the legal rights and responsibilities that a registered civil union would provide.

The state could legislate certain qualifications for civil unions that are in the state's interest (no polygamy), but could not define marriage for the church and could not discriminate against any groups.

Marriage would become solely a matter of faith and the traditions of diverse religious communions.

Marriage vows would be restored to sacred vows before "God and these witnesses" within a community of faith interpreting its own sacred texts.

It seems that Fife is thinking more like a Baptist than many Baptists today.

Interpretations of the Baptist History Celebration

2007-08-03T09:26:00.000-04:00

The diversity among the Baptists gathered here at First Baptist Church Charleston is telling, resulting in different accounts of just what is going on here. Yet I continue to sense a definite Calvinistic bent, followed by fundamentalist and Landmarkist influences, to the overall program. Tom Nettles further confirmed this observation last night, interpreting the Philadelphia Confession as the vehicle for spreading the 1689 Second London Confession in American Baptist life of the 19th century both North and South, opposing the heresy of Arminianism. In fact, all three Southern Baptists participating in the plenary sessions are from the Calvinistic Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (two other Southern Baptists, breakout speakers, are not Calvinists, that I am aware of). In addition, the absence of Free Will Baptists at this gathering also is noteworthy.

Indeed, it is odd to see Primitive and Landmark publications (including the Trail of Blood) for sale alongside Judson Press. On the other hand, having the smaller Baptist groups represented here is refreshing. The gathering together of historians from across the theological spectrum of Baptists in North America, in and of itself, makes this meeting worthwhile. Should there be another meeting such as this, Free Will Baptists should be invited, and women historians need to be on the program (none are speaking here in the plenary sessions, and only two, that I am aware, are speaking in breakouts).

Few are blogging about this event, but their observations are noteworthy:

Tony Cartledge notes the disproportionately large number of Primitive Baptists at this meeting.

Southern Baptist Pastor Steve Weaver takes exception to Leonard and Brackney. A Calvinist, Weaver otherwise is excited about the Celebration meeting.

Perhaps others will weigh in after the Celebration concludes

Ghosts Past and Present

2007-08-02T10:10:00.000-04:00

The First Baptist Church of Charleston, founded in 1682, is the oldest Baptist church in the South. Next door to the church lives an 18th century ghost; so says the historical plaque. On the other side of the ghost resides the pastor of First Baptist, a rather young man. This morning, Ann Judson, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof, appeared in the midst of the morning gathering of the Baptist History Celebration. The past and present, the dead and the living, dwell together in harmony here in historic Charleston as we are surrounded by history.

Bill Leonard, now speaking, joked that the widely diverse group of Baptist historians presently gathered at FBC Charleston are able to come together because "we only talk about dead people, and they are not a threat to us." Speaking on the topic of "Understanding Our Global Witness," Leonard unequivocally declared that the late 18th century / early 19th century missions movement led Baptist Calvinists to "change their theology." And although some modern day Calvinist Baptists uphold Andrew Fuller as a staunch Calvinist, Leonard argues that Fuller and "Fullerism" opposed and presented a sharp challenge to traditional Calvinism.

I suspect that if a question and answer time were allowed following Leonard's remarks, his views of certain dead Baptists would be challenged by some in attendance this morning. Perhaps dead Baptists can be a threat to Baptists today, after all. But for now we all sit in harmony in downtown Charleston. Nonetheless, at the end of this day, Calvinist historian Tom Nettles will have today's last word. So the future has been predetermined - by someone.

Diverse Baptist Historians Gather in Charleston

2007-08-02T07:01:00.000-04:00

I am sitting in the box pews of the sanctuary of First Baptist Church, Charleston, South Carolina, surrounded by Southern Baptists, Cooperative Baptists, American Baptists, African-American Baptists, Independent Fundamentalist Baptists, Landmark Baptists, Canadian Baptists, and probably others that I've not yet identified. The Baptist History Celebration, as it is called, is one of the more ideologically diverse gatherings of North American Baptists I've witnessed, although the annual gatherings of the Baptist History and Heritage Society witnesses similar diversity.

The occasion of this meeting is the 300th anniversary of the Philadelphia Baptist Association, America's first Baptist association. And the meeting is not free of ideological slant. Gary Long, srict Calvinist and the publisher of Particular Baptist Press, led the way in putting together this event. The Calvinist/Reformed slant shows: last night the three-day conference opened with a profile paper on John Gill, renowned hypercalvinist British Baptist (although last night Gill, rather than hypercalvinist, was somewhat touchy-feely, full of humility and piety). The remainder of early Baptists highlighted last night were also Reformed, although well-known Baptist historian Bill Brackney, the featured speaker, clearly noted that tremendous diversity existed among 17th and 18th century Baptists (read: not all, by any stretch, were Calvinists).

The Calvinist slant notwithstanding, the roster of speakers (in addition to Brackney) includes such noted Baptist historians as Bill Leonard, Edwin Gaustad and Tom Nettles. Independent and Landmark Baptists are also represented.

Last year, when describing what this meeting would be like, Gary Long, visibly excited, told me that "Baptists may not be able to agree on anything else, but we can agree on our history." I found that a rather odd statement, as our differences in Baptist life have much to do with competing interpretations (and emphases) of our history. But perhaps he meant that Baptist historians can at least agree that our denominational history is important.

Finally, this Charleston gathering marks the beginning of Baptists Today's foray into blogging. Tony Cartledge, recently retired as editor of the North Carolina Biblical Recorder and now writing for Baptists Today, headlines the new Baptists Today Blogs, offering his initial take on the Baptist History Celebration.

