Associated Baptist Press - 2/14/2008

Associated Baptist Press

February 14, 2008 (8-19)

IN THIS ISSUE:

Religious voters in ‘Potomac Primary’ boost Obama, protest McCain
Surgery causes Al Mohler to bow out of SBC race
Rep. Tom Lantos, champion of religious freedom, dies
Huckabee endorsement brings IRS investigation of Wiley Drake
Opinion: Torture is the bone caught in America’s throat
Opinion: An economy of scale to pursue edification, discernment

Religious voters in ‘Potomac Primary’ boost Obama, protest McCain

By Robert Marus

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- In the latest presidential primary contests, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama improved his position among Catholics on the Democratic side while most white evangelicals chose not to vote for Arizona Sen. John McCain, even though he is now all but guaranteed to be the GOP nominee.

The so-called “Potomac Primary” on Feb. 12 involved contests in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. Obama and McCain swept all three of their respective primaries, but exit-poll data showed that Obama won decisively among Maryland’s most religious voters and made significant inroads into Clinton’s previous lead among Catholics.

McCain, meanwhile, won the Virginia primary by a smaller margin than many observers had expected. And he lost decisively to former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee among Republican voters who described themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians.

On the Democratic side, results by the afternoon of Feb. 13 showed Obama beating Clinton in Maryland with 60 percent of the vote to her 36 percent.

He won among all Maryland faith groups other than Roman Catholics and Jews. But while Clinton had won Catholics by large margins in earlier contests, she only edged her rival 48-45 percent among the state’s significant Catholic population.

Obama, meanwhile, beat Clinton decisively (61-31 percent) among Democrats who attend religious services weekly or more often. Among those who said they worship more often than weekly, his advantage was even greater: 67 percent to Clinton’s 20 percent.

Clinton still edged Obama among the most faithful Catholics, but she led by less than 10 percentage points.

In the overall Virginia GOP contest, McCain beat Huckabee 50-41 percent. But the Arkansan -- who was a Baptist pastor before he entered politics -- beat McCain 60-31 percent among those who describe themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians.

Huckabee also beat McCain among the most fervent believers of all faiths, with those who said they attend services weekly or more often favoring the Arkansan over McCain by eight percentage points.

McCain beat Huckabee handily among the commonwealth’s more secular Republicans. Virginia GOP voters who said they attend church supported the senator 59-29 percent over his chief rival.

McCain has amassed more than half of the delegates required to cinch the GOP nomination, while Huckabee lags far behind. But the governor has shown no indication he intends to drop out.

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Surgery causes Al Mohler to bow out of SBC race

By Robert Marus

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (ABP) -- Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptists’ oldest seminary and spokesman for conservative social causes, will bow out of the race to head the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, according to a Feb. 14 statement.

Mohler will undergo surgery for a pre-cancerous tumor in his colon, according to a release posted on the website of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Mohler, 48, has headed the institution since 1995.

Three other candidates for the SBC presidency have already been announced: Georgia pastor Frank Cox and Californians Wiley Drake and Bill Wagner.

Doctors discovered the tumor during a routine colonoscopy Feb. 11, and a subsequent biopsy revealed that it was pre-cancerous.

Mohler went through similar surgery in December 2006. That surgery was complicated by blood clots that formed in his lungs. The Southern Seminary statement said Mohler’s physicians “will take special precautions to prevent a recurrence of the blood clots with this new surgery.”

It also said a date for the surgery had not yet been determined, but it will likely “require an extensive period for recuperation and recovery.”

Because of that, Mohler said, “I have decided to give my greatest attention right now to addressing this new challenge and to ministering to my wife and children. This is clearly not the right time for me to accept this nomination.”

He continued, “Frankly that decision is made much easier by my knowledge that there is at least one strongly conservative, committed pastor who intends to be nominated in Indianapolis.” He was presumably referring to Cox.

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Rep. Tom Lantos, champion of religious freedom, dies

By Robert Marus


WASHINGTON (ABP) -- One of Congress’ staunchest defenders of international religious freedom has died.

Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) died Feb. 11 at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., reportedly of complications from esophageal cancer. The 80-year-old Lantos had represented suburban San Francisco in the House since 1981.

Lantos was the only Holocaust survivor in Congress. At the time of his death, he served as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He was also a co-founder and co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus.

