Associated Baptist Press - 7/22/2008

Associated Baptist Press
July 22, 2008 · (08-72)

Greg Warner, Executive Editor
Robert Marus, News Editor/Washington Bureau Chief

in this issue
Obama, McCain's first joint appearance set for Saddleback
New ABP website uses colllaboration to offer more resources, interaction
Groups ask federal appeals court to halt Kentucky's funding of Baptist agency
Early retirement likely for embattled Nashville pastor
Correction

Obama, McCain's first joint appearance set for Saddleback
By Rachel Mehlhaff

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (ABP) -- Barack Obama and John McCain will make their first joint 2008 campaign appearance to an audience of Christian activists at a Southern Baptist church.

The two have agreed to participate in a "compassion forum" at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. on August 16. Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, extended the invitation.

"I just got to thinking, you know what? These guys have never been together on the same stage, it would be a neat way to cap the primary season before they both go to the conventions and things go dark for a couple of weeks," he told the New York Times. "I've known both the guys for a long time, they're both friends of mine, and I knew them before they ran for office, so I just called them up."

Warren will moderate the forum, which will focus on moral-values issues -- such as poverty, the environment and global AIDS relief -- in which many centrist and younger evangelicals have taken an increasing interest.

It will be in a non-debate format and Warren will interview the candidates separately for about an hour each. Warren will pose the questions. There will be no panel or questions from members of the audience. Obama will go first, as determined by a coin toss.

"The primaries proved that Americans care deeply about the faith, values, character and leadership convictions of candidates as much as they do about the issues," Warren said in a press release. "While I know both men as friends and they recognize I will be frank, but fair, they also know I will be raising questions in these four areas beyond what political reporters typically ask."

The four areas include: poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate and human rights.

This forum will be the presumptive nominees' only joint campaign event prior to each party's national convention, according to the press release.

The event is part of a series Saddleback calls the "Saddleback Civil Forum on Leadership and Compassion." According to a press release, the series "was established to promote civil discourse and the common good of all." A past event, held during Passover, featured Holocaust survivors sharing their stories. Another forum, set for September, features former British prime minister Tony Blair, who recently converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism.

The church has invited the moderate-to-progressive group Faith in Public Life to co-sponsor the event. In April, the group hosted a similar Compassion Forum for presidential candidates at Messiah College in Pennsylvania.

Some Religious Right groups have reacted skeptically to the announcement. Tony Perkins, president of the Washington-based Family Research Council said he hopes Warren will also ask the candidates about issues -- such as abortion and gay rights -- that have been of paramount importance to conservative Christian voters in the past.

In a July 21 e-mail update sent to FRC supporters, Perkins said, "While the Left would have us believe that this is the faith community's new agenda, a candid discussion of traditional values issues such as life, marriage, and religious freedom is what American voters need and deserve. Surely Rev. Warren won't ignore the most crucial initiative in his state (and perhaps the entire nation) as California determines the fate of marriage this November."

Perkins was referring to California, which earlier this year became the second state in the union to legalize same-sex marriage. Gay-rights opponents have gotten a proposed constitutional amendment on the state's general-election ballot that would illegalize gay marriage again.

-30-

-- Robert Marus contributed to this story

New ABP website uses collaboration to offer more resources, interaction
By ABP Staff

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (ABP) --The newly redesigned Associated Baptist Press website (www.abpnews.com) offers expanded resources and reader interaction, but the real change is the way ABP and its three Baptist media partners are collaborating to produce the site, according to Executive Editor Greg Warner.

The nearly 2-year-old New Voice Media Group partnership includes ABP; the Baptist Standard, newsjournal of the Baptist General Convention of Texas; the Religious Herald, which serves the Baptist General Association of Virginia; and Word & Way, the historic Missouri Baptist newspaper.

The four partners have collaborated to build one state-of-the-art website that makes content from each partner immediately available to all the others, Warner said. And the first-of-its-kind collaboration means users of each partner's website have access to Internet tools that no one partner could have provided alone.

