Associated Baptist Press - 2/19/2008

Associated Baptist Press
February 19, 2008 (8-20)

IN THIS ISSUE:
Post-Covenant criticism comes from left, right
Ed Young says he didn’t argue with Clinton about Bible literality
Opinion: Emerging evangelical center may decide 2008 election

Post-Covenant criticism comes from left, right
By Hannah Elliott
NEW YORK (ABP) -- Although organizers hailed a recent pan-Baptist gathering as a success, a handful of critics have leveled a wide array of charges against the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant.
The critics of the event, held in Atlanta in late January and early February, include conservatives who continue to accuse it of having a thinly veiled liberal political agenda. But they also include moderates and liberals who say the gathering was not inclusive enough of ethnic and sexual minorities.
The Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant drew an estimated 15,000 Baptists to discuss working together despite denominational, ethnic, political and economic differences. Its headline organizers were the two living Baptists who have held the presidency: Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
Many observers praised the event as a momentous occasion that generated new unity, energy and focus for Baptists across North America. It earned rave reviews from secular and religious media outlets alike as a crucial first step in the walk toward racial reconciliation in the Baptist faith.
Covenant leaders like Leo Thorne, associate general secretary of American Baptist Churches USA, even said the diversity of political opinion actually adds quality to the discussion.
“It doesn’t make any difference what decision you make or action you take, there are always people who use their freedoms to express disagreement,” Thorne said. “That’s rich. That’s energizing. That’s wonderful that we can have a diversity of opinions of issues.... If there are those who disagree, that is okay with me.”
But Carter and Clinton’s involvement in the event and the lack of official participation by the Southern Baptist Convention on a denominational level led many conservatives to criticize the celebration soon after it was announced in 2007. Although organizers made an effort to include prominent Baptist Republicans in the program, some conservatives have continued to criticize it. Paul Proctor, in a Feb. 11 column for the Nashville Tennessean, said the celebration achieved only an “image of unity,” which validated conservatives’ critique that liberals tend to promote “symbolism over substance.”
“As far as I'm concerned, outgoing SBC president Frank Page, who incidentally declined the invitation to attend, was right on calling the meeting a ‘smoke-screen left-wing liberal agenda,’” Proctor wrote. “Carter can preach Christian unity all he wants, but he was the one who spurned the Southern Baptist Convention back in 2000. If anyone is guilty of promoting division among Baptists, it is the presidential peanut farmer from Georgia.”
More progressive Baptists also criticized the event for insufficiently displaying unity amid diversity.
Laura Cadena, a graduate of George W. Truett Theological Seminary and a member of Peachtree Baptist Church in Atlanta, said the meeting’s rhetoric of Baptist unity appealed to her, and she attended to observe it as well as see friends from her Texas seminary days. But, she added in a Feb. 7 opinion column for EthicsDaily.com, the meeting proved to be a letdown when it came to representing all Baptist groups.
“I think that we could have done better, but it’s a beginning,” Cadena, 33, said. “I think that if the planning committee could have been more diverse -- and by that I mean including more women, more young people, more Asian Baptists, maybe more Ghanaian Baptists -- that would have been good.”
On the other hand, in a Feb. 8 Wall Street Journal column, Naomi Schaefer Riley described the event as a “liberal answer to the Southern Baptist Convention.” She said it showed how difficult it is for progressive evangelicals “to unite, let alone get under the same tent with secular liberals and become a political force….
“The New Baptist Covenant is supposed to be more ‘inclusive’ than the SBC. It's OK to rail against abortion, as long as you mention the problem of uninsured children in the same breath,” she said. “The group also wanted to distinguish itself from the SBC on the issue of homosexuality. But to get all of these church groups to sign on, the language of the agreement had to be chosen very carefully.”
Todd Thomason, pastor of Baptist Temple Church in Alexandria, Va., wrote in a column to be published by Associated Baptist Press that he’s not convinced there is much new about the covenant celebrated at the meeting, especially when it comes to the issue of homosexuality.
