Associated Baptist Press - 8/14/2008

Associated Baptist Press
August 14, 2008 · (08-79)

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

In this issue
Man shoots Ark. Democratic chairman, menaces Baptist Building
Former Texas church planter files libel suit against BGCT, others
Americans act as Georgian Baptists call for aid, end to conflict
Truett-McConnell College calls Caner as president
C.W. Brister, longtime Southwestern pastoral-care professor, dies at 82
Opinion: View scandal in light of private and public story
Opinion: Developing 'Conservative radicals' in Christian higher education

Man shoots Ark. Democratic chairman, menaces Baptist Building
By Charlie Warren and Robert Marus

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (ABP) -- A man fitting the description of a suspect who shot and killed the chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party Aug. 13 menaced employees at the nearby Arkansas Baptist State Convention headquarters shortly thereafter.

"A middle-aged white man in a white shirt entered our building at 525 West Capitol [Avenue] with a gun," said Dan Jordan, the convention's business manager. "The operator recognized immediately there was a threat. We have a process in place where she called the building manager immediately to respond."

The Baptist Building is located six blocks east of the Democratic Party offices, also on Capitol Avenue, in downtown Little Rock.

Jordan said the man ran up the stairwell to the second floor of the Baptist Building with a pistol in his hand. When Kirby Martin, the convention's building manager, confronted him, the man cocked the gun and pointed it at Martin.

Martin asked what was wrong, and the man said he had lost his job. Martin was able to flee the threat, and the gunman went down another stairway and out the front door of the building.

"He left with a gun stuck in behind his back belt," Jordan said.

The building operator had called Little Rock police, who arrived soon after the man left the building. The gunman had jumped into a blue pickup truck on Arch Street, at the side entrance of the building, and sped away. Jordan said the police were in hot pursuit of him as soon as he drove off.

The man did not fire a shot while in the Baptist Building.

Bill Gwatney was reportedly shot three times in the torso after a man similar to the assailant's description entered the Democratic office, just moments before the Baptist Building incident.

According to KTHV-TV, the local CBS affiliate, Gwatney's assistant ran to a florist's shop next door to the office and asked a clerk there to call 911. "I thought maybe someone had gotten hit by a car," said Sarah Lee, the clerk. "She was just shaking really bad." But the woman said Gwatney had been shot three times by a man who had come into the office asking to see the chairman.

"She said she was waiting on the gentleman. He wanted to see the chairman. She tried to give him Democratic party stuff," Lee told KTHV. "Evidently, he walked on around her and went in the office and started shooting."

Police assailed the suspect on a high-speed chase to the bedroom community of Sheridan, about 30 miles south of downtown Little Rock, where they disabled his blue truck. At some point in the incident gunfire was exchanged, and the suspect sustained injuries that also proved fatal.

Authorities later identified the shooter as Timothy Dale Johnson, 50. He lived in Searcy, Ark., about 50 miles northeast of downtown Little Rock. According to several local news outlets, Johson lived alone and had been fired from his job at a Target store in Conway, Ark., earlier in the day. Conway is located about 25 miles northwest of Little Rock.

Authorities who conducted a search of his home said it did not turn up any writings, books or magazines that would provide insight into his motivation.

Gwatney, 48, was a businessman from a prominent Arkansas family that owned a bank and, later, a group of automobile dealerships. He rose to political power as a state senator from Jacksonville, a Little Rock suburb.

Gwatney was a close friend and political ally of the Clinton family. Bill and Hillary Clinton released statements calling him a "cherished friend and confidante" and saying they were "deeply saddened" by his death.

"The details and stories will be told for days to come through the local and national media, but the greater story involves the emotional and spiritual needs of those directly affected by these events," said Emil Turner, the state convention's executive director. "Their lives will be marked by painful memories and unresolved questions."

Turner urged prayer for the families of Gwatney and the gunman.

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-- Charlie Warren is the editor of the Arkansas Baptist News, the journal of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention.

Former Texas church planter files libel suit against BGCT, others
By Vicki Brown

EDINBURG, Texas (ABP) -- A former Hispanic church planter implicated in a 2006 Baptist General Convention of Texas scandal has filed a defamation lawsuit against the BGCT and several other Texas Baptist entities and individuals.

Otto Arango, founder of the now-defunct Piper Institute of Church Planting, was one of three pastors accused in 2006 of misappropriating funds the Texas convention provided for new Hispanic church starts.