"The four New Voice partners are modeling a kind of cooperation that is rare in Baptist life but ... can open up powerful new possibilities for us and our readers," Warner said. "We believe the New Voice Media websites, working together, can create an online community of traditional and progressive Baptists that can make a real contribution to the future of Baptist life."

The new website offers click-of-the-mouse access to information and insight from a broad range of Baptist sources as well as easy opportunities for reader interaction, such as real-time comments on news stories.

Advertisers will also, for the first time, have the option of increasing their reach by placing ads on ABP's site and the three news partners' sites simultaneously.

As the site grows, it will provide new kinds of content, such as resources for ministers, churches and families. The new forms of content will respond to the results of a New Voice Media survey of church needs.

The site's new resources will be a boon for local congregations, according to one pastor. "New Voice Media provides a platform for churches to be able to do things not found anywhere else in Baptist life," said ABP board member William Shiell, pastor of First Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tenn., in e-mailed comments.

Website users, Shiell said, can "communicate about God's mission in the world through local churches, connect to other Christians who are serving faithfully, and find a pool of resources and information to help them minister in an effective, high-quality manner."

The Baptist Standard and ABP are the first two New Voice partners to go live with their content on the new site, which is being developed by Brainstorm Lab of Macon, Ga. The Religious Herald and Word & Way will soon follow.

"ABP's new website is certainly not lacking in its ability to dazzle!" noted Religious Herald Editor Jim White, in a statement. "The website enables the Internet visitor not only to read the news but watch and hear the news through its video and audio capabilities."

"I am pleased to see the new Associated Baptist Press site up and running," added Word & Way Editor Bill Webb. "ABP has been a dependable and vital news service since it began some 18 years ago. Now it has taken some giant steps to add contemporary media and visual resources. These new capabilities further enhance ABP's ministry of news, feature and opinion dissemination."

The ABP website, the editors said, reflects the New Voice partnership's commitment to offering traditional and progressive Baptists a platform for cooperation and information.

Baptist Standard Editor Marv Knox explained that the websites of the New Voice partners provide "a tangible, practical way to put in place the priesthood of the believer."

The new site "is the first major, tangible step in creating a new way for like-minded folks -- particularly traditional Baptists -- to find each other," he wrote. "We're in the process of creating spaces for folks to get together and explore ideas -- about faith, church, life, missions, ministry, family and all the other truly important relationships that define what it means to be fully human and intentionally Christian."

-30-

Groups ask federal appeals court to halt Kentucky's funding of Baptist agency
By Robert Marus

CINCINNATI (ABP) -- Two civil-liberties groups are asking a federal appeals court to stop state funding for a Kentucky Baptist agency, saying the agency uses the money to promote its religious beliefs to the detriment of employees and children.

On July 17, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union asked the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to take another look at Pedreira v. Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children, Inc.

In the suit, which a lower federal court dismissed in March, a group of Kentucky taxpayers asked that state funding for the agency (which has since changed its name to Sunrise Children's Services) be halted. Like many of the dozens of child-care agencies affiliated with state Baptist conventions, Sunrise has long contracted with Kentucky officials to house and care for children who have been taken into state custody.

The agency "uses its public funding to indoctrinate youths -- who are wards of the state -- in its religious views, coerce them to take part in religious activity, and convert them to its version of Christianity, and does so in part by requiring its employees to reflect its religious beliefs in their behavior," the plaintiffs' brief to the 6th Circuit states.

The lead plaintiff is Alicia Pedreira, who was fired from her job with the agency in 1998 after her employers discovered that she was a lesbian. She had gotten positive performance reviews prior to her termination.

"This case illustrates the all-too-real dangers of the government funding religious organizations without adequate safeguards," said Ken Chloe, an ACLU attorney, in a statement. "The Constitution's promise of religious freedom guarantees that the government won't preference one form of religion over another. Yet that's exactly what happened to Alicia Pedreira, who was fired because she didn't conform to the religious beliefs of her government-funded employer."

The plaintiffs' brief also notes a report from an independent Kentucky government contractor charged with monitoring child-care agencies. It said children under the agency's care reported being coerced to attend church services and being barred from attending other faiths' services.