Organizers decided not to allow the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists or the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America -- two pro-gay groups -- to participate in the event in an official manner. That decision, Thomason said, smacks of the “top-down exclusionary action” used by Southern Baptist leaders during the narrowing of the group’s policies in the last 20 years.
Champions of the New Baptist Covenant “cried foul when the leaders of the so-called ‘conservative resurgence’ seized the reins of power within the SBC and then circled the wagons, forcing out all who wouldn’t accept their narrow ideology or who dared to ask questions,” he wrote. “For these same Baptists to turn around now and disenfranchise other Baptists in much the same way (if not on the same scale) is the height of biblical hypocrisy.”
Covenant leaders “didn't think they could hold together the large coalition of Baptists needed to create a new Baptist voice in North America while addressing the issue of sexual orientation at the same time,” wrote Ken Pennings, director of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Event organizers have said homosexuality is to be “tolerated,” though not necessarily “affirmed.” While the pro-gay groups were not involved on an official level, many of their members attended, and they used exhibit-booth space provided by the Alliance of Baptists -- another pro-gay group -- to display materials at the meeting.
Cadena -- a fifth-generation Texan of Hispanic background – also wondered why participants from her ethnic group were not better represented at the meeting. She asked whether there is “room in the family photo for Latino Baptists?”
“Where do we fit? Here in the South, Latinos are relatively new … there are not enough people that speak Spanish, there are not enough doctors that speak Spanish, there are not enough teachers that speak Spanish,” she said. “So what does a Hispanic church look like? I don’t know.” Cadena said the meeting should have included specified time for networking between people from the same region or affinity group. That way, Latinos could have seen more clearly whether they should wait to be included in leadership of the larger Baptist family or create their own group.
Schaefer Riley, for her part, pointed out that one thing attendees did have in common was their age, which skewed to the older end of the spectrum. And that doesn’t bode well for the movement, she said.
“The reason for the overrepresentation of seniors may be that young people have increasingly been moving to non-denominational churches or because they are often more conservative than their parents on issues like abortion,” she wrote. “Either way, it doesn't bode well for the Covenant. Or for the left.”
Thorne said Covenant leaders will continue to address such concerns, especially through the efforts of the North American Baptist Fellowship, which played a large role in organizing the meeting. The body is the umbrella group for all North American Baptist bodies that belong to the Baptist World Alliance.
Leaders at NABF “are serous about continuing to strengthen relationships and efforts in networking for missions,” Thorne said. “They are committed to that. So this event … is not going to be a program that is a be-all and end-all.”
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--Robert Marus contributed to this story.

Gay-friendly Baptist groups excluded from New Baptist Covenant event (7/24/2007)
SBC officials reject Carter, unity talk, but not all Southern Baptists join chorus (1/12/2007)
Ed Young says he didn’t argue with Clinton about Bible literality
By Hannah Elliott
NEW YORK (ABP) -- Bill Clinton may have had Ed Young confused with another Southern Baptist pastor or may simply have chosen to remember a 1993 encounter falsely when he spoke to a group of Baptists several weeks ago, according to the Houston pastor.
Young, pastor of Houston’s Second Baptist Church, sent a letter to Clinton’s foundation disputing the former president’s recollection, which he mentioned during the recent Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant meeting in Atlanta. It concerned a meeting between the two that Clinton said involved a morning run and a White House breakfast.
Young, a former Southern Baptist Convention president, said he greatly enjoyed the time with Clinton, former vice president Al Gore and several other pastors. But it simply was nothing like Clinton described in the speech.
“I just think he pulled it out of the fantasy file. I really do,” he said.
In a keynote address Feb. 1, Clinton told the crowd that in 1993, Young, then-president of the SBC, had requested a meeting with Clinton and Gore. After a 40-minute run on the National Mall and breakfast on the White House’s Truman Balcony, Clinton said, Young asked him, “Do you believe the Bible is literally true?”
