Associated Baptist Press - 5/16/2008

Associated Baptist Press
May 16, 2008 (8-51)

IN THIS ISSUE:
Baptists, other Christians already in China beat limits on foreign help
Abundant field of SBC candidates may signal relaxed political reins
Gay marriage moves ahead in Calif. after state Supreme Court ruling
Analysis: ‘Evangelical Manifesto’ draws praise, critique from across Baptist life
Fellowship announces formal partnership with Ghana Baptist Convention
Three Baptist universities rank high in new survey
Southern gospel music legend Dottie Rambo dies in crash
Opinion: Christians’ attention to foreign policy long overdue

Baptists, other Christians already in China beat limits on foreign help
By ABP staff

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- While China has accepted a very limited number of foreign-aid workers in the wake of the disastrous earthquake that devastated much of Sichuan province May 12, several Baptists and other Christians from the United States were already situated to help.

According to the latest published reports on the morning of May 15, the quake had claimed nearly 20,000 lives – a toll that could go as high as 50,000.

At least 10,000 people are still buried beneath debris in Mianyang, a city near the quake’s epicenter. Bill and Michelle Cayard, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship representatives in China, had just started a partnership with a laity training center in that city, according to CBF officials. The workers also have connections with pastors in Dujiangyan, another city severely damaged.

Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham and head of the Samaritan’s Purse Christian aid organization, was already on a 10-day trip to China when the massive temblor struck. He met with officers of China’s government-sanctioned Protestant organization – representing thousands of officially registered churches across the country -- May 13.

“We want to do anything we can to assist with this crisis so we are committing these funds for initial support of the local church as they assist with the relief efforts,” Graham said, according to a Samaritan’s Purse press release. “I've been impressed with the effective and immediate response of the Chinese government and how they’ve responded to this devastating earthquake. Each day I’m here in China I am meeting with officials to assess the need and offer our assistance.”

The organization has already committed $1 million to assist with the immediate response. Following their meeting in Shanghai, China Christian Council President Gao Feng thanked Samaritan’s Purse for the help.

“This donation is very important to the people of China because it shows the love of God for all people,” Gao said, according to the release. “This will encourage more Chinese people to do the same and to reach out to their neighbors in need. Franklin Graham's visit is bringing us much more understanding and encouragement for each other.”

CBF, meanwhile has committed an initial $5,000 toward meeting immediate needs for water, food and tents in Jiangyou, another small city in the earthquake zone. Its only officially recognized church building was destroyed by the quake.

“That was the only registered church building in a city of over 100,000,” Michelle Cayard said May 13, according to a CBF statement. “The pastor there urgently requested tents, as people are sleeping outside without shelter and it has been raining now for almost 24 hours.”

“Though this is a small effort, it encourages those facing such a difficult time and provides a witness to the community,” Cayard said. “After immediate needs are met, we will work with local partners to identify longer-term needs.”

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Abundant field of SBC candidates may signal relaxed political reins
By Greg Warner

INDIANAPOLIS (ABP) -- Candidates are lining up two-by-two for this year’s Southern Baptist Convention presidency, like animals filing into Noah’s Ark – two big-church pastors, two small-church pastors, two former missionaries.

For the first time in almost three decades, six men will be nominated for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention, to be held June 10-11 in Indianapolis.

Not since the first year of the SBC’s conservative movement in 1979 have six nominees been offered for the annual presidential election, which for the subsequent 12 years was a showdown between two warring factions and later was dominated by the victorious conservatives. In their first victory in that succession, conservatives nominated one candidate – Memphis megachurch pastor Adrian Rogers – against five moderate or local candidates.

This year, all six candidates are conservatives who support the three-decade-long movement.

But the nature of the election has changed, said Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson.

“In the past, the presidency was all about prestige,” Burleson said. “If you had prestige, were a megachurch pastor, and waited your turn, you could be elected. Those days are over.”

-- Two of the 2008 candidates fit the mold of most presidents since 1979 – well-known megachurch pastors – although in recent years the megachurches have gotten smaller and the pastors less famous.