Does the Religious Majority Rule?

2007-07-23T10:55:00.000-04:00

USA TODAY's Monday religion column features an editorial on the manner in which local religious majorities in towns across America, including Southern Baptists in the South, are intimidating those who adhere to minority religious views in their communities.

Historically, Baptists, as a persecuted religious minority in colonial America, were the greatest champions of religious minorities in our nation, reflecting their commitment to the life Jesus lived in championing the poor and oppressed, and Jesus' teaching of faith as voluntary, not coerced.

Today, far too many Baptists, now a majority and convinced their views should be privileged and favored by the government, have devoted themselves to "defending" their own "rights" and forcing their faith and morals on those who disagree with them. They are so busy fighting for privilege and favor and forcing their beliefs on others that they have forgotten that the Bible teaches, and our Baptist heritage bears clear witness, that as followers of Christ we are not to demand our own rights, but rather to champion the rights of others.

Al Mohler on Re-Engineering Babies

2007-03-16T08:42:00.000-04:00

Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has crossed a threshold of nuclear proportions: the unwavering belief, among fundamentalists, that homosexuality is solely a choice. By indicating his belief, in his blog entry of May 2, that science may be right about biology playing a role in gayness, he has been blasted out of his presidential bunker by his fellow fundamentalists, a fact he laments, with a good deal of indignation and no small amount of defensive posturing, in his blog entry of today.

Accused of saying that babies could be born gay, Mohler denied he made the statement. Accused of advocating genetic engineering, Mohler declared, "I am adamantly opposed to genetic therapies of such a sort." Blaming the "secular" media for making such false accusations, Mohler scolds fellow Christians for believing the media without reading what he actually said.

Seemingly bitter, Mohler retorted: "I am even more frustrated with many conservative Christians who read the secular headlines without even bothering to read my article. They jumped to conclusions that I do not hold and castigated me for advocating things I have opposed all my life. I have received a great deal of hate mail from those identifying themselves as homosexuals outraged that I believe homosexual acts to be unconditionally sinful. But I also received mail that can only be described as hateful from those who identified themselves as Christians -- people who clearly had never read my article and simply jumped to conclusions or accepted misrepresentations."

But let's go back to the March 2 Al Mohler, who said:

"We must fight against the idea of aborting fetuses or human embryos identified as homosexual in orientation. If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin."

The March 2 Al Mohler listed only "aborting fetuses and human embryos" as off limits (or not "appropriate") when it comes to combating homosexuality in the womb, but was clearly open to other treatments that would "reverse the [biological] sexual orientation [of the fetus] to heterosexual." In short, the March 2 Al Mohler did endorse the future use of biological treatments for re-engineering babies. Can a biological "treatment" of a human fetus to reverse homosexual orientation be anything other than manipulating the genetic makeup, that is, genetic engineering?

As Mohler notes, "Soon, genetic treatments may allow for changing the [genetic] profile [of a fetus]. Welcome to the world of designer babies. If that happens, how many parents -- even among those who consider themselves most liberal -- would choose a gay child? How many parents, armed with this diagnosis, would use the patch and change the orientation?"

The only clear criticism that the March 2 Al Mohler offered of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis [PDG] was that some liberals might use the information to choose abortion.

"The human genetic structure, along with every other aspect of creation, shows the pernicious effects of the Fall and of God's judgment," the Al Mohler of March 2 stated. Back then, he openly expressed support of changing the biological makeup of a fetus, at least if the fetus were pre-disposed to be homosexual. But today, Al Mohler declares: "I was said to advocate genetic therapies. I never said that, and I resolutely oppose such proposals. I would not advocate the use of genetic therapies to create heterosexual babies -- or any other therapy of this type."

Just call him "Backtracking Al." Two weeks ago he clearly embraced the possibility of manipulating human biology to change the sexual orientation of a fetus. But today he is horrified at the very idea!

Yet it may be too late, for by merely acknowledging the possibility that homosexuality may be based at least partially on biological composition, Mohler may be devoured and cast aside by his former allies, for in the world of fundamentalism, only the ideological purists survive.

Responding to Christian Nationalism

2007-03-08T09:10:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow (Friday, March 9) at the spring meeting of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Georgia, I am leading a seminar entitled "Responding to Christian Nationalism." The emphasis is on effectively communicating with persons who are Christian nationalists (whether consciously or not). There are some serious barriers between those who hold to the "America as a Christian nation" myth and those of us who yet believe, as did our Baptist forefathers, in the Separation of Church and State. If you have any insight into how to begin breaking down these barriers, I'd like to hear from you (whether today, Friday or later).

Below is part of my outline for the seminar. This section specifically addresses the question of what happened between the 1950s and today to give rise to the myth of America as a Christian Nation?

=======================================

What Happened Between the 1960s and Today?