In addition to the BGCT, the lawsuit names the Baptist Standard, the BGCT's news journal; David Montoya and Calvary Baptist Church in Mineral Wells, Texas, where he is pastor; Palo Pinto Baptist Association, which includes the Mineral Wells church; David Tamez and Dexton Shores and the Rio Grande River Ministry for which they worked; Roberto Rodriguez and the church he serves as pastor, Primera Iglesia Bautista in Harlingen, Texas; and Eloy Hernandez.

Arango's legal action stems from allegations that he and two other church planters, Aaron de la Torre and Armando Vera, misused BGCT church-start funds. The trio claimed 258 churches had been started in Texas between 1999 and 2005 through a training system Arango had devised. The system was based on the house-church approach.

Questions about Arango's reportedly lavish lifestyle and suspicions about the use of some funds prompted BGCT officials to ask an independent counsel, Diane Dillard of Brownsville, to investigate. Her team included Brownsville attorney and former prosecutor Michael Rodriguez, certified public accountant and fraud examiner Carlos Barrera and investigator Gregorio Castillo.

The investigative team reported that the BGCT had given more than $1.3 million for start-up funding for the program and monthly support for the Aranago, de la Torre and Vera. Investigators also noted that 98 percent of the congregations they claimed to have planted via the program either no longer existed or existed only on paper.

The team noted that the Piper Institute had delayed providing information requested of it and that de la Torre admitted to falsifying some documents.

Investigators also accused some BGCT staffers of poor oversight of funding, uneven management, failure to follow the convention's guidelines and failure to investigate when staff became aware of possible problems.

In the lawsuit, Arango alleges that the defendants made "false and malicious statements" about him, and that they have harmed his "reputation, credibility and integrity."

He alleges that the statements were published in the Standard's print edition and on its website "with malice and a lack of good faith."

The statements, he contends, convinced others that he had "stolen funds, had improperly used church funds and had lied about the number of new Hispanic Baptist churches he had started."

Arango's lawsuit, filed in Texas' 139th Judicial District Court in Hidalgo, primarily points to the convention and the Standard. He did not list specific charges against the other defendants.

Defendant Montoya, on his blog and in convention meetings, had spoken against Arango. He had also been openly critical of the way in which the Texas convention and its then-executive director, Charles Wade, had handled the situation.

Arango is suing for lost earnings, including back pay and benefits, retirement benefits, and lost future earning or diminished earning capacity. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for past and future mental and physical pain and anguish.

He also asks for unspecified punitive damages, claiming that the defendants "acted with malice, actual malice and/or a specific intent to injure" him.
Arango is seeking a jury trial in the case.

In a written statement, BGCT Executive Director Randel Everett expressed surprise and disappointment that Arango had turned to litigation. But, he added, "we believe this suit is totally without merit and that the BGCT has no liability in the matter."

"The Standard denies the allegations and expects to be exonerated," noted newsjournal editor Marv Knox, via e-mail.

The Standard is one of three Baptist state newspapers with which Associated Baptist Press has formed a news partnership. In addition, Knox serves on ABP's board of directors.

Montoya said he welcomes the opportunity to face Arango in a legal setting. "I will not settle with the man, period," he said in a telephone interview Aug. 14. "I want to go to court."

He argued that the legal confrontation is the only way the "full story" will become available to all Texas Baptists. "It is the only way we are going to get the complete investigative report out," he said, calling the BGCT report released after the investigation "only the tip of the iceberg."

Montoya added that a court hearing also "would be an opportunity to get E.B. Brooks and Otto under oath .... Then we will see these non-disclosure agreements they made with the BGCT."

Brooks became executive director of the Piper Institute in 2005, after retiring as director of the BGCT's missions, evangelism and ministry area.

Other defendants did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

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Americans act as Georgian Baptists call for aid, end to conflict
By Robert Marus

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (ABP) -- Baptists in the United States and elsewhere in the world are responding with aid and prayers for their counterparts in the embattled former Soviet republic of Georgia.

It was unclear by midday Aug. 14 whether Russian troops and irregular bands of Russian sympathizers in the breakaway South Ossetia region of Georgia were obeying a cease-fire agreement that Russia and Georgia had reached the day before. But the conflict, which began a week earlier, has already cost hundreds of lives and displaced thousands of people on both sides.