In this case, both are from metro Atlanta. Frank Cox, pastor of North Metro Baptist Church in Lawrenceville, Ga., and Johnny Hunt, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Ga., are both closely associated with the SBC’s conservative power structure. Cox and Hunt were on trips to Israel and unavailable for comment for this story.

-- Two of the candidates are small-church pastors who would qualify as SBC outsiders and -- if history is a guide -- longshots for the presidency. Wiley Drake is pastor of the 75-member First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif. Les Puryear, a North Carolina native who was a telecommunications executive for 25 years before entering the pastorate in 1996, serves Lewisville (N.C.) Baptist Church, with an average attendance of 195.

Both Drake and Puryear are better known than most small-church pastors. Drake served as SBC second vice president and is a mainstay at the annual meeting, proposing the famous boycott of Disney because of questionable programming and support of gay rights. Puryear was organizer of the SBC’s first Small Church Leadership Conference in March.

-- Two candidates were career Southern Baptist missionaries. Bill Wagner, a 72-year-old seminary professor and current president of Olivet University International in San Francisco, served the SBC International Mission Board from 1965 to 1996. Avery Willis, former senior vice president of overseas operations for the IMB and author of the popular MasterLife discipleship curriculum, served 15 years as head of adult discipleship for LifeWay Christian Resources before retiring to Arkansas.

Like Drake, Wagner served as SBC second vice president, in 2004.

The unusual election this year is being played out against a backdrop of decline in the country’s second-largest religious group. For the first time in history, the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention posted a decline in membership last year, after several years of baptism losses and other signs of slumping vitality.

The statistics belie the battle cry of conservatives, that seizing control of the denominational hierarchy would prevent a slide into liberal-inspired lethargy, the graveyard of mainline denominations.

The abundant field of candidates – and their less-than-obvious political alignment -- has prompted speculation that Southern Baptist conservatives are now so comfortable with their hold on the convention that they are less concerned about who holds the powerful office, which was the centerpiece of the strategy used to steer the SBC onto a rightward course.

Another interpretation, however, suggests that the convention’s powerbrokers are promoting a more-the-merrier strategy in hopes of assuring at least one sympathetic candidate makes it into a runoff.

Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson, a prominent blogger and leader among younger SBC conservatives, took the less cynical interpretation, welcoming the burgeoning field.

“I think it’s healthy when there are a lot of different candidates,” said the pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid. He said there are “good choices” among the six announced candidates.

And he hinted the field may grow even larger. “When was the last time there were six, maybe seven, maybe eight candidates for president?” he asked. “There is a possibility [of more nominees], but it’s not for certain.”

The presidential winner will succeed South Carolina pastor Frank Page, who was elected with help from Burleson and other bloggers who advocated relaxing denominational control and spreading leadership around. Their goal is to broaden SBC involvement, innovation and inclusiveness in order to increase cooperation and turn around declining statistics.

“The issue is no longer who is president, but what are the issues?” Burleson continued. The issues are denominational cooperation, local-church autonomy and “resurgence of the gospel,” said Burleson.

The pastor promised there would be motions introduced at the June convention related to those issues – “either to stop progress or move it along.”

Burleson did not announce his favorite among the six nominees but said electing a small-church pastor “would represent a voice in the SBC that has not been heard.”

Puryear is an advocate for the SBC’s helping small churches, which he said represent 83 percent of the convention’s churches.

“Historically, the SBC has been a convention of small churches led by megachurch leaders,” he said in an e-mail interview. “I have nothing against those in megachurches. However, I don't think they understand the needs of the small church and its members and leaders as well as someone who ministers in that environment each day.”

Puryear admitted small-church pastors have not fared well in previous presidential elections. “I do know that now more than ever before I am hearing the small church included in convention discussions,” he said.

Puryear likewise welcomed the multitude of nominees. And he added, “Indianapolis will reveal whether the [2006] election of Frank Page was a true shift in the SBC or just a bump in the road for the establishment.”

In what has to be a first in SBC history, one candidate interviewed another about the SBC election on live radio May 15.