A. Events From 1950s to early 1970s

1. Race

a. Desegregation: Brown vs. Board of Education (1954)

b. Civil Rights Act (1964)

2. Religion (Pluralism) – Immigration Act (1965) – more immigrants, less whites

3. Sex – youth rebellion, rock and roll

4. National Defeat – Vietnam

B. Establishment Feelings (race relations, religion, morality, military)

1. Loss of control

2. Disillusionment

3. National Embarrassment

4. Threat to traditional family structures

C. Interpretation by the Establishment

1. Society and culture as immoral (sex)

2. Growth of false religions (pluralism)

3. America the Weak

4. Family life and structure under attack

5. Overall culprit: “liberalism”

D. Responses

1. Politics - Founding of Religious Right / Moral Majority (Bob Jones Univ, 1975)

2. Education – Lack of school prayer (1962, Engel vs. Vitale) blamed; private white religious schools founded; public education attacked

3. Theology – Fundamentalism

4. Culture – Anti-sex morality (anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, abstinence)

5. Family – return to the 1950s as a role model for family (segregation; male bread winner; wife as home maker), which in turn is framed as a reflection of Puritan Colonial New England

6. Overall ideology - conservative politics/religion embraced as godly, liberalism in all forms branded as evil

7. Collective Response - recasting of history via the myth of America as a Christian nation

ENVIRONMENTALISM AND BAPTISTS

2007-02-07T19:02:00.000-05:00

The Christian Life Commission of the Baptist General Convention of Texas has stepped forward to call Creation Care "A Christian Responsibility." The specific agenda is opposition to the construction of more coal-burning plants in the state of Texas, but the CLC is espousing a cautious approach. In response, the Associated Press reports on Baptists slowly becoming green.

And today I was informed that First Baptist Church of Christ in Macon is addressing the issue of Creation Care head-on.

If you know of other Baptist churches directly addressing environmentalism (or Creation Care), I'd like to know. At this juncture, it is a cutting edge issue even among moderate Baptists.

WHY DO SOME ELITES DESPISE THE POOR?

2007-01-26T20:03:00.000-05:00

I continue to be amazed at the moneyed elites who despise the poor and evidence their spite by arguing that raising the federal minimum wage hurts poor people more than helps them. A Friday, January 26 editorial in the Wall Street Journal (print edition, page A11) argued raising the minimum wage will make the poor poorer. How? Because a 40% increase in the minimum wage (from $5.15 to $7.25) "raises the costs of fast foods and other goods," and a handful of the poor may find themselves without a job.

Did anyone hear these elites warning about the harmful consequences to the poor over the past ten years as fast food and goods prices rose without a corresponding rise in the federal minimum wage? Have any of these anti-poor elites, in recent years, lamented the number of poor people losing jobs over rising prices? Or were they more concerned with fattening their own pocketbooks while making certain the poorest citizens in our country remained poor? If the price of foods and goods is going to rise anyway, would it not be better to recognize that the poorest in our society need to make enough wages to keep up with inflation? And does anyone (even the most elite of the moneyed elite?) want to make an argument that fast food and goods prices will rise 40% over the next few years if the minimum wage is raised?

If this country is left in the hands of the moneyed elites, prices will continue to rise while the rich fatten their pocketbooks and make certain the poor get poorer.

So much for the American dream.

FUNDAMENTALISTS ERODE GEOLOGY WHILE DISRESPECTING BIBLE

2007-01-18T14:20:00.000-05:00

"In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under [the Bush administration's] orders to suspend its belief in geology." Thus declared Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, as quoted in Christian Century.

The effect of this anti-geology Bush edict is that employees at Grand Canyon National Park are not permitted to discuss the age of the canyon.

Of course, the Hebrew wording of the Genesis creation accounts (which most fundamentalists insist is a literal six, 24 hour day event) does NOT mandate a literal six day creation. In fact, in the original Hebrew, the wording clearly indicates that creation was an act of God over a very long period of time. Some Bible inerrantists have enough confidence in the Bible to admit as much, but many do not. Which means, ironically, that biblical fundamentalists are trying to force science to conform to something the Bible does not actually teach in the first place. Furthermore, only since the 17th century has the belief in a literal six-day creation become popular among Christians, and not until the 1870s and 1880s was "creationism" born.

That many fundamentalists disrespect and even abuse the Bible (even as they publicly claim to believe it) for their personal gain is nothing unusual. For President Bush to turn their disrespect of the Bible into public policy is inexcusable.

THE $3.9 MILLION MISSIONARY

2007-01-18T10:00:00.000-05:00

We live in the era of seemingly countless $10 million-a-year athletes ($3 million for sub-par performers), entertainers and CEO's. Now you can add a new superstar to these lofty ranks: the $3.9 million missionary.

Who in the world would shell out $3.9 million to field a missionary ... in America? According to Mary Branson, former long-time editing director at the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, the NAMB took an operating budget of $126,000,000 and managed to fund a total of 32 full-time home missionaries. That's not a misprint: 32 full-time missionaries, one missionary for each $3.9 of NAMB operating budget.

OK, it is true that no given missionary pocketed $3.9 million ... but it is also true that former NAMB president Bob Reccord helped himself, and his friends, to many millions of dollars in lavish personal expenses and contracts while at the helm of the organization, according to Branson. And while Reccord was preening his image and living high on the hog, and lining the pockets of his buddies, he publicly boasted that NAMB fielded some 5000 missionaries even as the missions agency quietly supported only 32 full-time missionaries with the $126,000,000 that Southern Baptists contributed to NAMB. Oh, and Reccord made certain to use some of NAMB's budget to give handouts of a few hundred dollars a month to several hundred church planters and pastors in "pioneer" areas of the U.S. How generous. (At one point, I and my wife, although never receiving a dime from NAMB, were counted as two of the thousands of NAMB missionaries, with our names included in the organization's printed promotionals. But I digress; that is another story.)

Although Reccord is now gone, there are no indications that Southern Baptists are currently getting any more bang for their buck in terms of missionaries. Perhaps next summer at the SBC annual convention someone should make a motion that NAMB take its $126,000,000 pot and select 32 missionaries who also happen to be professional baseball players. The NAMB Home Run Missionaries might put on quite a show. For a small admission price, Southern Baptists could attend games at Missionary Park, scarfing Gospel Dogs while watching the Home team relief pitchers try to convert save opportunities.

