Associated Baptist Press - 2/21/2008

Associated Baptist Press
February 21, 2008 (8-21)
IN THIS ISSUE:
Will 'evangelical center' emerge to rival waning Christian Right?
Fort Worth congregation subject of latest Internet-fueled struggle
Baptists provide opportunities to oft-shunned Roma people
Pastor points to Muslims as source of Kenya violence; experts disagree
Guest opinion: New Covenant may come in old wineskins
Correction
Will 'evangelical center' emerge to rival waning Christian Right?
By Greg Warner
(ABP) -- If the Religious Right is losing its influence, as many pundits predict, will it be replaced by the "other" evangelicals -- a center-and-left coalition with a broader social agenda and a kinder, gentler brand of cultural engagement?
Advocates say centrist evangelicals are a bona fide constituency that is re-emerging after three decades spent underground -- or at least ignored by the media and society at large. Though these other evangelicals have no dominant spokespersons and no representative organization, at least not yet, they say they are every bit as worthy of the "evangelical" label as their counterparts on the right -- and every bit as numerous.
In fact, Christians can "be more evangelical by being less conservative," argues Baptist theologian and author Roger Olson. And he's written a book to tell them how.
"Evangelicals are leaving the Religious Right in droves!" added Christian activist Jim Wallis, for three decades the social conscience of the evangelical left. "This evangelical center is getting so big."
So how many evangelical centrists are out there?
Political scientist John Green, the preeminent researcher on evangelical politics, concluded that 10.8 percent of American voters in 2004 were in the evangelical center, compared to 12.6 percent of voters on both the evangelical left and evangelical right. But that doesn't include African-American and Latino evangelicals, about half of whom are centrists. And those numbers likely have swelled in recent years if Wallis and others are correct about the exodus on the right.
Driving the shift among evangelicals is "the refusal of the center or the left to confine moral values to abortion and homosexuality," said ethicist David Gushee, who insists researchers and reporters err by grouping evangelicals into "bipolar" camps of left and right.
That shift is sped by the "generational transition" also taking place in society, said Gushee, a centrist Baptist who teaches at Mercer University and its seminary, both located in Georgia. The students he meets today, even at conservative Christian colleges, are more likely to campaign against sex trafficking, torture and environmental abuse than abortion or gay rights, Gushee said. And they're fed up with the right's "slash and burn" approach.
"The younger generation is definitely turned off to the culture-war mentality and all the anger," he said. "They believe it violates the Spirit of Christ."
Gushee, Wallis and Olson all have new books coming out about the emerging evangelical center and its broadened social agenda.
All three say faith steers the political views of moderate and progressive evangelicals -- particularly young adults -- to include a varied pallet of issues: poverty, war and peace, care of the environment, immigration reform, AIDS, lingering racism, torture, support for human rights, genocide in Darfur, and other social issues the Religious Right has largely avoided.
In a January poll by Beliefnet.com, self-described evangelicals ranked poverty, the environment, health care, education, the economy, governmental reform, and ending torture and the Iraq war as more important issues than abortion or gay marriage, the right's two hot-button issues. And, perhaps most surprising, a majority of survey respondents were conservative.
A similar result came from a 2006 Zogby International poll of voters in the mid-term elections. Those voters said "kitchen table" issues -- the economy, Iraq, poverty and greed -- mattered more than abortion or gay marriage. Fewer than 9 percent of voters named abortion or gay marriage as the top moral issue. And the number of religious Americans who voted Democratic in 2006 increased significantly over 2004.
"If Christians are still reading the Bible seriously, and they're reading it from Genesis to Revelation, then it's impossible to ignore the broader issues," said Gushee, who says the evangelical center is growing and will set the tone for Christian cultural engagement in the future.
"A historic shift is occurring," Richard Cizik, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said in a Scripps-Howard interview. "It is equivalent to an earthquake in slow motion -- people aren't sensing it."
Cizik, the NAE's progressive VP for governmental affairs, has himself been the target of evangelicalism's old guard -- such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson -- who accuse him of distracting evangelicals' attention from the bread-and-butter issues of abortion and homosexuality.
The 2008 presidential election is demonstrating that religious voters are anything but monolithic. New surveys from the Pew Forum and the Barna Group suggest evangelical voters are in play for Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both of whom are professing Christians with social agendas mirroring the new, broader evangelical definition of public morality.