The congressman used his office to draw attention to human-rights issues, especially religious freedom. Lantos focused on abuses of minority ethnic and religious groups in Sudan, Saudi Arabia and China, to name a few.

“Despite the many demands on the time and attention of such a senior member of Congress, victims of human-rights abuses could consistently rely upon Rep. Lantos to be an advocate for freedom,” said Michael Cromartie, chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, in a statement mourning Lantos’ death. “Rep. Lantos never hesitated to speak on behalf of those with no political voice.”

Lantos pushed for the 1998 legislation that created the commission, an independent government agency that monitors and reports on religious-liberty conditions worldwide. It also created, for the first time, an ambassador-level State Department position with a focus on freedom of conscience.

More recently, Lantos turned his attention to the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. In 2006, he was one of four members of Congress arrested at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington for protesting that government’s role in the crisis.

Lantos was born to a Hungarian Jewish family in Budapest in 1928. As a teenager, he fought against the Nazis as part of the Hungarian resistance to German occupation. He was eventually captured but escaped a concentration camp before fleeing to the United States.

At a Feb. 14 memorial service in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, colleagues and dignitaries honored Lantos. “For Tom, freedom was not just an abstract ideal,” said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to the Associated Press. “I can see him look at us with those piercing-yet-compassionate eyes and say, ‘All right, you can pause for a moment to remember me, but then you must resume the struggle.’”

After arriving in the United States, Lantos used scholarships provided by Jewish organizations to attend college, eventually earning a Ph.D. from the University of California. He worked as an economist and business advisor before being elected to Congress.

Lantos’ death came only a month after his announcement that he would not seek re-election due to the cancer diagnosis.

“It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress,” Lantos said, in a statement announcing his decision to retire. “I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country.”

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Huckabee endorsement brings IRS investigation of Wiley Drake

By Robert Marus

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- Outspoken California pastor and former Southern Baptist Convention officer Wiley Drake is being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service.

The candidate for the SBC presidency this year is under scrutiny for using his church letterhead and church-sponsored radio show last year to endorse Mike Huckabee. Joe Conn and Jeremy Leaming -- alive and well after Drake called God’s wrath against them for criticizing his endorsement -- work at the religious-liberty agency that filed an IRS complaint that prompted the investigation.

After Americans United for Separation of Church and State announced their IRS filing in August, Drake asked his supporters to pray for ill to befall Conn and Leaming. The two are communications staffers for the agency.

Drake confirmed Feb. 14 that he had recently received an IRS letter noting he was under investigation for using church resources to endorse Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, Southern Baptist minister and Republican presidential candidate. Federal tax law prevents churches and similarly organized non-profit groups from endorsing candidates or political parties.

Drake, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif., made the endorsements last August. “After very serious prayer and consideration, I announce today that I am going to personally endorse Mike Huckabee,” he said in the press release printed on church letterhead. “I ask all of my Southern Baptist brothers and sisters to consider getting behind Mike and helping him all you can.”

He said he believes “God has chosen Mike for such an hour,” and that of all the candidates running for president, “Mike Huckabee will listen to God.”

Shortly after he released the written statement, Drake also endorsed Huckabee on an Internet-based radio show the church sponsors.

“Yes, I endorsed him personally and, yes, we use the First Southern Baptist Church,” Drake said on the show. “Everything we do is under the auspices of the church.”

The Americans United complaint to the IRS mentioned both forms of endorsement. The IRS letter to Drake also mentioned both the press release and the radio show.

Drake, reached by telephone Feb. 14, referred a reporter to his attorney. “Because I have retained legal counsel and they’ve told me, ‘Don’t talk to the press,’ I have to abide by that,” he said.

The attorney, Erik Stanley, did not return a telephone message by press time for this story. But he told the Associated Press that Drake did not violate federal tax law by endorsing Huckabee because it was a personal endorsement, not done on behalf of the church.

“Our position on this is that ... churches and pastors have First Amendment rights just like anybody else, and that includes the right to speak out,” he said. “They can feel free to personally endorse candidates. It was not a church endorsement, and he made that very clear.”

Stanley is representing Drake on behalf of the Alliance Defense Fund. The group is a national network of attorneys who often offer legal defense of individuals and causes supported by the Religious Right.