FORGIVING JESUS

2007-01-10T21:01:00.000-05:00

Russ Moore, Dean of Theology of The Southern Baptist Theology Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, still hates former president Bill Clinton with a passion. It still amazes me that some individuals who consider themselves conservative Christians can hate Clinton so deeply for his sexual indiscretions, yet turn around and fawn over George W. Bush, a president who called the Constitution of the United States "nothing more than a G%^D(*$&$ piece of paper" and whose lies and deception have led to the deaths of more than 3000 American soldiers and 600,000 Iraqis.

The only explanation I can think of for such warped ethics is that to some conservatives, anyone who bears a hint of the label "liberal" is unforgivable, unless the sinner completely renounces his or her liberalism. Conversely, those who bear the label "conservative" are eminently forgivable, no matter how hateful, unethical, slanderous, deceitful and otherwise filth-fully sinful. Conservatives, without even acknowledging their sins, can easily be pardoned from their sins by simply claiming they believe in God. But when liberals say they believe in God, they are obviously lying. Thus, George W. Bush is a saint, and Bill Clinton is the worst sinner on the face of the earth.

Strange (and certainly unbiblical) though such a view of sin and sinner is, it does help explain fundamentalist aversions to Jesus. When Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and his fellow fundamentalists so crafted the 2000 edition of the Baptist Faith and Message to remove acknowledgment of Jesus being the "criterion" for interpreting scripture, they did so out of fear that some Baptists were daring to put their trust in the liberal Jesus.

That's right, the liberal Jesus. After all, he was quite the religious liberal in his day. Jesus, the one who enjoyed drinking wine and was even accused of being a drunkard. Jesus, the one who violated the religious laws and taught his disciples they could so likewise. Jesus, the one who was a friend to prostitutes and the other dregs of society. Jesus, the one who refused to execute a woman caught in the act of adultery, thus refusing to follow the law. Jesus, the one who taught that Christians have a social responsibility to the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden, the marginalized. Jesus, the one who taught that shirking one's responsibility to providing for the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden and the marginalized has a direct bearing on one's very salvation. Jesus, the one who taught experiential faith over propositional (that is, doctrinal) faith. Jesus, the one who had not a word to say about abortion and homosexuality, but spent much time expounding upon the evils of religious legalism (fundamentalism). Jesus, the liberal.

Some conservatives so dislike the liberal Jesus that they deny him in this respect (hence, his demotion in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000), holding him at arm's length ... but at the same time trying to dress him up in fundamentalist clothes, because you can't claim to be a Christian and not publicly hold on (to at least a part of) Jesus.

What I want to know is this: when are these conservatives going to move beyond denying the liberal Jesus and instead forgive him for being other than they want him to be? Indeed, are they even capable of forgiving Jesus? If they can't extend forgiveness to Bill Clinton for being a liberal, how can they possibly forgive Jesus, the Son of God, for being a liberal?

Obviously, they can't.

JUST WHAT IS RICHARD LAND SMOKING?

2007-01-09T21:09:00.000-05:00

"I know I represent the views of overwhelming numbers of Southern Baptists." So said Richard Land today as he dismissed a meeting of moderate Baptists in Atlanta at which leaders of Baptist groups representing some 20 million Baptists were present.

What is Land's list of "Baptist views?" He has consistently insisted on a handful of necessary beliefs: pro-life (in Land's world, "pro-life" actually means "anti-abortion"), pro-Israel, non-gay marriage, pro-Bush and pro-Iraq War. That's it folks; that's what is required to be a Southern Baptist, according to Richard Land, head of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and self-appointed spokesperson for all Southern Baptists.

Never mind that prior to the 1960s, Southern Baptists did not pretend to take definitive stances on the first three of Land's defining issues. In fact, one would have been hard-pressed to find any Southern Baptist who was pro-Israel as Land defines it (Christian Zionism did not develop until the 1970s), most Baptists were not discussing abortion (and most that were discussing it were not entirely opposed), and gay marriage was a non-issue. And it is doubtful that any Southern Baptist prior to this decade would have voiced unwavering support for a president who repeatedly lied to start a war (and in order to continue the utter fiasco that the war has become) and considers the Constitution of the United States "nothing more than a *^&$%&$* piece of paper!"

In short, by Richard Land's definition, true Southern Baptists did not even exist until sometime after the 1960s!

But what of the present, an era in which Land and his fundamentalist cronies claim to be leading Southern Baptists around by the nose? In my current church, whose members financially support both the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Southern Baptist Convention, not a single one of the roughly 10 of 500 or so members who actually know who Richard Land is ... consider Land as representative of their views. As a matter of fact, very few Southern Baptists (outside of preachers) know who the man is, and although quite a few Southern Baptists might agree with the man on some of his views, few turn to Land for guidance on what to believe, and many would take offense that he pretends to speak on their behalf.

And in Baptist circles other than (some) Southern Baptists and other fundamentalist Baptists, Land's priestly pretensions are widely recognized as the shrill rantings of a blowhard.

So, Richard Land, just what are you smoking? It seems you are rather high on the fumes coming from the tailpipe of your own self-importance ... and inhaling deeply.

WOULD JESUS THROW McDONALDS OUT OF THE TEMPLE?

2007-01-03T14:30:00.000-05:00

As noted in a news story from Canada about their southern neighbors:

"The faith and family market has attracted the attention of some of America's largest corporations.