Wiley Drake, who hosts a daily radio show in Southern California that is also webcast on the Internet, interviewed fellow Californian Bill Wagner.

The interview focused more on the candidates’ agreements than differences, and Drake pledged to support Wagner if the mission leader is elected.

Wagner said the SBC should develop a program to recruit and send out college students for two-year stints as missionaries, with the individuals, their families and their churches supporting them financially.

He also advocated creating a convention department to relate to the secular media. Baptist Press, the denomination’s information arm, “does an outstanding job” of communicating with Southern Baptists but “a miserable job” with secular media, Wagner said.

“There is no apparatus to let people know who we are and the tremendous things we’re doing,” Wagner said, to Drake’s “amens.” Wagner, who has a website promoting his candidacy, added Southern Baptists are “behind on using the Internet.”

At the interview’s conclusion, Drake said of Wagner: “I agree with his presidential platform and will do everything I can to assist him … if he is elected.”

Wagner, on his website (www.williamwagner.org), offers a “Contract with Southern Baptists” that advocates the “conservative resurgence,” expanding SBC involvement to include all conservatives, supporting the SBC mission boards, learning about world religions, deploying college students in missions, rebuilding relationships with national Baptist unions around the world, and involving younger Baptists, small churches and minority churches in SBC life.

Drake is emphasizing the spiritual dimension of his presidency, promising to promote “repentance and revival” in SBC churches and in America and to lead Southern Baptists to increase denominational cooperation and influence the social order – particularly as it concerns government “intimidation” of preachers.

“Win, lose or draw, I’m going to take on the [American Civil Liberties Union],” he pledged in an interview with ABP.

Drake, who supported Page’s election, said he is “one of the few candidates who can make changes” needed in the SBC. “If we don’t make those changes, we’re going to be in deep, deep trouble.”

Avery Willis, who also promotes his candidacy on a website (www.averywillis.com), told Associated Baptist Press his presidency will stress the spiritual needs of Southern Baptists.

“The thing I see missing most in the churches I visit is God,” he said.

If elected, he would “talk about whatever it means to be a disciple,” said the longtime proponent of personal discipleship. Denominational emphasis on revival and evangelism is important, he said, “but it’s not going to turn around the situation of 70 percent of our churches being stagnant or declining.”

“I will be calling for a spiritual returning to God on a personal level and a congregational level.”

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Gay marriage moves ahead in Calif. after state Supreme Court ruling
By Robert Marus

SAN FRANCISCO (ABP) -- Sixty years after their predecessors handed down a landmark decision allowing interracial marriages, the California Supreme Court justices May 15 did the same for same-sex marriage, overturning a statewide ban on the controversial practice.

The decision paves the way for the Golden State to become the second jurisdiction in the union with fully legalized gay marriage. However, it likely will have little effect, legally speaking, on same-sex couples in the state, which already offers such couples domestic partnerships with rights and obligations virtually identical to those provided by marriage.

Nonetheless, the court’s majority decided that denying the use of the term “marriage” to such couples violates their rights under the state’s charter.

“The question we must address is whether, under these circumstances, the failure to designate the official relationship of same-sex couples as marriage violates the California Constitution,” said the court’s majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Ronald George.

The majority referred to the court’s historic 1948 Perez v. Sharp ruling, which similarly said a California ban on interracial marriage violated the state constitution’s equal-protection provisions – even though such a ban had existed since California’s founding. It was the first state high court in the United States to issue a ruling on interracial marriage, and it predated by nearly two decades the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision overturning such anti-miscegenation laws nationwide.

The Perez decision, the current California court’s majority said, “makes clear that history alone is not invariably an appropriate guide for determining the meaning and scope of this fundamental constitutional guarantee. The decision in Perez, although rendered by a deeply divided court, is a judicial opinion whose legitimacy and constitutional soundness are by now universally recognized.”

The ruling overturns a 2000 statewide ballot initiative, called Proposition 22, that defined marriage exclusively in heterosexual terms. It passed with 61 percent of the vote. But recent polls have suggested opinions are quickly changing in favor of gay marriage in California.