Conservative evangelicals insist their obituary is premature. While they remain uneasy with their presidential options, they still carry weight in the electorate -- particularly in the Republican Party -- and they expect to have an impact on the presidential election.
But clearly the landscape has changed since the early days, when Jerry Falwell prayed publicly for God to speed the death of "liberal" Supreme Court justices.
"The Christian Right has made some mistakes and has been declining and is losing its market," said Gushee, the author of The Future of Faith in American Politics. "The classic sex-and-abortion agenda is not resonating in this election season. And their ability to direct foot soldiers is declining."
The shift to the center, if indeed it is one, is not entirely new, Olson said. In How to Be Evangelical Without Being Conservative, due out in March, he argues that historically evangelicals -- rather than being dependable stalwarts of the conservative status quo -- have often been radicals on doctrinal and social issues like worship and slavery.
A professor of theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Texas, Olson is a "Northern evangelical" transplanted to the South. He calls himself a "post-conservative evangelical" and staunchly refuses to surrender the term "evangelical" to the right wing.
"We are evangelical, and we have every right to be called that," he said. But he admits he and his cohorts have a public-relations problem. "Those of us who are not conservative need someone who is famous who can come on radio and TV and nuance things."
It is possible to be evangelical and be liberal socially, Olson maintains. For instance, he argues, a Christian can be patriotic without succumbing to nationalism, can favor the redistribution of wealth without being a socialist, and can innovate in worship without trivializing it.
The term "evangelical" has a rich history that predates the Religious Right, Olson says, but "it is a very problematic term right now" for those who don’t consider themselves fundamentalist or conservative.
"Many 'former' fundamentalists are calling themselves theological evangelicals," he said, citing Jerry Falwell Jr., the 47-year-old chancellor of Liberty University, founded by his fundamentalist father.
And he concedes that centrists may lose the battle over language: "I don't want to say that conservatives will win, but they are winning."
Besides the often-times pejorative nature of the term, Olson and Wallis say they also have a problem with the political language of right, left and center. "They are so tied to the Enlightenment," Olson said. "'Post-conservative' means I want to be off that spectrum."
In his new book, The Great Awakening, Wallis, founder of a faith and justice network called Sojourners, prefers the terms "moral center" and "gospel center," trying to lift Christians above the political fray.
The three authors also use different criteria to define "evangelicals." Wallis and Gushee employ theological definitions of evangelicals that focus on core beliefs. Olson prefers an "experiential" definition -- evangelicals are "God-fearing, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving" Christians, he says.
Many historians don't use “evangelical” to describe Baptists because their history did not intersect with American evangelicals, who grew as a moderate response to early-20th century fundamentalism. But Olson and Gushee embrace it.
They are both Baptist, but they come from different historical streams. Olson grew up in a Pentecostal family and later became a Baptist in the North. Gushee is a former Roman Catholic. Both work for progressive universities with Southern Baptist roots.
"Most moderate Baptists are center or center-left evangelicals, they just don't know it," Gushee said. "I want to help moderate Baptists reclaim the term 'evangelical' and re-associate with other evangelicals who are kindred spirits, if they only knew it."
Evangelicals in the northern United States are willing to work across denominational lines, Olson added. "In the North, we evangelicals get together with anyone who looks fondly upon the Cross."
Sharp theological lines are less important in the North because Christians are a minority, he said. A "Jesus-centered piety" is common-enough ground for fellowship. "I think most Baptists in the town I grew up in would be part of that. But Baptists in the North are so fragmented, it's hard to classify them."
Gushee said the recent New Baptist Covenant meeting, which drew an estimated 15,000 moderate-leaning Baptists of different races and traditions to Atlanta, is a healthy sign of the growing strength of centrists.
But Covenant organizers say their movement will not become a denomination or institution. Likewise, other centrist evangelicals -- scattered in dozens of denominations -- have no organizational identity or rallying point. The National Association of Evangelicals currently is fragmented over its identity and focus.
"What's needed is a new national organization that is truly centrist and truly viable," Olson said. "The NAE could be that, but it has lost some steam. … I'm still hopeful about the NAE."
Will evangelicalism's new "middle" hold without some structure? There's more hope than certainty among its advocates.