"We pray that the conflict is peacefully resolved and opposing sides reconciled," said Malkhaz Songulashvili, the archbishop of the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, in an Aug. 9 statement posted on the organization's website. "We mourn about the death of soldiers, children, men, women, elderly from both sides who lose their lives even as I write this statement. We deplore injustice, aggression and the conflict resolution at the cost of civilian lives."

Songulashivli called on Georgia's Western allies to come to the aid of the tiny republic, wedged between Russia's southern border, the Black Sea, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan. "We call on the international community, religious leaders and all the people of goodwill for their support of the long-suffering people of Georgia," he said.

Georgian and Russian leaders each contend that the other side provoked the conflict.

Russian troops responded with an overwhelming show of force to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's attempt to assert control over South Ossetia. The province is regarded by international law as officially part of Georgia, but many of its residents consider themselves Russians and hold Russian citizenship.

However, reports Aug. 13 and 14 suggested Russian troops were ransacking the city of Gori -- outside of South Ossetia and not far from the Georgian capital, Tblisi. President Bush called on Russian leaders Aug. 13 to obey the terms of the cease-fire and withdraw from undisputed Georgian territory. He also said that U.S. military planes and warships would begin bringing humanitarian aid into Georgia.

Baptist World Aid, the humanitarian arm of the Baptist World Alliance, has provided an initial $10,000 grant to Georgian Baptists for relief work. "We condemn this wanton taking of human life, and mourn the death and suffering of all the peoples of this region," said BWAid Director Paul Montacute, in a press statement. "Baptists of the world pledge their support for all in need with their prayers, expressions of concern and their giving."

European Baptist Federation General Secretary Tony Peck said, "We are very concerned about the whole situation and urge a peaceful resolution of the conflict." He called on all European Baptists to pray for peace in the Caucasus region.

International Ministries of the American Baptist Churches USA has also designated a $7,500 emergency grant for Georgian Baptists to use to relieve the suffering, according to the American Baptist News Service. Reid Trulson, executive director of International Ministries, and Charles Jones, the agency's area director for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, have both been in contact with Georgian Baptist leaders. Trulson said, "We are deeply concerned about the destruction taking place in Georgia and are praying fervently for the people of Georgia as well as for those who are causing this chaos."

Merab Gprindashvili, another Georgian Baptist leader, noted in an e-mail to Trulson that he had become a refugee himself even as he was trying to help others. Gprindashvili reported: "There are a lot of destroyed houses and many dead and wounded people in the villages. We do not know yet what has happened with our brothers and sisters. There are 35 baptized members living in the hottest spots in the conflict zone, and about 100 members in the neighborhood of Gori. Before the war broke out, we had started raising money [for a massive new "cathedral" church in Tblisi]. Of course, we have changed our mind and this collection will be used for the refugees. There are many things to be done."

Gprindashvili said refugees from several areas are coming to the Beteli Center, a new Georgian Baptist benevolent institution in Tblisi. "We will be more than happy if you can contribute something for the benefit of the refugees," he said.

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Truett-McConnell College calls Caner as president
By ABP staff

CLEVELAND, Ga. (ABP) -- A Sunni Muslim-turned-conservative Baptist has been tapped as the eighth president of Truett-McConnell College in Cleveland, Ga.

College trustees voted Aug. 8 to name Emir Caner to the position. Caner is founding dean of the College at Southwestern, the undergraduate program at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. The appointment follows a year-long search for a successor to Jerry Pounds, who resigned last year.

Truett-McConnell Vice President for Academic Services Mike Simoneaux has served as interim president since Aug. 3, 2007. Caner will begin his duties Aug. 18.

According to a biographical sketch provided by the college, most of his family disowned him when Caner, born and reared a Sunni Muslim, became a Christian in 1982. He earned a bachelor's degree in biblical studies at Criswell College in Dallas, a master of divinity degree from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., and a doctor of philosophy degree from the University of Texas at Arlington.

Caner has authored or contributed to 16 books, including Unveiling Islam. His brother, Ergun Caner, serves as president and dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, Va. The school was founded by the late Baptist pastor, television evangelist and poltical activist Jerry Falwell.

The Georgia Baptist Convention financially supports Truett-McConnell and elects its trustees. At the convention's 2007 annual meeting in November, the college received a portion of $2,412,946 that had been earmarked for Mercer University. The redistribution of funds marked the final action in the split between the convention and Mercer initiated two years earlier, primarily over gay-rights issues.

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C.W. Brister, longtime Southwestern pastoral-care professor, dies at 82
By ABP staff

FORT WORTH, Texas (ABP) -- C.W. Brister, Jr., who taught pastoral counseling and theology to generations of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary students, died Aug. 9, reportedly of complications from Lou Gehrig's disease. He was 82.