Justice Marvin Baxter, in a dissenting opinion, said the court’s majority was not justified in overruling the proposition.

“Nothing in our Constitution, express or implicit, compels the majority’s startling conclusion that the age-old understanding of marriage -- an understanding recently confirmed by an initiative law -- is no longer valid,” he wrote. “California statutes already recognize same-sex unions and grant them all the substantive legal rights this state can bestow. If there is to be a further sea change in the social and legal understanding of marriage itself, that evolution should occur by similar democratic means.”

The case stemmed from 2004, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom (D) and other city officials began performing same-sex marriages despite the Proposition 22 ban. Hundreds of couples were wed before the California Supreme Court stepped in to halt the marriages.

The justices, six of whom were appointed by Republican governors, found that Newsom had overstepped his authority. They put a halt to the marriages, invalidating the ones that already had taken place.

Gay couples married under his edict sued, first challenging the state law banning same-sex marriage, then challenging the new state law that created domestic partnerships. They were joined by gay-rights and civil-liberties groups. The court consolidated several cases that dealt with the constitutionality of the two-tiered scheme of marriage and domestic partnership.

Conservative groups in the state have vowed to push harder for an amendment that is likely to appear on the November ballot to reinstitute the marriage ban. Since it would be a constitutional amendment, it would invalidate the court’s ruling.

“The voters realize that defining marriage as one man and one woman is important because the government should not, by design, deny a child both a mother and father,” said a statement from Glen Lavy, a senior counsel for the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, who argued the case before the court. “The court’s decision clearly demonstrates that marriage is not ultimately safe from tampering by activists and others in government until the voters have amended the constitution.”

The organization will ask the court to stay their decision -- slated to take effect in a month – until after the election.

But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), who vetoed legislative attempts to legalize same-sex marriage twice in as many years, said May 15 he would uphold and enforce the latest decision. He has previously said he would oppose the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage permanently.

The case is City and County of San Francisco v. California.

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Analysis: ‘Evangelical Manifesto’ draws praise, critique from across Baptist life
By Robert Marus


WASHINGTON (ABP) -- If the authors of “An Evangelical Manifesto,” released May 7, aimed to inspire conversation and self-reflection among their kindred, they certainly succeeded.

Among Baptists at the intersection of faith and public life, the conversation and reflection have included both praise and critique of the document itself -- from the left and the right. Southern Baptist critics on the right, including Al Mohler and Richard Land – complained mostly about what they consider the document’s omissions, such as a condemnation of sexual immorality.

The 20-page statement, initially endorsed by about 75 prominent evangelical pastors, scholars and writers, delivers a barely concealed rebuke of the methods and rhetoric of the Religious Right from many either within its own ranks or very close to it.

The document specifically denounces what it describes as the “two equal and opposite errors” of privatizing faith and politicizing it.

Politicization of Christianity, the document says, amounts to “using faith to express essentially political points that have lost touch with biblical truth. That way faith loses its independence, the church becomes ‘the regime at prayer,’ Christians become ‘useful idiots’ for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form.”

The manifesto emphasizes that evangelicalism should be primarily a theological identity rather than a political or theological one. It calls on conservative evangelicals to contribute to a more civil public discourse rather than simply adding ammunition to the culture wars.

“[W]e are especially troubled by the fact that a generation of culture warring, reinforced by understandable reactions to religious extremism around the world, is creating a powerful backlash against all religion in public life among many educated people,” the statement notes. “If this were to harden and become an American equivalent of the long-held European animosity toward religion in the public life, the result would be disastrous for the American republic and a severe constriction of liberty for people of all faiths.”

The manifesto also calls on evangelicals to broaden their social advocacy beyond the classic issues of abortion rights and sexuality into other areas, such as the environment, poverty and international human rights.

Its initial endorsers included a broad range of evangelical leaders -- such as popular author Os Guinness, who spearheaded the effort, Fuller Theological Seminary President Richard Muow and Christianity Today Editor David Neff.