One observer, historian Bill Leonard, dean of the Wake Forest Divinity School, is skeptical a middle can emerge within evangelicalism because the movement is already so divided, pitting one vision of "orthodoxy" against another. "'Middle ways' may not be a luxury that evangelicalism can afford in the years ahead," he said.
Meanwhile, don't look for the Religious Right to collect its marbles and go home quietly. While conservatives remain uneasy with their '08 presidential options, they still carry weight in the electorate, particularly in the Republican Party.
Their numbers may be dwindling, "but the commitments of many in the movement have not waned -- hence, [Republican Mike] Huckabee's dramatic Southern victories on Super Tuesday," Leonard said. "But the movement is certainly aging, and many of its leaders are dead or less active."
"The real test of the Religious Right and its political influence is in the 2008 election and its dominance in one particular party," he concluded. "We'll see.”
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Beliefnet poll: Evangelicals still conservative, but defy issue stereotypes
Poll shows voters care more about Iraq, poverty than abortion, gays
Evangelicals ‘caught in the middle’ of debate over identity, direction
Born-again and Democratic? -- An interview with George Barna
Evangelicals call for a non-partisan political agenda
Fort Worth congregation subject of latest Internet-fueled struggle
By Robert Marus
FORT WORTH, Texas (ABP) -- The latest prominent Baptist church caught in a highly publicized, Internet-fueled controversy is a historically moderate one -- and similar struggles may await other moderate congregations.
Members of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, will vote Feb. 24 on a compromise proposal for a new pictorial directory to mark the congregation’s 125th anniversary. Last year, a dispute erupted over whether to include photos of coupled gay members alongside other couples and families. The congregation attempted to resolve the situation last December and ultimately gave it over to the board of deacons.
But a disgruntled group of more than 150 members has signed petitions calling for the congregation to vote on whether to oust Pastor Brett Younger. The group, calling itself Friends for the Future of Broadway, says the handling of the directory and other issues has proven that Younger’s leadership is divisive and that he has led the church away from its “historical moderate Baptist theological heritage.”
A larger group has signed a counter-petition calling for continued dialogue over sexuality and other divisive issues within the congregation.
Younger, in Feb. 19 comments that constituted his first on-the-record interview about the controversy, said determining Broadway’s true identity is the biggest question.
“People on both sides agree that the question here -- it’s more than just about the pastor. It’s about the kind of church that Broadway wants to be,” he said. “And so my hope is that we will find a process by which we will understand more fully what kind of church we want to be, and if it’s not the kind of church that … needs me to be the pastor, then that will be obvious.
“Broadway has long had the reputation outside the church of being inclusive and creative and an alternative to most Baptist churches. But there were many good members of Broadway who came here for other reasons and who have been a wonderful part of the church, so we have this tension between being an alternative and being traditional.”
The congregation, founded in 1882, has been one of the most prominent churches in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and in national Baptist life. Its pastors have included Cecil Sherman, the founding coordinator of the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. And generations of students, professors and administrators at nearby Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary have been active members.
While it always has been different in its theological approach and worship style from many Southern Baptist congregations, Broadway has since 1979 increasingly charted a direction away from its historic denomination. That year, fundamentalists began taking over the Southern Baptist Convention’s governing structure.
But Younger’s leadership has taken the church beyond where many members are comfortable going, according to a manifesto from the group opposed to the pastor.
“The pastor has taken Broadway, without authorization from the deacons or the congregation, far away from its own historical moderate Baptist heritage based on timeless core foundational doctrines of the Christian faith,” said a statement, titled “Reasons to ‘Vacate the Pulpit,’” circulated among those who signed the anti-Younger petition.
The spokesman for that group, Robert Saul, said Feb. 20 the sexuality issue isn’t the only or even the primary reason the group opposes his leadership.
“I don’t know of a single person in our group that is against gay and lesbian people being members of our church,” he said in a telephone interview. “Now, I do believe that not only in our group but many, many in the church feel that we should be a welcoming church but not an affirming church.”
The broader issue, Saul said, is Younger’s leadership style. “My concern is that the church is so divided and has been for months under Dr. Younger’s divisive leadership, and it’s just become more divided.”
Saul’s group faulted Younger for mishandling the directory issue as well as several other recent church controversies. Other supposed mishaps include the development of a policy for registered sex offenders within the church and Younger inviting controversial theologian Marcus Borg to preach.