Coca Cola Co., Daimler Chrysler AG and McDonalds Corp. are among the giant U.S. corporations that have begun tapping into the Christian market, largely through the "mega-church" phenomenon sweeping largely through the southern states.

Coca-Cola and McDonalds have given away free samples at the 25,000-member New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga. Target Co. won praise from the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn for donating 2,000 backpacks to children in a low-income housing project.

GM's Chevrolet division has just sponsored evangelical singer Michael W. Smith's recent tour, while Chrysler ponied up for Patti La Belle's recent gospel tour that included her Dec. 2 concert at Jericho City of Praise in Maryland. GM also made donations to a cancer cause for parishioners at the Maryland church who test drove their cars."

The Republican Party has already conscripted much of the evangelical community, with mega-churches at the forefront, for political purposes. Now, in the wake of success on the political front come America's biggest corporations, seeking entrance into holy places. Altruism? Not a chance. It is all about $$$.

Would Jesus throw McDonalds out of the Temple?

YOU KNOW A DENOMINATION IS IN TROUBLE WHEN ...

2006-12-06T09:01:00.000-05:00

... it has and enforces a "prayer policy," even in regards to private prayer.

The SBC now polices who can pray and how. The message: "You can't talk to God unless we say you can, and then only if we approve your words and thoughts." Until recent years, Baptists would have considered this to be a violation of the priesthood of all believers. Yet this is just one more recent decree by Southern Baptist leaders who view themselves as God's bodyguards.

"You don't believe in inerrancy? God's not interested in seeing you."

"So you speak in tongues in private? Go babble somewhere else, God's not available."

Fortunately, at least some Southern Baptist pastors are standing up to this nonsense.

CATFISH AND SHRIMP: THE FOOD OF SINNERS!

2006-11-21T10:42:00.000-05:00

Although many individual Christians and local churches claim to believe in and practice the whole Bible, Oliver "Buzz" Thomas, formerly of the Baptist Joint Committee For Religious Liberty, reminds us again that we modern Christians sometimes are a people in denial who have a habit of discarding scriptural laws which we don't like while clinging to scriptural laws which reinforce our own prejudices ... at the risk of being, yet again, on the wrong side of irrefutable truth.

Indeed, if we followed biblical law, our churches would be empty on Sunday mornings. After all, how many Baptists do you know who have never 1) eaten catfish or shrimp, or 2) sassed their parents? Leviticus 11 says that eating catfish and shrimp is an abomination unto God, while Exodus 21 demands the death penalty for those who sass their parents. Yet we allow these worst of biblical sinners to not only participate in our worship services, but teach our Sunday School classes and preach from our pulpits! (The audacity of it all!)

Sinning, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder. We allow our kind of sinners into our churches, but prevent those dastardly "other" sinners from coming anywhere near us.

But, heh, why dwell on such self-righteous inconsistency? Forget about it. Just take your family out to one of those evil, sinful, hell-hole restaurants ... the local Catfish House or Seafood Joint.

After all, that's where our kind of sinners go to for a good time.

JAMES DOBSON AND ANN COULTER CONFIRM THAT JESUS IS A GODLESS LIBERAL

2006-10-31T09:50:00.000-05:00

After hinting at it for many years, a top leader of the Religious Right and his ideological soul mate confirmed what has been a closely guarded secret for some 2000 years: Jesus is really nothing more than a godless liberal.

The startling revelation came on Tuesday, October 24, 2006. The previous day James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family and widely-recognized leader of the Religious Right, welcomed Ann Coulter, author of Godless: The Church of Liberalism, on his radio show. Dobson, self-proclaimed and self-important champion of “family values,” recently made news by dismissing the Republican Party’s child sex predator scandal by declaring that the charges were the result of a prank played by teenage pages. Coulter, in the meantime, has emerged as a favorite of the Religious Right for slamming and slandering Democrats in Godless, her latest book. Dobson in turn welcomed her as a hero on his radio show, after which the two quickly launched into a shared favorite pastime: gloating in self-righteousness while swapping lies about “liberal Democrats.”

For two days, Dobson and Coulter had a good time kicking the stuffing out of liberal, godless Democrats while blaming them for every known evil under the sun. In the midst of the gloat-fest, the subject turned to liberals’ concerns over how to treat one’s enemies, including the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Scoffing over the idea that any American would be concerned about how the

United States

treats or mistreats the nation’s enemies, Coulter slipped up and let the secret out of the bag: demonstrating “kindness” to one’s enemies, Coulter declared, is nothing more than “a liberal idea that will not die.”

“You have heard it said,” Jesus said to his followers in the Gospel of Matthew, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Nonsense, according to Coulter and Dobson. Only morons would love their enemies … liberal morons, at that.

Yet Coulter and Dobson are right in at least one regard: Jesus’ commandment to love one’s enemies is indeed “a liberal idea that will not die.”

Coulter and Dobson, mockingly dismissive of Jesus’ teachings, apparently despise Jesus for being a godless liberal who believes in showing kindness to one’s enemies. Of course, the Religious Right of Jesus’ day knew all to well that Jesus was a godless liberal, and it was reason enough for them to have Jesus executed.

But Jesus did not really die when the religious fundamentalists of his day had him nailed to a cross. Neither did his liberal teachings, which live on to this day, to the chagrin of the modern Religious Right.

Thomas Jefferson, one of America’s leading founding fathers, tore out many of the pages in his Bible, but refused to dismiss the teachings of Jesus. But to Coulter and Dobson in 2006, even Jesus is a godless liberal who can no longer be trusted.

