Associated Baptist Press - 8/12/2008

Associated Baptist Press
August 12, 2008 · (08-78)

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

In this issue
Amid Criswell College turmoil, accrediting probation lifted
Faith leaders ask DNC, RNC to showcase anti-poverty plans
American Baptist leaders organize first-ever Burmese Baptist meeting
Opinion: Gay Christians can't wait any longer
Opinion: No true compassion apart from revelation

Amid Criswell College turmoil, accrediting probation lifted
By ABP staff

DALLAS (ABP) -- A bright spot has appeared amidst leadership turmoil at Dallas-based Criswell College: the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools has removed the school from its probation list.

The accrediting agency lifted the year-long probation at its June session, according to its website (www.sacs.org).

The agency placed Criswell on probation in June 2007 because the school had failed to demonstrate compliance with standards governing financial stability and "appropriate control" of financial resources.

Criswell officials believe an auditing error on the association's part caused what they described as an "unnecessary" probation.

"In the audit report, they picked up a wrong line as a deficit. They listed a $3 million positive as a $3 million negative. That made it a $6 million error," Criswell Provost Lamar Cooper explained Aug. 11.

Because officials of the accrediting agency act only once each year, Criswell administrators could contest the issue shortly after being placed on probation -- but not get the action revoked until this year.

Cooper said the college has encouraged the association to provide an option between annual meetings for member schools to seek redress for rulings they consider unfair.

The provost emphasized that Criswell never lost its accreditation.

The news comes at a time of significant turmoil for the school, which was founded by First Baptist Church of Dallas and has long been a bastion of the conservative movement in Southern Baptist and Texas Baptist life.

The school's former president, Jerry Johnson, resigned abruptly Aug. 5. The resignation came shortly after Johnson and at least one Criswell trustee publicly accused First Baptist and its pastor, Robert Jeffress, of planning to sell the institution's assets. The proceeds, they contended, would go to fund a massive new sanctuary that the historic church has proposed.

First Baptist, under the guidance of its legendary then-pastor, W.A. Criswell, established Criswell College in 1971. The church must approve appointment of the college's trustees, over half of whom must be First Baptist members, and the church's pastor serves as the school's chancellor. Criswell College is affiliated with the conservative Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.

"For six months, the chancellor has been trying to cannibalize Criswell College to fund his building program at the church, which will cost $170 to $240 million," Johnson told the Dallas Morning News a week prior to his resignation.

The president also accused Jeffress of planning to stack the board with trustees who would agree to sell its campus and radio station, KCBI. The FM station and its two satellite stations broadcast over large portions of Texas and Oklahoma.

Criswell trustee Steve Washburn, pastor of First Baptist Church of Pflugerville, Texas, also accused the Dallas church of plotting to sell the school's assets, in a letter released in late July.

According to news reports, Johnson and some trustees, such as Washburn, have pointed out that the college is meeting financial and enrollment challenges. But Jeffress has advocated for a study to determine whether a need for the institution still exists.

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Faith leaders ask DNC, RNC to showcase anti-poverty plans
ABP staff

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- Prominent faith leaders are calling on the United States' two major political parties to use their upcoming presidential-nominating conventions as platforms for showcasing how they would deal with poverty.

In a recent letter to presumptive Republican nominee John McCain and likely Democratic contender Barack Obama, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Protestant leaders requested that both use prime-time speaking slots at the conventions to outline their respective plans for combating poverty.

"As people of faith, we believe that it is immoral to ignore our nation's most vulnerable populations," the leaders wrote.

They pointed out that more than 37 million Americans, including almost 13 million children, currently live below the federally defined poverty level. Millions more, they noted, are one crisis away from joining the ranks of the desperately poor.

"As Americans, we believe enduring poverty undermines our country's economic strength and prosperity," the leaders said, pointing out that alleviating poverty requires national effort.

Faith leaders pledged to work together in the lead-up to the general election to "build the political and public will to combat poverty in the United States."

The letter's signers included David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World; Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of the National Council of Churches; Richard Cizik, vice president for government affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals; Jim Wallis, Sojourners chief executive officer; Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA; Steve Gutow, Jewish Council for Public Affairs executive director; David Saperstein, director and counsel of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; Sayyid Syeed, Islamic Society of America secretary general; and Eboo Patel, executive director of Interfaith Youth Core.