Younger said that the congregation has had a long tradition of inviting thought-provoking speakers like Borg, that the church approved the sex-offender policy by a two-thirds vote, and that the policy “incorporated both the need to protect children and to be as inclusive as the gospel” when dealing with those who have committed sex crimes.
On the directory issue, the compromise proposal to be presented by the deacons involves featuring as many members as possible in candid and group photos, but without photos of family groupings. The proposal, according to a statement from deacon chair Kathy Madeja, respects the diversity of opinions within the congregation on what constitutes a family: It neither endangers the church’s standing in the Baptist General Convention of Texas -- which has expelled pro-gay churches -- nor violates its governing documents. Broadway’s bylaws, she said, “state all members are equal in rank and privilege.”
The controversy has been publicized on several blogs, including two run by Broadway members. Those led to news stories in at least two secular news agencies -- the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram -- and conservative Christian outlets, such as the SBC’s Baptist Press.
Both Younger and Saul agree the outside attention has not helped the situation.
“I think the presence of the Internet and private blogs make it even more imperative that the church be open in its discussions,” Younger said. “It’s impossible to chase down all the misstatements that are made, and so it becomes more important that the church address the questions facing the church in church settings.”
Saul said the publicity has taught him one important lesson in dealing with church fights. “Do not go to the open Web,” he said. “After it gets out there on the Web like that, then the press starts calling.”
Younger also said churches will inevitably have to deal with issues surrounding their views on homosexuality. “I think the best advice I could give is to start talking about it before you have to start voting,” he said, noting that Broadway has hosted lectures and studies on ways to interpret passages in Scripture that deal with sexuality.
The church also invited prominent Baptist sociologist Tony Campolo and his wife, Peggy, to discuss how to maintain Christian fellowship despite such differences. The couple disagrees over how to understand the Bible’s view of homosexuality.
“I think an awful lot more people in the church have the sense that we can be the kind of church that continues to struggle with this issue just like you struggle with a lot of issues,” Younger said. “We have people with different opinions on the war [in Iraq] … but they still share [the] church.”
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Baptists provide opportunities to oft-shunned Roma people
By Carla Wynn Davis
ATLANTA (ABP) -- Susan and Wes Craig learned early during their three-year assignment to Romania that most locals are disgusted by the minority Roma people, who are often called “gypsies.”
And that’s what made a particular church meeting so powerful.
While talking about his work at the Gypsy Smith School, which provides education and training to Roma church leaders and evangelists, Wes Craig noticed a Romanian man with his hand on the shoulder of a Roma boy. Their relationship seemed like that of a father and son -- something that flies in the face of Romanian social norms. Craig said he saw, in that simple act, Christianity at work.
“A Romanian treating a Roma like family is a demonstration of the power of the gospel and a testimony to how God can change [a] heart,” the Texas native said.
Supported by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Craigs have worked with the Roma people since 2006. They are part of Project Ruth, a Bucharest-based charity established in 1992 to help Roma children, who often drop out or fall inescapably behind in school. The organization’s Ruth School helps children re-start and finish their education.
“At Ruth School, [the children] all are given the opportunity to receive a school education through grade eight,” Susan Craig, a Houston native, said. “At the end of the eighth grade they take a national exam, and if they pass, then they can continue their education at an academic high school.”
Susan Craig works in the Project Ruth office as a coordinator of activities, volunteer trips and day-to-day logistics.
Wes Craig works in theological and leadership education with Roma pastors at the Gypsy Smith School. The school helps Roma like Sandu, a friend of the Craigs who continues to serve as the administrator of his church even though his non-Christian parents harass him for his faith.
The school gives Sandu the support he needs to grow as a Christian, Wes Craig explained.
“At the school, Roma church leaders are encouraged and further equipped for the ministry [to which] God has called them,” he said. “For the Roma of Romania to be reached with the gospel, it really must come through Roma reaching Roma, and this is one way we can encourage and support this.”
Project Ruth survives on donations and involvement from churches in the United States. The Craigs’ church, DaySpring Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, provides prayer and encouragement. And a group from the church will visit them this spring.
Boulevard Baptist Church in Anderson, S.C., has also long helped the ministry by sponsoring children at Ruth School, raising financial support for specific projects and sending teams of church members to help in tangible ways.
It’s just a simple example of how a local church can make a lasting and meaningful impact in the world, both Wes and Susan Craig agreed.