Clinton told the crowd he said, “Reverend Young, I think that it is completely true, but I do not believe that you or I or any other living person is wise enough to understand it completely. He said, ‘that’s a political answer,’ and I said, ‘No it’s not. You asked a political question.’”
Young said he was shocked when one of his aides showed him the transcript from Clinton’s speech.
“I was stunned. I said, ‘You’re kidding me.’ I thought they set me up,” Young said. “The point is, I don’t go to the White House every day. That’s a big thing for me. [The conversation] didn’t happen. So many of the things he said weren’t true.”
The former president also told the crowd that the men had “a remarkable breakfast” while they debated several issues. Gore allegedly told Young, “You know I love my Baptist roots, but I have three daughters and a son, and I don't think it’s right that only my son can become a minister.” Clinton said Young and Gore then “argued” about the subject of women in ministry.
But Young said Feb. 14 that he never solicited a meeting with Clinton. Rather, he contended, a Clinton aide invited him to Washington.
“For the record, we did not have a meal together,” Young wrote in the Feb. 8 letter, sent to Clinton’s New York-based foundation office. “The next morning after our meeting on the Truman Balcony, we did jog the Washington Mall. … Vice President Gore did ask about women in the ministry. Your account of his question was right on target. But there was absolutely no argument. There was nothing to argue about.”
Young said he told Gore and Clinton he opposed women serving in pastoral roles, but respected the autonomy of local Baptist churches to ordain women if they so chose.
Young said the most egregious of Clinton’s errors in his speech regarded the question of whether the Bible is literally true.
“I do not believe the Bible is literally, in the normal definition of the word, true,” Young wrote to Clinton. “Jesus said, ‘I am the door.’ No one takes that ‘literally.’ As you know, sir, in the Bible there are metaphors, parables, hyperbole, poetry, apocalyptic language, etc., and the Bible cannot be understood by anyone who would be foolish enough to think that you can take the Word of God literally. Also, at no time during our visit did I use the pejorative phrase, ‘slick political answer.’”
Representatives from the William J. Clinton Foundation did not respond to requests from an Associated Baptist Press reporter for a response to Young’s contentions.
Young, for his part, said the exchange with Clinton has not soured his take on the New Baptist Covenant event, which he had not followed closely prior to its meeting. Several of his conservative Southern Baptist colleagues had decried the historic meeting of several different Baptist groups. They alleged that it was a narrowly-veiled attempt to rally support for a liberal political agenda, even though prominent Baptist Republicans participated.
“I think there is a tendency from all around the whole controversy in Baptist life to take the right wing or the left wing or the moderate wing and try to put [words] into their mouths and interpret what they believe in a pejorative way,” he said. “That is a tendency of all of us.
“My philosophy and theology can be summed up very simply: In essentials unity; in nonessentials diversity; in all things love. In all things there are non-essentials, and that’s where the controversy lies.”
As a member of the board of directors of the Greater Houston Partnership, which hosts a presidential debate prior to the Texas primary, Young in his letter invited the former president to meet with him in Texas, should Clinton accompany Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to the debate.
He does not expect to receive a response to the invitation, he said.
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Respond to critics with 'spirit of love,' Clinton tells Baptists (2/2)
Opinion: Emerging evangelical center may decide 2008 election
By David Gushee
Last summer I completed a book arguing that an evangelical center is emerging in American life and that it shows signs of displacing the vaunted but fading “Christian right” in the hearts and minds of American evangelicals--especially among younger and non-white Christian believers. Events occurring during this presidential campaign demonstrate this is happening already.
The factual argument of my book, The Future of Faith in American Politics, is that the American evangelical community shares core Christian beliefs but does not (and never did) exhibit political consensus. I argue that besides the widely recognized evangelical right, symbolized by figures such as James Dobson and the late Jerry Falwell, and the evangelical left, symbolized by activists such as Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo, today there is emerging a visible and increasingly powerful evangelical center, whose most influential figures are probably the megachurch pastor Rick Warren and the lobbyist Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals. My book names dozens of figures who can be placed in the various camps.