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American Baptist leaders organize first-ever Burmese Baptist meeting
By ABP staff

VALLEY FORGE, Pa. (ABP) -- In October, the American Baptist Churches USA will convene the first-ever national conference for Burmese Baptist leaders serving in the United States.

More than 30 pastors and lay leaders are expected to attend the Oct. 21-22 event, to be held at Chin Baptist Church in Dallas. American Baptist Personnel Services and ABC Asian Ministries -- two divisions within ABC's home-missions agency, ABC National Ministries -- will sponsor the conference.

The event will help newly resettled pastors and lay leaders in local churches become familiar with American Baptist processes for attaining professional standing, ordination, and theological and continuing education.

Burma -- also known as Myanmar, the name given to it by the military junta that has ruled the Southeast Asian nation since 1962 -- was one of the first nations that Baptist missionaries targeted in the early 19th century. It has long been home to significant numbers of Baptists and other Christians, particularly from its many ethnic minority groups.

However, worldwide human-rights organizations and the U.S. State Department consider the Myanmar regime one of the world's worst violators of religious freedom and other human rights. Many Burmese Christian refugees have escaped to camps in neighboring countries as a result of the oppression. In recent years, many of those have immigrated to the United States.

The Burmese Baptist conference will provide an opportunity for networking and fellowship for Baptists from the Karen, Chin, Kachin and other Burmese minority groups. Many of them and their congregations have come to America from refugee camps in Thailand and Malaysia.

Following the Burmese event, the American Baptist Asian Pastors Conference and Asian Caucus Convocation will convene at Chin Baptist Church Oct. 22-24.

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Among first missionaries in Burma, Baptists now help refugees in U.S. (10/4/2007)
Opinion: Gay Christians
can't wait any longer
By Peggy Campolo

Editor's note: The recent series of articles by David Gushee on homosexuality generated an unusual amount of response. ABP solicited these two representative responses -- from Peggy Campolo, an advocate for gay Christians, and George Guthrie, a professor at Union University.

(ABP) -- Thanks to Dr. David Gushee for his engaging article on Christian ethics as they relate to gay and lesbian Christians. I am a committed Baptist who has worked within the church of Jesus Christ for more than 20 years to foster the understanding and acceptance of my gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender sisters and brothers - I'll just say "gay" for shorthand. I can personally testify to the anguish gay people feel when rejected by church and family because of who they are. I have also witnessed the joy of the many gay people I know who have found church homes where they are loved and accepted.

I agree with Dr. Gushee that the majority of the church is devoid of the kinds of discussions that would enable its members to gain a sound, biblically based theology of sexuality and marriage. Sadly, that has left its people to be manipulated by political voices who influence public opinion on sexual issues to win elections.

Dr. Gushee is right on the mark when he states that the problems of gay Christians cannot be properly addressed without the church clearly defining the meaning of sex and marriage, and I think he would agree with me that those who reduce marriage to "plumbing and baby-making" are the ones who demean marriage. The church should be grateful to those gay Christians who are raising the right questions.

The current problems of straight people, as well as those facing God's gay children, cannot be solved until the church of Jesus Christ clearly defines for its people the meaning of celibacy, sex, marriage and what constitutes a family. However, as Dr. Gushee clearly states, the large majority of the church today is afraid to talk about divorce or discuss any of these matters, even as they relate to heterosexuals.

Dr. Gushee calls for "a careful, unhurried process of Christian discernment" on this subject. I join him in longing for that. But God's gay children cannot face exclusion any longer. They are raising the very questions that need to be addressed by all of us, straight and gay. The anguish and despair I have seen in the Christian gay community does not allow time for such a scholarly approach to be our first move. We who are called to love our neighbors as ourselves must get to know and listen to them NOW.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter titled "Why We Can't Wait" from a jail in Birmingham, Ala. He made his point about racial equality by talking about his own four small children, and all of the other children of color who were growing up feeling like second-class citizens. Those children of God, those who do not happen to be straight, are the reason that I, and so many others who love Jesus and believe in the Bible's message of grace, demand justice for them NOW.

A pastor friend of mine, who has conducted too many funerals for gay children of God who ended their lives because they could no longer live the lie that their churches and families demanded of them, tells of a suicide note left by a young Christian. He dearly loved the godly parents who had accepted him but could not bear the anguish felt when their church excluded them along with him. His final letter to his mother and father read simply, "I didn't know how else to fix it."