The first signatories also included a wide range of Baptists, such as Bethel University President George Brushaber, Liberty Theological Seminary President Ergun Caner, Mercer University professor (and Associated Baptist Press columnist) David Gushee, and Beeson Divinity School Dean Timothy George.

But even before it was released, some conservatives denounced the document for leaving out the most politically prominent evangelical leaders, such as James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Land, in a May 13 opinion column for the SBC’s news arm, said he was “in full agreement with at least 90 percent of what [the statement] has to say” but that details -- such as what he called theological imprecision -- would prevent him from signing it.

He also took issue with the authors’ decision to offer a specific critique of rampant consumerism and materialism in some parts of evangelical culture without offering a similarly specific critique of sexual immorality or other sins.

“[I]f the manifesto can take time to denounce ‘consumerism’ by name, why can't it take time to specify the sins of premarital and extramarital sex?” Land asked. “When evangelicals, who proclaim the sanctity of marriage, have the same rate of divorce as the general society, they have indeed shamed the gospel they proclaim with their lips but deny with their libidos.”

Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and a prominent conservative social critic, took similar issue with the document’s finer points, while praising its overall thrust. His overarching criticism was that the manifesto lacked specific proposals for how evangelicals could increase civility in public discourse and engage in public affairs without appearing as if they were attempting to hijack the government for purely theological ends.

“There can be no doubt that far too many evangelicals have confused the gospel with a political agenda -- and even with the Republican Party,” wrote Mohler, in a May 12 entry on his AlbertMohler.com blog. “But what the document never makes clear is how to hold to deep moral and political convictions, based in biblical principles, without running the danger of identification with a political agenda -- at least to some extent. Does the manifesto suggest a Gnostic form of political engagement?”

While praising the document’s call for civility -- much of which echoes the thrust of Guinness’ most recent book, The Case for Civility -- Mohler said it didn’t lay out a plan for engaging civilly when debating principles of the highest importance.

“[N]either Guinness nor the manifesto can construct the framework for civility that Guinness brilliantly imagines. This is due to the fact that we are now dealing with the very fundamental questions of existence that the manifesto acknowledges; the questions that, in the end, will shape the civilization,” Mohler wrote.

“Issues such as abortion and marriage are not only important, but urgent…. The manifesto is wonderfully prophetic in calling for civility, but it never explains how civility can survive a policy conclusion -- or how civil parties to a conversation about ultimate things can speak the truth and always be considered civil.”

Guinness, in a written response sent to an Associated Baptist Press reporter, welcomed Mohler’s praise for the document but said his criticism was misdirected.

“Would that Dr Mohler’s simple agreement with [a] hotly contested statement in the manifesto be heard widely by supporters of the Religious Right! What even the pope now acknowledges about the errors of Christendom, and most thoughtful Christians confess sadly about many expressions of faith on both left and right, has been rejected by many as a statement of unfaithfulness and a pandering to the left,” he said.

Of the accusation that the manifesto calls for a political engagement that is “Gnostic” – disconnecting knowledge from physical action -- Guinness said: “God forbid, and why so? The manifesto calls for evangelicals to be ‘fully engaged’ in politics but never ‘completely equated’ with any party or ideology. In other words, Christian engagement that is faithful always requires the same steps as any other Christian engagement in any other field, such as economics or academic scholarship. It requires: 1) discernment (what actually is the truth of the matter and the facts of the case?), 2) assessment (from a biblical standard, is it true or false, right or wrong, wise or foolish?), and 3) engagement (where it is true, right, and wise, we use it gratefully; where it is false, wrong, and foolish, we resist it wholeheartedly). There is nothing Gnostic here.”

As for a lack of specificity about what the statement means when it extols “civility,” Guinness said it should “not be confused with niceness, etiquette or squeamishness about differences, and it is most certainly not a recipe for any syncretistic form of interfaith dialogue.”

Instead, he said, “A civil public square is a carefully constructed framework of the ‘three Rs’ – rights, responsibilities and respect – within which people of all faiths are free to enter and engage public life but with a due respect for the rights of all others too.”