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Pastor points to Muslims as source of Kenya violence; experts disagree
By Greg Warner
DALLAS (ABP) -- Religious extremism prompted much of the violence surrounding Kenya's disputed presidential elections, according to a Kenyan expatriate and Baptist pastor who lost a bid for a seat in parliament. But international experts with contacts in the region point to ethnic and political divisions -- not religion -- as precipitating the bloodshed.
International media reported widespread violence erupted throughout Kenya's rural areas after the nation's electoral commission declared incumbent President Mwai Kibaki defeated challenger Raila Odinga, and Odinga's supporters claimed the voting was rigged.
But Solomon Kimuyu, a Dallas resident who has maintained his Kenyan citizenship, said he saw televised images of the violence long before the polls closed, just prior to a media blackout in Kenya. And he asserted members of Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement with close ties to the National Muslim Leaders Forum orchestrated much of the rioting.
Muslim extremists tied to the opposition party pledged long before the election that if certain conditions were not met prior to the Dec. 27 voting, violence would result, he insisted.
But Joel Barkin, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Iowa and senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said his sources in Kenya reported no involvement by Muslim extremists in orchestrated violent demonstrations.
"The violence has been interethnic, not religious," he said.
Barkin pointed to different types of violence surrounding the elections. Some violence was organized, but he insisted it was generated by rival political factions who seized on tribal differences, not fomented by Muslim extremists.
Some violence was spontaneous, breaking out in reaction to the allegations of rigged elections. And some of the violence was caused by police who were "overly aggressive and who killed more than 100 people," he said.
William Zartman, director of the conflict management program at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, agreed some violence was planned well in advance of the election.
"Militias were prepared and ready to move," he said.
But like Barkin, he saw the differences in Kenya in terms of ethnic groups and political parties, not along lines of religion.
"I've heard nothing about Muslim involvement," he said. "Of course, that's not proof to the contrary. But I don't see religion as a major element in this conflict."
Kimuyu, however, insisted he had a one-of-a-kind vantage point for observing the developments surrounding Kenya's election.
"I was in a unique position as both a pastor and a politician. I was in meetings where I heard what the politicians were saying, and I was in meetings where I heard what the bishops were saying," he said.
Kimuyu participated in interfaith meetings with religious leaders as a representative of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, he explained. And he joined political strategy meetings as a candidate for parliament.
Before moving to Texas, he served as pastor of Athi River First Baptist Church in Kenya, general secretary of the Baptist Convention of Kenya and vice president for the All-Africa Baptist Union.
In early fall, Kimuyu appeared almost certainly headed to a parliamentary seat to represent Machakos township, about 35 miles east of Nairobi. He had received the nomination by the Kenya African National Union. He represented the Akamba tribe, which dominates the area. And polls showed him receiving 80 percent of the expected vote. He was the first Kenyan in the United States -- living in what his countrymen call "the diaspora" -- to be nominated by a major political party.
But when the party that nominated him was folded into a coalition Party of National Unity, another candidate was given the new party's endorsement. Kimuyu ran as the United Democratic Party of Kenya candidate, but he was soundly defeated.
While violence in Kenya has been portrayed as a spontaneous reaction to injustice and vote fraud, Muslim radicals planned much of it in advance, Kimuyu insisted.
And while "we will never know" if the election was rigged by the party in control, he maintains voters unquestionably were threatened and harassed by Muslim supporters of the opposition party.
"People were prevented from going to the polls, and people were prevented from counting votes," he said.
Kimuyu has lived in the United States more than two decades, earning degrees from Howard Payne University, Dallas Baptist University and the University of North Texas and launching several homes for children and youth.
When he ran for office, Kimuyu made the Micah Challenge a centerpiece of his platform. The Micah Challenge is a church-based campaign in developing nations of the Southern Hemisphere to achieve the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals-cutting global poverty in half by 2015, reducing child morality and fighting HIV/AIDS, malaria and other preventable diseases.
Kimuyu remains committed to those goals. And while he is concerned about the "loss of moral authority" by multiple parties both inside and outside Kenya, he wants to stay engaged in both political and religious reform in his homeland.
"I will be back," he said.
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Guest opinion: New Covenant may come in old wineskins
By Todd Thomason
(ABP) -- Many of my friends and ministerial colleagues recently returned from the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant in Atlanta full of enthusiasm. I myself have yet to feel much excitement.