In recent years, some religious conservatives have tried unsuccessfully to undo the tax laws that prevent churches from endorsing candidates or parties while retaining their tax-exempt status. Opponents of such efforts claim the prohibition actually upholds religious freedom by protecting houses of worship and denominational bodies from being used by candidates and parties.

In August, after Americans United announced their complaint, Drake told the Los Angeles Times that he wasn’t worried about federal tax regulators. “They don't scare me,” he said. “I don't give a rip about the IRS. I don't believe in the separation of church and state, and I believe the IRS should stay out of church business.”

The letterhead Drake used both to endorse Huckabee and to call for God’s wrath against Conn and Leaming also mentioned his previous position as second vice president of the SBC. He held that office from June 2006 to June 2007. He has announced that he will run for president of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination this year.

SBC officials, however, have asked him not to mention his denominational leadership post on such press releases.

On Aug. 14, Drake released the statement calling for “imprecatory prayer” against Conn and Leaming.

The term “imprecatory prayer” is used to describe prayers, mostly in the Bible's Old Testament, that the righteous used to call down God’s wrath against their enemies.

In the statement, Drake asked supporters to “specifically target” Conn and Leaming. Their names usually appear as the return address or contact line on the Americans United press releases, including the one that announced the IRS complaint. Drake’s call to arms said Conn and Leaming “are those who lead the attack” on him, even though the group’s executive director, Barry Lynn, was quoted extensively in the release.

Drake’s statement justified its call to wrath by citing statements from Jesus, the apostle Paul, John Calvin, Martin Luther and the book of Psalms. It quoted extensively from Psalm 109, in which the Psalmist prays that his enemy’s “children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”

The Psalmist, quoted by Drake, also asks that his enemy’s “children be continually vagabonds, and beg; let them seek bread also out of their desolate places.”

Conn, asked how he was feeling Feb. 14, laughed about the situation.

“I’m pleased to say that both Jeremy and I are feeling fine, and we’re pleased to see that the IRS is ready to enforce the law,” he said. “The irony of ironies is that both Jeremy and I have been doing very well even though most of the office has come down with the flu.”

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Read more:

Drake, SBC presidential candidate, calls for God's wrath against AU (8/15/2007)

Opinion: Torture is the bone
caught in America’s throat

By David Gushee

It is clear to me that the problem of torture is like a bone caught in our national throat. We can’t swallow it, but we can’t quite spit it out. And so we are choking on it.

The sound of choking can be heard from various directions:

In recent congressional testimony on waterboarding given by Attorney General Michael Mukasey, CIA Director Michael Hayden, and others, the torture issue has been front and center. The basic import of this testimony is that the Bush Administration has at last admitted that it has employed waterboarding (simulated drowning, a recognized torture technique for centuries). Administration representatives say waterboarding is not presently occurring but suggest that such techniques could still be employed with the approval of the Attorney General and the President. This stance apparently will not change under the current administration, despite fierce opposition from many Americans of all faiths and political perspectives.

This week Senate leaders are trying to pass an anti-torture amendment with teeth. The context is the 2008 Intelligence Authorization Bill. The amendment would apply the interrogation restrictions imposed on the military by the Army Field Manual onto the CIA. This would ban waterboarding and a host of other cruel and inhumane acts. It appears that this legislation, which passed the House, faces doubtful prospects in the Senate. (Immediately is a very good time to contact your senators about this issue.)

The presidential campaign has had a number of surprises. Among them is the ascendancy of presidential candidates who oppose all forms of torture, and the decline or collapse of those who take the current administration position. Now, of course, these anti-torture candidates, such as Senator McCain, are being flogged as too moderate and too soft on torture.

The Bush administration announced this week its plan to prosecute six detainees linked to 9/11, including Khalid Shaik Muhammad, the purported mastermind of that terrible attack. Muhammad is among those whom the administration has admitted to have waterboarded as part of interrogations. The admissibility of any “evidence” he offered up under waterboarding will be just one among many issues raised by the trials of these men -- if the public is given access to news of these trials at all.

Given developments in the presidential campaign, it is now very possible to envision an election in which both major party candidates resolutely oppose torture. For this I can only thank God, even as others apparently gnash their teeth in frustration.