It’s like the sport of boxing, which uses a set of long-established rules to structure a fight, Guinness said. “So a civil public square is not a grand, ecumenical love-in, at the end of which everybody agrees about everything. It is a political framework that acts like the ring within which important differences are ‘fought out’ robustly but always civilly,” he said.

Baptist critics with a different view of the relationship between church and state, meanwhile, also expressed agreement with the overall thrust of the manifesto but criticism of some of its finer points.

“From the perspective of the [Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty], this is a welcome contribution to the ongoing conversation about religion in public life and an important declaration of a Christian commitment to religious freedom,” said Holly Hollman, general counsel for the Washington-based BJC in an e-mail message. “The statement rejects the idea that Christianity should be treated preferentially [by government entities] and commits to a ‘civil public square’ to include all perspectives. By doing so, the signers seem to be signaling a greater willingness to reach across dividing lines and work toward common ground than many would assume.”

The document uses familiar terminology to describe two views of the proper place of religion in public life -- the so-called “sacred public square” versus the “naked public square.” That framework has been described by some who have supported government endorsements of religion in the past but denounced by some religious supporters of strict church-state separation as a false dichotomy.

In the case of the manifesto authors, Hollman said, “the utility of their statement on … religious expression in the public square is limited by their failure to define terms. Whether the word ‘public’ is being used to mean ‘government-sponsored’ or simply ‘outside one's home and church community’ has significant practical and legal implications.”

Guinness said he was closer to Hollman’s view of church-state separation than many religious conservatives. “Every term and label has been abused by someone. But that said, no such suspicion should be read into this,” he said. “I have been a constant critic, for example, of the president’s ‘faith-based initiatives,’ though that argument is no part of the manifesto.”

Melissa Rogers, professor of public policy at the Baptist-related Wake Forest University Divinity School, welcomed the statement’s robust defense of religious liberty. But, in a May 8 post on her blog (melissarogers.typepad.com), she added: “A philosophical commitment to this principle is good; a pledge to act on that commitment is better. The next step is to pledge to go to bat for this principle in some specific debates about policy and law over the next year. If more evangelicals take this step, the cause of religious freedom will be advanced in important ways.”

Nonetheless, moderate/progressive Baptists and conservative Baptists alike seemed to find much to praise and only minor points to criticize about the statement overall.

Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance and preaching pastor of Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, La., said that while he found minor fault with the statement, he was happy to see it.

“This manifesto should be read as a strong criticism of the Religious Right’s so-called leadership, who were clearly not involved in the drafting or signing of this document,” he said, in a statement. “I appreciate the tone of this document, especially the call to remove religion from politics, though it does not and should not remove the right of people of faith to voice their concerns on issues of national importance.

“We will have to wait and see what, if any, impact this document has on the Religious Right.”

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Fellowship announces formal partnership with Ghana Baptist Convention
By Patricia Heys

ATLANTA (ABP) -- Leaders from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Ghana Baptist Convention recently signed a memorandum of understanding, representing an official partnership between the organizations and churches that partner with them.

For many years, Fellowship partner churches and Ghanaian Baptist churches have collaborated in ministry. Leaders hope that this formal partnership will enable more congregations to join the work already in progress.

“The future of global missions will be shaped by strategic partnerships between Baptist bodies as well as between churches,” CBF Executive Coordinator Daniel Vestal said.

“This partnership has the potential of being transformative both for the Ghana Baptist Convention and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. It represents a vision of shared ministry that is exciting.”

The Ghana Baptist Convention represents approximately 1,000 churches with more than 65,000 members, primarily located in the country's rural areas. Twenty percent of these churches have their own building. The remainder worship in classrooms or temporary structures. The convention has approximately 600 trained ministers and two ministerial training institutions.

CBF and the Ghana Baptist Convention will collaborate in a variety of ministries, including establishing church-to-church connections, creating networks of congregations focused on meeting the needs of the most marginalized and supporting Ghanaian churches in the United States. The organizations will share resources in five specific areas -- prayer, church planting, leadership development, ministry infrastructure and community transformation.

The convention's Student Holiday Outreach Program will enable student groups from the United States to minister across Ghana through construction projects, sports activities and evangelism.