Not that I’m not happy to see African-American Baptists and Anglo Baptists coming together and standing together; I certainly am. Such a reunion is long overdue. Not that I object to the Covenant’s platform of “seeking peace with justice, bringing good news to the poor, respecting diversity, welcoming the stranger, and setting the captive free,” because I wholeheartedly believe in those biblical imperatives.
I’m just not convinced there is much that is new about the Baptist dimension of this Covenant (at least not yet).
The event’s website billed it as “an unprecedented demonstration of Baptist unity” to reaffirm traditional Baptist values. Jimmy Carter and other organizers have also expressed a desire for the Covenant to provide an alternative Baptist witness to the theological and political agenda of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has come to define Baptists’ public image. Heaven knows we Baptists need another voice in the public square loud enough to demonstrate that not all of us take our cues from the Jerry Falwells and James Dobsons of the world.
Nonetheless, distinctions are made by practice more than by rhetoric -- and so far the New Baptist Covenant has been largely about rhetoric.
Two groups were notably absent from the event’s official roster: the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists and the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. Both organizations accept homosexuals and advocate for gay rights within Baptist life. As Associated Baptist Press reported, in July 2007 Alan Stanford, the general secretary of the North American Baptist Fellowship, forbade both gay-friendly groups from participating in the Covenant celebration in an official capacity. He said the decision was made out of concern that their presence would “change the terms of the meeting [and] that might cause an already fragile coalition to unravel.”
Lest we forget, this sort of top-down exclusionary action is precisely why many of the ex-Southern Baptists who are championing the New Baptist Covenant are ex-Southern Baptists. They 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.
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. How can we say with any integrity that we’re coming together to take a stand for social justice when, as Ken Pennings of the AWAB correctly observed, “the very people in American society being scapegoated and marginalized the most … are not invited to participate?”
Two of the historic Baptist principles that the New Baptist Covenant should reaffirm are liberty of conscience and the freedom to interpret Scripture for oneself under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Members of AWAB and the Peace Fellowship believe, based on their reading of Scripture and the guidance of their consciences, that homosexuals can and should be accepted fully as disciples of Christ.
Other Baptists, also based on their reading of Scripture and the guidance of their consciences, do not. If the architects of the New Baptist Covenant truly believe in freedom, then all that should matter is whether or not AWAB and the Peace Fellowship can affirm the platform of the Covenant itself.
If homosexuality is not part of the Covenant agenda, then positions on homosexuality ought to be irrelevant to anyone’s ability to participate in Covenant activities. Otherwise, what we’re left with is yet another gathering of Baptists defined more by partisan politics than unity in Christ -- and we’ve already seen what that yields. Jesus warned his disciples about putting new wine in old wineskins.
The predominance of politicians taking part in the Covenant celebration also calls the exclusion of AWAB and the Peace Fellowship into question -- especially in an election year, especially when one of the keynote speakers is the husband of a presidential candidate, especially since civil rights for homosexuals was a contentious and pivotal issue in 2004.
I don’t often agree with Richard Land (in fact, this is almost certainly the first time), but he is right in asserting that the political affiliations of the Covenant’s chief standard-bearers are not beyond suspicion. If we non-/ex-Southern Baptists are going to faithfully challenge those who have given their riches to the worship of a golden elephant, setting up a golden donkey is not the answer. Becoming an alternative witness involves more than recasting and repackaging what the other side has to offer.
Jimmy Allen asked NBC attendees whether the event would be “a moment” or become “a movement.” I think the answer to that question will be determined by how much sway old models and old temptations are allowed to have. Covenants are not “fragile coalitions.” They are tenacious relationships rooted in our life with God. When we Baptists arrive at a place where we can commit ourselves to “seeking peace with justice, bringing good news to the poor, respecting diversity, welcoming the stranger, and setting the captive free,” without exception and regardless of what else we might agree or disagree about, that will be a truly “unprecedented demonstration of Baptist unity” and something worth celebrating.
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-- Todd Thomason is pastor of Baptist Temple Church in Alexandria, Va.
Correction
By ABP staff
There was an error in the 10 paragraph of the Feb. 13 ABP story, “Religious voters in ‘Potomac Primary’ boost Obama, protest McCain.” Please replace the second sentence of that paragraph with the following: “Virginia GOP voters who said they rarely attend church supported the senator 59-29 percent over his chief rival.”
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