The evangelical center shares with the right its deep opposition to abortion, concern about the decline of marriage and the eroding well-being of children in our society, worries about the moral content of mass media, and rejection of the morality of sex outside of heterosexual marriage. It rejects, however, the right’s entanglement with and loyalty to the Republican Party, its relatively narrow focus on issues primarily related to sexuality, and its mood of angry nostalgia and aggrieved entitlement about the Christian role in American society.
The evangelical center, in turn, shares with the evangelical left a strong emphasis on the plight of the poor, attention to racism as a moral and policy issue, opposition to the routine resort to war by the United States, a high priority to creation care and acceptance of the seriousness of climate change, commitment to finding a humane solution to the immigration issue, and conviction that human-rights commitments require wholehearted opposition to torture in the U.S. war on terror. It tends to differ from the left in its more careful commitment to political independence, its stronger and more thorough attention to issues of abortion, family, and sexuality, and its willingness to support the moral legitimacy of some (though not all) U.S. military actions.
In some ways the towering presence of the evangelical right has made it difficult until recently for any kind of alternative voices to gain a broad cultural hearing. For many, the word “evangelical” has equaled “Christian right.” For just as long as there has been an evangelical right (about 35 years), a small and largely ignored evangelical left has sought to carve out an alternative. Now it is time for all cultural observers to acknowledge that the evangelical political landscape is fragmented along right/center/left lines -- just like, for example, Catholics, females and Hispanics.
Polling data already available when I wrote the book led me to argue that non-white evangelicals and younger evangelicals definitely skewed in a centrist or more liberal direction overall than did older white evangelicals. This led me to project that generational change and increasing demographic diversity among the evangelical population in the United States would lead to the emergence of a strong and visible evangelical center, a more muscular evangelical left, and in some cases a center-left coalition representing half or more of American evangelicals.
These days everyone is talking about the presidential campaign and especially how evangelical voting behavior has been evolving. Though there is a long journey awaiting us between now and November, outcomes so far seem to confirm at least parts of the argument I am proposing.
On the Republican side, the evangelical right was unable to coalesce around a candidate who reflected their classic positions. Perhaps the closest ones were the long-forgotten Sam Brownback and Alan Keyes. Only now is the evangelical right showing signs of closing rank around Mike Huckabee as an alternative to John McCain. But it was a long time coming, and this was no doubt because the pre-2008 Huckabee record exhibited centrist or progressive strains on such issues as immigration, the death penalty, and economic inequality. Even during the campaign he has made what are to centrists promising comments about issues such as climate change and ending torture. As it stands, the two remaining Republican candidates reflect at least a number of commitments that point toward the center rather than the right, much to the frustration of the right.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both offer policy stances rooted in moral commitments sometimes openly traced to Christian values. Their positions on such issues as torture, poverty, health care, immigration, war and climate reflect stances held by both the evangelical center and left. To the extent that either or both offer clear statements on the moral tragedy of abortion and concrete policies to reduce the number of abortions, they may well succeed in gaining the support of many centrist evangelical voters who are genuine independents and could consider supporting a candidate of either party. It is not clear whether the homosexuality issue will prove as salient to evangelicals, especially centrists, as it did in 2004.
It is quite possible that the votes of centrist evangelicals—perhaps representing as many as one-third of our nation’s massive evangelical community—will decide the election this fall.
I believe that the emerging evangelical center represents a maturing of the Christian public voice in American life. This is a more peaceable, forward-looking, holistic and independent approach to politics than what has come to carry the evangelical label. Its emergence is good for our nation and for evangelicals. Centrist evangelicals bear watching in this election and beyond.
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-- David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. http://www.davidpgushee.com/