Dr. Gushee's proposal for "a careful, unhurried process of Christian discernment" is a necessary wake-up call for the church. However, we must also find a way to end the exclusion and anguish of God's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender children NOW.

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Peggy Campolo, a follower of Jesus Christ, speaks at churches, colleges and conferences, advocating for civil rights and full inclusion in the church for her lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender sisters and brothers. A graduate of Eastern University, Peggy Campolo is a member of Central Baptist Church, Wayne, Pa., and serves on the advisory council of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. She is the wife of Baptist author and Eastern University professor Tony Campolo.

Opinion: No true compassion
apart from revelation

By George Guthrie

Editor's note: The recent series of articles by David Gushee on homosexuality generated an unusual amount of response. ABP solicited these two representative responses -- from Peggy Campolo, an advocate for gay Christians, and George Guthrie, a professor at Union University.

(ABP) -- There exists a fundamentalism on the theological left, as well as the more broadly published fundamentalism on the theological right. Both fundamentalisms communicate, "You must agree with my position and my applications or I will vilify you." These strident cousins eschew dialogue as compromise and often take an approach that shouts, "If I can label you, I have dealt with you; and if I can label the information you present (e.g., "this is just garbage"), I have dealt with your research and ideas."

In his ABP article, "Discernment, the church and homosexuality," David Gushee invites us to move beyond the shrill extremes and join him around the table of conversation. He wants us to consider a renewed emphasis on hermeneutics and theology as we reflect together on the important issue of homosexual couples and the church. I am thankful for the opportunity to join the conversation, for I could not agree more that we must raise the level of theological and hermeneutical reflection in Baptist life.

Therefore, let me begin by making sure I have heard those sitting across the table from me correctly. Those who wish to rewrite the church's traditional teaching on the practice of homosexuality seem to build their arguments on at least three primary foundation stones: 1) Homosexuality is constitutional, intrinsic to who the homosexual is as a person and, therefore, compassion demands that we affirm the homosexual in his or her sexuality; 2) Scripture does not address a "covenanted monogamy" form of homosexuality and, therefore, does not condemn such homosexual relationships; and 3) homosexual couples who practice "covenanted monogamy" should be affirmed in their relationship and welcomed as members in good standing in the church.

Of course, there are other arguments offered, but let's begin here and probe the hermeneutical underpinnings of these points.

First, constitutionality. Let's begin by agreeing that many homosexuals experience their sexual desires for the same sex as "inherent" to who they are. Some certainly would say "I have always felt this way." Yet, the science on the biological constitutionality of homosexuality (i.e. the "nature vs. nurture" question) is still in process. I am aware, of course, of the pertinent studies, such as the one by Dr. Simon LeVay, but prominent scientists disagree on how the data should be read (Indeed, LeVay himself is modest concerning the significance of his findings).

Yet, even if biology someday was shown clearly to be a primary factor in homosexuality, I want to suggest that constitutionality cannot serve as an appropriate basis for making a hermeneutical move to accepting homosexual practice. Why? Because there are other aspects of our existence that we experience "constitutionally" that nevertheless cannot be used as a basis to affirm behavior in line with that constitution. For instance, according to Scripture, we as human beings are sinners (e.g. Romans 7:18-21). Yet, of course, that cannot be used as a basis for affirming sin. In my experience of ministry, I have had womanizing men state, "This is just the way I am." Indeed, do those of us who are heterosexuals not at times experience the sexual tug, that jibbering monkey in our loins, which attempts to draw us to sexual expression outside of our marriages? I experience the sex drive as inherent to who I am; it is constitutional. Yet, it cannot be used to excuse acting on that impulse.

I am also concerned that there exists a short step from affirming homosexuality on the basis of one's constitution, to affirming other forms of sexual expression, such as pedophilia, on the same basis. Some of our homosexual friends would abhor the idea, but we are talking about constitutionality as a basis for making ethical decisions, and there are those in the global, heterosexual and homosexual communities who already put pedophilia forward on the basis of it being "natural." My point is not that all homosexuals are pedophiles, but that constitutionality forms a terribly poor basis for promoting an ethical stance on homosexuality.