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Three Baptist universities rank high in new survey
By ABP staff

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- Three Baptist universities were listed among the top 50 national universities in a new results-based ranking by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP), based in Washington.

The two-year-old nonprofit organization ranked Wake Forest University at 19th, Samford University at 27th and Baylor University at 34th on its list.

Rankings were released May 6 on the Forbes.com website, and are scheduled for publication in the May 19 issue of Forbes magazine.

The Center for College Affordability and Productivity is an independent, not-for-profit organization that studies higher-education issues. Rankings are based on student perceptions of the quality of courses and instructors, graduation rates and such factors as percentage of students winning nationally competitive awards.

The center also looks at the number of graduates listed in “Who's Who in America” because that publication includes undergraduate affiliations of those listed. The organization measures student evaluations posted on Ratemyprofessors.com, a 9-year-old site with 6.8 million student-generated evaluations.

Because the Center for College Affordability and Productivity is a results-based ranking, its findings often differ from other recognized college performance measures, such as the annual list produced by U.S. News & World Report.

For example, Southern Methodist University in Dallas ranked 13th on the center’s list, but only made it to the 67th spot on the U.S. News list.

Wake Forest ranked 30th on the U.S. News list, with Baylor at 75th. Samford showed up at 118th.

The trio ranked among several nationally known institutions, including Rice University (24th), Carnegie Mellon University (25th), Georgetown University (26th), the University of California-Berkeley (28th), the University of Rochester (29th) and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (30th) in the CCAP listing.

"We always are pleased with national recognition because it affirms the work of our faculty, students, alumni, staff and friends in building the strong academic reputation of Samford University," said Samford President Andrew Westmoreland, in a press statement.

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Southern gospel music legend Dottie Rambo dies in crash
By Vicki Brown

MOUNT VERNON, Mo. -- Southern gospel music singer and songwriter Dottie Rambo, 74, was killed when her tour bus ran off a highway near Mount Vernon, Mo., May 11. She was en route to an engagement in Texas after performing in Illinois.

Born Joyce Reba Luttrell in Anton, Ky., Rambo wrote more than 2,500 songs, including “We Shall Behold Him,” “He Looked Beyond My Fault (and Saw My Need)” and “I’ve Never Been This Homesick Before.”

According to the singer’s Web site (www.dottierambo.com), she wrote her first song as an 8-year-old “on a Morganfield, Ky, creek bank.” At 12 years old, she started traveling to sing in churches. She married Buck Rambo at 16. They were later divorced.

Rambo broke into the music business at 17 when she attracted the attention of then-Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis. The governor, who was also a singer, funded publication of Rambo’s songs.

The music artist garnered a number of awards throughout her music career. In 1968, her song, “It’s the Soul of Me,” captured a Grammy for the Best Soul Gospel Performance. Rambo was among the first white gospel performers to use African-American backup singers.

The Country Christian Music Association named her its Songwriter of the Century in 1994, gave her its Pioneer Award in 2003, and named her Songwriter of the Year in 2004. Whitney Houston’s recording of Rambo’s “I Go to the Rock” garnered a Dove Award in 1999.

Rambo was inducted into the Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame twice -- as a solo performer and with her group, The Rambos. In 2006, she was inducted into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame.

The singer/songwriter also performed for television, regularly appearing in the 1960s broadcast, “Gospel Singing Jubilee.” She had her own program, “The Dottie Rambo Magazine” on TBN for several years.

Her 80th project -- “Sheltered,” a CD of fan favorites -- is due for release this summer.

Rambo is survived by a daughter, Reba Rambo-McGuire; a sister, Nellie Slaton of Cedar Rapids, Iowa; two brothers, Jerry Luttrell of Madisonville, Ky., and Freddie Luttrell of Sturgis, Ky.; three grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.

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Opinion: Christians’ attention to foreign policy long overdue
By David Gushee

(ABP) -- One of the great weaknesses of contemporary Christian public engagement is in the area of U.S. foreign policy.