Attorneys for Sunrise have countered that they do not use government funds to coerce or indoctrinate the children in its care.

A spokesperson for the agency said July 22 that it did not have any response to the latest development in the case other than the same arguments asserted to the lower court.

"They have followed their judicial right to appeal, and we continue to stand our ground in terms of our policies and our service to at-risk youth and children in Kentucky," said Karen Taylor, director of communications for Sunrise. "We are unapologetically faith-based [but] we do not coerce our children to believe any one certain way. They certainly are invited to go to church but don't have to go, they are invited to Bible studies but don't have to go -- but they're also invited to go do fun things that every kid wants to .... While we've been accused of coercion, it's just not there."

The lower federal court dismissed the suit in March, citing a 2007 Supreme Court decision that limited taxpayers' ability to file suits based on the First Amendment's guarantee against government establishment of religion. While many experts at the time said the decision was very narrow, some federal judges have interpreted it as instituting a broad bar on taxpayer lawsuits against government funding for religion.

-30-

Early retirement likely for embattled Nashville pastor
By ABP staff

NASHVILLE (ABP) -- Prominent Southern Baptist pastor Jerry Sutton likely will retire early from Two Rivers Baptist Church in Nashville, following a year-long period of turmoil within his congregation.

In an e-mail to church members, John Levesque, chair of Two Rivers' human-resources team, outlined terms of a proposed retirement package. The 57-year-old Sutton will be offered the package if the congregation approves it in a vote scheduled for July 27.

If the proposal passes, Two Rivers would pay him the equivalent of 22 months' salary -- one month for each year he has served as the church's pastor -- spread over five and a half years. The church would pay a portion of Sutton's medical and long-term disability coverage until he accepts a position elsewhere or reaches age 62 -- whichever comes first. Two Rivers also would continue to contribute to his retirement account for 24 months.

Three church committees -- human resources, trustees, and building and finance -- developed the package.

Sutton, 57, was receiving about $150,000 in salary and benefits annually, according to the Nashville Tennessean. He was to receive $67,285 in base salary, $79,999 as housing allowance and $3,600 as car allowance in 2008.

Last year, the former Southern Baptist Convention officer came under fire from a vocal group of Two Rivers members. They accused him of misappropriating church funds for personal use, including an alleged use of $4,000 for his daughter's wedding.

In September 2007, more than 70 then-members filed a lawsuit alleging Sutton had illegally concealed church records that would prove their charges.

Sutton survived an October ouster vote, and a judge dismissed the lawsuit in January. In April, he requested that the plaintiffs be dismissed from membership "because of the damage done to the witness, reputation, and welfare of Two Rivers Baptist Church."

On May 4, Sutton supporters failed by four votes to gain the super-majority necessary to withdraw fellowship from those who had filed the lawsuit. On May 11, the church reversed itself, voting to discount the ballots cast by the members in question. The action removed them from the congregation's rolls.

The three church teams held an informational meeting about the retirement package July 20. Another was set for July 23.

Two Rivers is one of the most prominent congregations in the SBC, which is headquartered in Nashville. Many of the denomination's top leaders attend the church.

According to SBC statistics for 2007, Two Rivers claimed 6,900 total members, with 1,621 as average worship attendance. The church recorded 106 baptisms for the year and $4.4 million in total receipts. Those numbers have declined in recent years.

Sutton served as SBC first vice president in 2005-06 and is the author of three books. He was a prominent figure among the denomination's conservatives in their successful struggle to take control of SBC agencies from moderates in the 1980s and '90s.

He was nominated for the SBC's presidency in 2006 and had the support of many of the denomination's conservative power-brokers, but lost in a three-way race to a candidate backed by a reform movement in the denomination.

-30-

Correction
There was an error in the 22nd paragraph of the July 6 ABP story, "Jesus in MySpace: Churches use social-networking sites." The founder of MyChurch.org mentioned is named Joe Suh, not Jon Suh. Please change it to read:

"It is kind of a MySpace for churches," said Joe Suh, one of the founders. The site was created about a year and half ago to fill a need that Suh's congregation, The River Church in San Jose, Calif., felt.

-30-