WILL THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT FORM A THIRD POLITICAL PARTY IN 2008?

2006-10-23T10:55:00.001-04:00

For some years now, I have silently wondered just how long the Religious Right will stick with a Republican Party which is only willing to partially embrace the theocon vision of a theocratic, "Christian" nation.

Now, for the first time, I note at least one religious conservative pundit is publicly considering just such a move in time for the 2008 presidential election.

Bonnie Alba from Renew America, after vowing never to vote Democrat and dismissing the current Republican Party as also too liberal, has this to say:

"Republicans and Democrats, you have two years to get your act together. Do the job you've been hired to do, confront the very real problems of our time and honor your oath of office. In two years, I will decide with my vote whether you have fulfilled your commitment and earned your pay. There is a third party waiting for me, just in case."

A week earlier, an editorial in Tennessee's Chattanoogan had advocated for a religiously-based third political party.

Will other theocon pundits jump on Alba'a bandwagon? Even now, are Religious Right leaders such as James Dobson and Jerry Falwell quietly discussing the formation of a third party?

The theocons are, after all, in a tight spot. The nationalistic ambitions of the Religious Right are the hot topic of conversation in the Current Affairs section at local bookstores, and their theocratic designs have been broadcast to the general public even as the presumptive Party of God, in addition to being a wasteland in terms of ethics and integrity, has been exposed as a long-time safe harbor for homosexuals and a child predator. In short, the efforts of Christian conservatives to hijack the Republican Party, despite certain gains (such as the recent Supreme Court nominees) and a lot of public rhetoric from the Bush administration, have failed miserably.

If the theocons are to remain true to their nationalistic, moralistic faith and principles, they are left with only one alternative to save face and prove their commitment to the principles they publicly proclaim: abandon the tainted and corrupt Republican Party and form their own political party.

FAITH, A CASUALTY OF POLITICS?

2006-10-13T16:57:00.000-04:00

Sgt. Ricky Clousing, a young, born-again evangelical Christian, went off to war in Iraq "out of patriotism, idealism and curiosity." But as an interrogator in Iraq, he quickly realized that American forces were harassing and even killing innocent civilians, thus "creating the insurgency you're trying to fight." He told his superiors of the problem, who referred him to a chaplain, who blithely counseled him that in the Old Testament, "God sent his people to war." Returning to the states on leave, Clousing told his church friends the truth about the war in Iraq, but they told him that the Bible commanded Americans to be loyal to the government by "rendering unto Ceaser's what is Caesar's." And thus Clousing realized that their "politics" had "infiltrated their religion so much, they can't see past their politics."

This week Clousing was court-martialed and sentenced to 11 months in prison for going AWOL, for once he became convinced of the anti-Christian nature of the Iraq War, he refused to return to the battlefield.

You can read his story in the New York Times, but you probably won't hear about it from your local Republican megachurch or conservative Christian organizations ... just like you won't hear Jesus' admonitions that his followers should be peacemakers rather than warmongers.

FLIP-FLOPPING ON CHURCH AND STATE

2006-10-09T07:05:00.000-04:00

In 1802, the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut wrote Thomas Jefferson in support of the Constitutional separation of church and state. But in 2006, another Baptist church in Danbury, Connecticut is coveting taxpayer money, through the Bush administration's faith-based initiative, to build a children's center. Their Danbury Baptist forefathers would be horrified, but more and more of today's Baptists, now a majoritarian voice in America, expect and even demand tax dollars to prop up their faith.

In fact, the New York Times reports that religion in America, especially of the evangelical stripe, in recent decades has gained more and more government privileges at the burden of American taxpayers. Not only that, but increasingly churches and other religious institutions are not only hungry for taxpayer dollars and insistent on government privileges, but, ironically, are enclaves in which employees have few rights and in which individuals are often treated in anything other than a Christian manner.

The last two stories are the first two in a series of four in a New York Time's special entitled, "In God's Name," an expose on how religious organizations, including a large percentage of Baptist churches, increasingly press for, and receive, special privileges and favoritism from an accommodating government.

As Randall Balmer noted, "Where have all the Baptists gone?"

REPUBLICANS AND SEX: POLITICAL ARMAGEDDON

2006-10-06T18:51:00.000-04:00

On Friday, September 29, Republican Congressman Mark Foley (Florida) resigned amid evidence he engaged in sexually explicit instant messaging with a minor male House page.

In the intervening seven days, five Amish girls were killed in a horrible schoolroom shooting, dozens of American servicepersons died in Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of Iraqis died in sectarian violence, and yet more evidence surfaced that the Iraq War is a disaster and utter failure, contrary to President George W. Bush's insistent denials.

But the one story receiving the lopsided bulk of attention is the Republican Sex Scandal involving the homosexual Foley and accusations that he is a child sex predator. Foley is no longer even the centerpiece. The obvious cover-up is the main course upon which the media is dining. And the one question on everyone's mind is, "Will House Speaker Denny Hastert, who apparently knew of Foley's inappropriate contact with the page months or even years ago, be forced to resign?" Even Republicans are acknowledging that this latest scandal may well be the final straw that gets them kicked out of majority positions in both the House and Senate this November.

Why is the Foley scandal turning out to be the greatest of many scandals in the past three years within the Bush administration and Republican Senate and House? Greater than the presidential layer of lies that led us into a disastrous war in Iraq and continue to this day. Greater than the Abramoff corruption scandal in which numerous felonies were committed and numeorus Bush administration figures have been forced to resign. Greater than Tom DeLay's ties to Abramoff and the other federal crimes committed by the Texan.