We live in what for now remains the most powerful nation on earth, and there are a goodly number of us Christians here -- perhaps a majority of the population, depending on how we make the count. And yet we have done little to hone our reflections about how this nation conducts its foreign policy.

This weakness became apparent to me when working on my book on faith and politics. I discovered that the evangelical/Christian right had two problems in this regard. One was a narrow focus on what have been called “moral values” issues such as abortion, stem cells and homosexuality.

The other was that, amid this supposedly narrow focus, these groups had in most cases essentially adopted neoconservative or Bush administration foreign policy as “the Christian position.” Just review the history or look at their websites and it will be apparent.

The evangelical left has tended to give much more attention to foreign-policy concerns, but their stance has often lacked nuance. They have generally been dovish, multilateralist, and aid/trade oriented. They have historically opposed every U.S. military action, emphasized globalized rather than unilateral solutions to foreign-policy challenges, and attacked the current U.S.-dominated international economic/political apparatus such as the World Bank and trade agreements.

Meanwhile, in Christian academia, in the world of textbooks and classes, it often seems that the only issue ever discussed is the ethics of war. Many who have been to a Christian college or seminary can now run through the criteria of just-war theory and contrast it with pacifism. Some even know about just-peacemaking theory. But even this laudable breakthrough often fails the concreteness test. Most presentations of the ethics of war are theoretical and abstract and fail to think about the particular challenges facing Christians in the most military-powerful and military-engaged nation in the world.

While I am no foreign-policy expert, I am convinced that Christians who seek to be thoughtful and engaged citizens need to be thinking about at least these issues:

-- The power of the United States in the world

Many have argued or now assume that the U.S. is the world’s sole superpower, or “hyperpower.” Sometimes our nation is described as the new Roman Empire, and this is not usually meant as a compliment. On the other hand, the staggering costs -- in blood, treasure and prestige -- of the Iraq War and to some extent of Afghanistan, together with the inexorable rise of powers like China, have others arguing that the United States is now clearly in decline.

There are factual and moral questions to consider here. The factual questions involve how one evaluates the power of a nation and how the United States is actually doing in relation to other nations or its own prior power.

The more interesting question is moral. It involves considering whether we, as Christians, should care about how much power the United States might have. Should we want our nation to have the power of an empire? Should we care if our nation is in decline? To what extent is loyalty to the self-interest of one nation -- our nation -- in a world of 190 nations, appropriate for Christians? Are we to be entirely internationalist, entirely nationalist or something in between?

-- Unilateralism vs. international cooperation

The world both is and is not one entity -- the world community. At times it does function as a kind of mega-polity, as one global community. We see this in international treaties (that work), in global market capitalism, in global emergency-relief efforts, to some extent in a disputed thing called international law, and sometimes in the meetings and acts of the United Nations. On the other hand, the world also gives evidence of functioning as an unsupervised, disunited collection of individual nations and alliances in which those with the most power win.

Most Christian ethicists believe that international cooperation and the strengthening of a strong global community are the right goals. They (we) believe that the United States is actually better off as a cooperating member of this international community, even if our actions are sometimes constrained by that involvement. Of course, after 9/11 the Bush administration emphasized U.S. unilateralism and embarked on the Iraq War with little international support.

Question: Can it be shown that multilateralism and international cooperation, rather than unilateralism and the rule of the most powerful, is the preferred Christian position?

-- Military intervention

Setbacks in Iraq and limited success in Afghanistan have shown that the U.S. military is not omnipotent. Nor is the U.S. budget omnicompetent to handle every stress we might load on it. With over 4,000 deaths in Iraq, many times that number seriously wounded, and a long-term commitment to care for survivors through a variety of expensive programs, our nation may be reaching the limit of how much military force we can hope to apply in the world.

Isolationists, libertarians, peacemakers and many others who are simply weary of war are calling for an end to our involvement in Iraq and a reconsideration of our military involvements in general. And yet some of the same people continue to press for involvement of our military to prevent genocide, as in Sudan. Christians must think through both the practicalities and the ethics of the use of the United States military in the world.

It is past time that Christians turn our attention to serious consideration of these and other moral issues relevant to U.S. foreign policy.

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