Second, what of the argument on the grounds of covenanted monogamy? I know of no hard data on the practices of homosexual couples who claim to be Christians (and am open to being informed on the matter). It seems clear (in works such as The Male Couple), however, that homosexual men in general experience an astronomically high rate of infidelity compared to heterosexuals, with strikingly low rates of monogamy or even semi-monogamy.

I am sure there are homosexual couples that are faithful to one another, but, again, even if covenant monogamy was widely practiced among homosexuals, is a commitment to monogamy an appropriate basis for affirming a homosexual relationship? If so, why would it not be appropriate to use the same principle of "covenant monogamy" to affirm incest, for instance? Most ancient references to incest, whether Greco-Roman or Egyptian, focus on relationships between consenting adults, whether brother and sister or parent and grown child. Again, my point is not that homosexuality leads to incest, but that a commitment to "covenant monogamy" makes a poor basis for a hermeneutical move to affirm homosexual practice.

This then brings us to the question of Scripture and its interpretation. If our discussion is to be considered "Christian," it must come down to a consideration of what God has revealed as true in his Word. There is no true compassion apart from revelation. Thus, we need to embrace a rigorous "Berean" hermeneutic that is coherent in terms of the broad scope of biblical theology (e.g. God's mercy, God's wrath, the human condition, human sexuality, redemption) and compassionate in its application of truth to real-life contexts of homosexuals in the modern world.

That said, it seems to me the attempts to affirm homosexual relationships with Bible in hand fall primarily into two categories. Arguments in the first go something like this: "The Scripture does not condemn monogamous, covenanted, homosexual relationships but rather other forms of homosexuality," and "Jesus never condemned homosexuality but welcomed the outcast." Both are arguments from silence. Monogamous, covenanted, homosexual relationships are not condemned in Scripture, because they were unknown (indeed, unthinkable) in Jewish or Christian contexts of the ancient world. It is true that in the Gospels Jesus doesn't say anything about homosexuality. (Remember, though, that he does strongly affirm marriage as a creation ordinance involving a man and woman -- Matthew 19:4-6). But neither does Jesus address directly other forms of sexuality, such as incest, beastiality, pedophilia or sadomasochism. Arguments from silence weave a terribly thin hermeneutical thread from which to hang one's theological behemoth.

The other approach to hermeneutics involves a reframing of what the Scripture does say about homosexuality. For instance, it is suggested, that Genesis 19 really concerns the lack of hospitality on the part of the men of Sodom. Or Romans 1:24-27 is about idolatry and participating in homosexual orgies, not the practice of responsible homosexual relationships. Yet, I would humbly suggest, the convergence of word meanings, background information, literary context and other factors stand against these interpretations. For instance, in Romans 1:26-27, Paul lays great stress on the "abandoning" of or "exchanging" natural sexuality (between a man and a woman) for sex with a person of one's own gender. This is the central point in those verses. The creation ordinance of God has been abandoned.

As for context, two verses later in Romans 1:29, the apostle speaks of greed, murder, strife, deceit, gossip and disobedience to parents, among other vices. That catalogue plays a role in communicating the pervasive sinfulness of humanity, not merely the sinfulness of specifically idolatrous or orgiastic contexts. Homosexual practice, according to Romans 1, is part of a larger problem of human sinfulness, the rejection of God's intentions for the world.

I am sure to be accused of lacking compassion for those embracing a homosexual lifestyle, and that grieves me. Yet, is it a rightly applied compassion that affirms a lifestyle that too often compromises the physical and emotional well being of fellow human beings? The data seems to indicate that homosexual practice for both couples and individuals leads to a greatly reduced life expectancy (as much as three decades, and not just due to AIDS). Among homosexual men, for instance, there exists a much higher risk of rectal cancer and rectal trauma (which causes a much higher risk of a wide range of diseases). Is it compassionate to affirm such a lifestyle?

In conclusion, I agree that churches too often have neglected important ministry to those struggling with homosexuality. Yet, what is needed is not to rethink the church's stance on homosexuality, as Dr. Gushee suggests, but to rethink our response to homosexuals themselves. For some this will mean dropping a harsh posture, getting the facts on the challenges faced by those in the homosexual community, and opening our hearts of compassion. For others it will mean a renewed commitment to the whole counsel of God on human sexuality.

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George Guthrie is the Benjamin W. Perry Professor of Bible at Union University www.uu.edu/personal/gguthrie