The answer is a three-letter, dirty word: sex.

The Republican Party, led around by the nose by the Religious Right since the 1980s, shaped by the so-called "moral" (read anti-abortion, anti-homosexual and anti-sex in general) agenda of the Religious Right, has suddenly been revealed as anything but moral.

Homosexuality. Child sex predation. Cover-up at the highest levels of the Republican Party.

In short, the unthinkable political doomsday scenario suddenly happened. Republicans overnight became everything and more that the Religious Right has spent over two decades trying with all their might to pin on the "liberal" Democratic Party.

It doesn't matter that the Republican Party under the current administration had become the party of warmongering, legions of lies, unswerving supporters of the rich over the poor, systemic polluters of our fragile environment, and of a President who cursed the Constitution as nothing more than a "G...D... piece of paper" and devoted his presidency to violating it.

What matters is sex. It's what the Republicans used against Bill Clinton with a hatred that was unparalleled in American politics. Now it has become the downfall of the Republican Party. And this time it is about much more than consensual oral sex between two adults.

And how is James Dobson, the spokesperson of the Religious Right, handling this scandal involving homosexuality and child predation and political cover-up at the highest levels of the Republican Party? Dobson is pooh-poohing the whole thing as a "joke" and a "prank" by some wayward pages.

That's right. A prank. A joke. Nothing more.

And what about Baptist Press, the SBC Public Relations arm that is loyal to a fault to the Republican Party and is quick to point out sexual immorality in American culture and among "liberals," especially homosexuality?

Not a peep.

Jerry Falwell?

Nada.

But what else can the Religious Right do? They've been in bed with the Republican Party for so long that even the revelation of homosexuality and child predation between their sheets cannot dislodge them, for if they throw back the covers, their own moral nakedness will be known to all the world. So their only option is denial. After all, it's worked (somewhat) for Bush these past three years in regards to the Iraq war.

Party's over, folks.

Political Armageddon has arrived, exploding between the legs of the Religious Right. It's not a pretty sight, but justice is sometimes ugly.

2006-10-04T21:28:00.000-04:00

"God's Country"

Walter Russell Mead is the author of an interesting article in the current edition of Foreign Affairs journal.

I stumbled across the article yesterday while in Barnes & Noble, and read it in hard copy. The website link above contains the entire article (it is long), prefaced with the following very brief summary:

"Religion has always been a major force in U.S. politics, but the recent surge in the number and the power of evangelicals is recasting the country's political scene -- with dramatic implications for foreign policy. This should not be cause for panic: evangelicals are passionately devoted to justice and improving the world, and eager to reach out across sectarian lines."

I suggest you read the article yourself if you have any interest in Christian nationalism in America. I do have a few quibbles with some of Mead's basic assumptions, however.

For one thing, he downplays fundamentalism and broadens evangelicalism well past the borders of fundamentalism. Regarding Baptists, he shows little comprehension that the Southern Baptist Convention has become fundamentalist, not merely evangelical. In quoting Frank Page (p. 37 in the print copy) as saying (following his surprising election to the presidency of the SBC) "I believe the Word of God, I'm just not mad about it" as a way to prove the non-fundamentalist nature of the SBC, he placed the quote in the wrong context of Page referring to independent fundamentalists outside the SBC, when Page instead was backhanding the fundamentalist leadership of his own convention.

Secondly, while he correctly brands Jerry Falwell as a fundamentalist, he makes no mention that Jerry Falwell is not only a Southern Baptist, but was a leader (though an outsider) in the takeover of the SBC, the dominant speaker of the fundamentalist-controlled SBC pastor's conferences during the Takeover years, became the ultimate insider in the process, and remains a top-billed speaker at SBC events to this day (particularly opening convocations at SBC seminaries) whose frequent-over-the-top statements are never condemned by SBC leaders. In short, Mead fails to realize that Jerry Falwell, of all Southern Baptists today, is arguably the one individual that is most representative of the ideology of the current SBC (Mohler could be, if he were not a strict Calvinist; Land pretends to speak for all Southern Baptists, but simply acts out of his own hubris; Patterson would like to be the top representative, but ultimately has too many rough edges - even Falwell admits Patterson is more right-wing than he, which is really scary). Land, by the way, according to Mead, is not a fundamentalist.

Finally, listening to Mead alone, one would never pick up on the theocratic aspirations of folks like James Dobson, Rick Scarborough and D. James Kennedy.

So ultimately, I would say, Mead underestimates (and underdefines) fundamentalists. One might also argue with his other labels of "liberal" and "evangelical" Christians, but that is another discussion.

I do highly recommend the article.

2006-09-28T12:31:00.000-04:00

FIGHTING OVER THE UNPROMISED LAND

The Fundamentalist Takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention was never really about the Bible, liberalism or God's will, despite the Takeover group's attempt to make it so. It was all about one central theme: control. The Bible, liberalism and God's will flowed out of the central theme of control: controlling the Bible, defeating "liberalism" and mandating God's will for God. And in taking over the SBC, the fundamentalists in the past 27 years have led the denomination into unprecedented decline, disgrace and scandal (other than the 19th century support of slavery).

So what comes next? A battle among "conservatives" for continued control of the machinery of a still-large but rapidly declining denominational institution. Now firmly entrenched in their unpromised land flowing with vinegar and bitterness, "conservatives" have turned upon one another as many of us have long predicted. The two sides will soon be accusing the other of not believing the Bible. The youngsters (having claimed the biblical character of Joshua as their own) supporting the Takeover geezers are already labeling Wade Burleson and his young followers as liberals; the accused "liberals" deny the label and are hurling back charges of legalism.