However, the fight against torture is not over until it is really over. This will require the ongoing efforts of advocates to help cement a cultural, religious and ethical consensus against torture over the next year or more. If our nation does elect an anti-torture president, we will still need to help that person implement their intentions into law. And this will require strong support from Baptist and evangelical communities, which have not broadly engaged this issue.

That is not entirely true. Many influential voices in the national (and international) evangelical community have come out strongly against any resort to torture. Many mobilized around our 2007 “Evangelical Declaration Against Torture,” which can still be signed at www.evangelicalsforhumanrights.org.

Few of those hundreds of signatories are Baptists -- as of now. The stance of the official Southern Baptist Convention leadership was signaled by attacks on the declaration through Baptist Press, with no opportunity given to me or anyone else involved with the declaration to respond.

I am more surprised by the silence from moderate Baptist leaders and the centrist-progressive kinds of Baptists who gathered at the New Baptist Covenant meeting. It is my hope that their general silence on torture does not signal consent or acquiescence but simply a lack of focus amid other pressing issues.

A religious community that selected Luke 4 as its central text, that lifted up Jesus Christ our tortured Savior and Lord, and that emphasized peace, justice and mercy, cannot be sanguine about our national use of torture in the war on terror, can it?

Also: Please continue to be in prayer for the Union University community, which faces a massive rebuilding effort even as it celebrates God’s grace in sparing the lives of the thousands of students -- including my daughter Holly -- who were in the dorms when the tornado hit last week.

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-- David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. His latest book is The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center. www.davidpgushee.com

Opinion: An economy of scale to pursue edification, discernment

By Beth Newman

I recently had the privilege of enjoying the hospitality of the Englewood Christian Church of Indianapolis. This congregation isn’t as well known as Saddleback, nor has its pastor (Michael Bowling) ever been interviewed by Larry King, but its story is as exciting as any told by Joel Osteen.

Even a partial list of the community projects supported by Englewood is remarkable: a lawn care business, bookkeeping and PC-repair services, and a bookstore with on-line ordering capability. All of these benefit neighbors in the streets around the church. The church’s largest area of outreach has been in the housing sector, where it has helped more than 25 householders become homeowners in their neighborhood.

What makes this story particularly impressive is not just what the church is doing but how it got into the position to make it all possible. Englewood’s history over the past 100 years is in many ways the case history for mainline Protestantism: once one of the largest churches in Indiana until “urbanization” led to a loss of members, it faced a struggle to survive financial and numerical freefall. I won’t recount the full story (it’s available on the church website) but I do wish to lift up for consideration the three Scriptural convictions that guided their path to renewal and dialogue:

-- The church must pursue one-mindedness.

-- Assembly is for the purpose of edification.

-- Godly discernment must take place in assembly.

These conversations (every Sunday evening) took place in a congregation that within 20 years had shrunk from more than 1,000 to 250 people.

I can’t help wondering whether their numbers made it possible.

While we are being inundated by the campaign ads of various presidential contenders, each of whom promises to transform, I can’t help wondering how a nation of 300 million can discern anything. Wendell Berry has observed that it’s impossible to think globally and act locally because of the vastness of scale. The globe is an abstraction, and what is real for any of us are our families, our schools, our neighborhood and our churches. Any change will take place there, or it won’t take place at all.

This is what the Baptist emphasis on the autonomy of the local church -- at its best -- is all about. The emphasis on the local is not an assertion of rights over or against a national convention or the church catholic. Still less is it a vehicle for the implementation of national programs. The local church is the place where the gospel is embodied.

Above all, the local church is the place where the voices of the congregants matter in discerning the call and the vision of the larger congregational body. As Paul wrote to the early Corinthians, “When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.” There must be, therefore, some economy of scale that allows space for each member to speak and to be heard.

While this practice, as Englewood discovered, is messy, costly and painful, it also embodies a kind of “localist” economics -- an economy not based on bureaucratic structures but based on love. This might sound cheesy or idealistic. But at a place like Englewood the economic focus is not on getting rich people to give money but on how individuals envision the kingdom of God in the concrete place where they exist.

As Englewood tells the story, “What has emerged from all of this activity has been a community of faith imperfectly but intentionally bearing the transformative gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a community church immersed in the real stuff of life. What better placement could there be for the leaven of God’s kingdom come on earth?”

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-- Beth Newman is professor of theology and ethics at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. bnewman@btsr.edu