Who will win Part II of the SBC fundamentalist controversy? Actually, that is the wrong question to ask. The SBC has already lost, and on a grand scale. The battle over the leftovers of the SBC will have no winners as this unpromised land is scorched and burned by the misplaced fervor of men who feign divine mandates for their personal prejudices and agendas.

2006-09-20T11:19:00.000-04:00

Monday, September 18 the SBC powers used Baptist Press to level their full bore cannons at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship for daring to defend itself from previous Baptist Press charges that the way CBF counts churches violates local church autonomy. What is the substance of this broadside against CBF over the issue of church counting? That CBF uses the pretense of donations of as little as $1 from an individual church member to the CBF in order to count the unsuspecting church as a CBF church and thus inflate their membership stats. The evidence? The personal testimony of three fundamentalist Baptist pastors.

All I know about those three particular pastors is that they seem to be willing tools of the BP lie and deception machine. But I can testify firsthand that over the years I have supported CBF (contributing directly to CBF) while holding membership in several Southern Baptist churches which did not include CBF in the church budget. In each instance, CBF did not count that given church as a CBF church. On the other hand, I see no reason why CBF should not recognize individual gifts given through a local church (even if not via the church budget) in identifying CBF churches. In fact, the fundamentalist Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC) utilizes this very practice in counting contributing churches, as do many other Christian organizations. Leave it to SBC leaders to find some pretense to condemn CBF for doing precisely the same thing that many of their own fundamentalist churches are doing. Yet the hypocrisy apparently goes much further: according to several Texas Baptists, the SBC counts among its member churches all BGCT congregations, regardless of whether the individual congregations contribute to the SBC or not, despite years of requests from some non-SBC local Baptist churches to the SBC to take them off SBC roles.

So just what is the real story behind this latest “we hate the despicable CBF” piece from SBC liars and spinmasters? Why do SBC leaders continue to feel compelled to lash out in anger at little ole’ CBF? Why are these fundamentalist Baptists infatuated and infuriated over how CBF functions in the first place?

Are SBC leaders really as insecure as their actions indicate? Does berating CBF allow a little bit of a distraction from their own growing choruses of lament over the historically-unprecedented decline of baptisms and evangelism within the SBC, not to mention the leadership scandals? As the failures of the SBC fundamentalist leadership mount, will CBF be the brunt of ever greater anger and rage?

It seems to me the SBC leadership is more desparate than ever in light of their escalating failures. Their misplaced berating of CBF is a weak attempt to mask the sound of their own implosion.

2006-09-09T16:23:00.000-04:00

Are Christian and Muslim theocrats working hand-in-hand?

Numerous observers of modern religious fundamentalist have noted the similarities between American Christian and Middle Eastern Muslim fundamentalists, many of whom strive for the establishment (America) and/or continuation of theocracies. Armageddonists in America have seemingly influenced the current Bush administration's Middle East policies, as pre-millennialists who believe a large-scale Middle East war will immediately precede the return of Christ. Some prominent Baptists are at the forefront of the Armageddonist movement. Now we learn that the Bush administration, prior to the invasion of Iraq, placed their faith in Iraqi informers known to have been compromised by Iranian intelligence. In effect, Iran apparently wanted the U.S. to invade Iraq, and the Bush administration blithely obliged.

Why did Iran ply the Bush administration with false information about Iraq in order to effect a U.S. invasion? Perhaps they realized that a U.S. presence next door would, by way of reaction, bolster theocracy in Iran. Perhaps they wanted to topple the secular Hussein regime and have it replaced with a friendly theocracy, and saw an opportunity to allow the U.S. to do the job for them. Perhaps they wanted to stretch thin U.S. foreign military commitments and endanger worldwide goodwill towards the U.S., thus opening the door for the uninpeded development of their nuclear program. Perhaps all of the above were factors (directly or indirectly) in Iran misleading the Bush administration and stoking the administration's Christian theocratic allies who want to force God to send Jesus back to earth to temporally judge and destroy their enemies.

And, of course, this is not to say that factors other than pre-millennial fervor were absent on the Bush side of the equation, such as George W. seeking to finish that which his father left undone and providing a boost to the oil industry of which the Bushes and Cheney were deeply imbedded.

Regardless of the precise reasons, the irony is that Iranian Muslim and American Christian theocrats colluded, directly or indirectly, in escalating the conflict in the Middle East, weakening America's military capabilities and tarnishing the U.S. image throughout the world ... ultimately in the name of God.

Followup: View a timeline of how theocracy is taking ahold in the former secular Iraq.

2006-09-07T11:39:00.000-04:00

Is the Religious Right imploding under the George W. Bush administration? If James Baldwin, pastor of the large and influential Crossroads Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida, and a significant individual within the Religious Right, is any indication, the foundations of the Religious Right are crumbling over discontent with Bush, and may be in danger of collapsing.

Read Baldwin's criticism of both Jerry Falwell and President Bush.

2006-08-29T23:00:00.000-04:00

Brent Walker, Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, offers an excellent rebuttal to Katherine Harris' lie that "the separation of church and state is a lie." Sadly, many fundamentalist Baptists increasingly place their faith in historical lies and myths.

2006-08-21T21:31:00.000-04:00

Welcome to A Baptist Perspective. This blog is a companion to to my personal site, www.brucegourley.com.