Brister was a professor of pastoral counseling at the Fort Worth, Texas-based seminary for 45 years. He held the title of distinguished professor emeritus of pastoral ministry, and the Southwestern School of Theology gives an award named for Brister annually to the most outstanding student in pastoral ministry.

"He had such a capacity for caring," Larry Baker, a former student of Brister's, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "He took a genuine interest in the people around him. He had a reserved personality, but he took initiative in relating to people."

Commodore Webster Brister, Jr., was born in 1926 in Pineville, La. He earned his bachelor's degree from Louisiana College and went on to earn his master's degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He received his doctorate from Southwestern, and did additional study at several prominent theological schools, including Princeton Theological Seminary and Oxford University.

Before going to Southwestern, he served as pastor of churches in Louisiana and Texas. He also served as interim pastor at several churches in Texas and Oklahoma.

Brister's son, Mark, retired last year from the presidency of Oklahoma Baptist University.

Besides his son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons, he is survived by his wife, Gloria, and his sister, Dolores Bausum of Beloit, Wis.

Baker -- pastor of the First Baptist Church of Sun City West in Sun City, Ariz. -- was scheduled to officiate at Brister's funeral, set for Aug. 15 at Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth.

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Opinion: View scandal in light of private and public story
By Beth Newman

(ABP) -- The recent spectacle of John Edwards' confession of adultery managed to be at once pathetic and instructive.

While bearing in mind Lily Tomlin's observation that no matter how cynical one becomes, it's impossible to keep up, I can't imagine anyone but the most hardened political hack taking pleasure in these events. I am embarrassed for the man and pity his family. And without defending him, I will observe that he is far from the first political figure to commit this very unoriginal sin.

I call it instructive because it illustrates the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of ethical discourse, at least on a national scale.

On a very basic level, the scandal involves our confusion over the public and private spheres. Like all contemporary politicians, Edwards sought to convince us not merely that he was the most qualified to administer the complex machine comprising one third of our federal government. He sought to convince us that we mattered to him as persons. After all, aren't we all members of something called the American family? While an inkling of this idea has always been present, this age of instantaneous communication has intensified it tremendously. What the Edwards' family has discovered is that there is no longer a "private" sphere to retreat back into.

In a world in which pollsters routinely ask potential voters whether they'd rather have a drink with Sen. Obama or Sen. McCain, there seems no coherent reason for withholding any detail, no matter how sordid.

The question asked has been asked whether Mr. Edwards has any future public life at all, political or otherwise. I have no prescription for his particular future, but the difficulty in speaking of one reflects the quandary of how or to what extent we can even talk about such things.

Both sides of the political arena speak of a moral vision for America. It is fascinating that both presidential candidates have agreed, as of this column's writing, to address Rick Warren's questions at Saddleback Church. I presume they will speak there rather than at Wharton Business School to make a point.

In the past, roughly speaking, when the left spoke of a moral vision, it used words such as "justice" or "equality" while the right spoke of "character." The question, it would seem, is whether Edwards' failure of character will destroy his commendable desire to end poverty.

The difficulty is that there does not exist a national story that will allow us to negotiate these difficulties.

The church has such a story. We can, for example, cite chapter and verse to demonstrate that neither our money nor our sexuality can ever be purely private matters. Furthermore, our story contains a procedure for reconciling a sinning brother or sister. Our national story has no such resources, and we are thrown back on meaningless generalities.

Living the Christian story, however, means allowing ourselves to be claimed by the God who created a particular people, Israel, to be a light for all nations. Like Israel, the church, too, is not simply a set of personal beliefs, but a people called to worship and honor God in all of life.

This particular story, in contrast to the story of any nation, gives us resources to name and confess sin, to practice the peace of Christ in the midst of violence, and to see the face of Christ in the poor and suffering.

Most of all, this particular story trains us see that true justice requires the faithful worship of God: indeed that such worship is itself justice. As Augustine claimed, there can be no justice where God is not truly worshipped.

If all politics, as Tip O'Neill has claimed, is local, then all ethics is local as well. This means that through the Body of Christ in its particular local manifestations we learn how to embody the love and justice of God. This is neither a private matter nor a general truth, but a matter of becoming, through divine grace, a part of God's particular and peculiar people on behalf of the world.

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-- Beth Newman is professor of theology and ethics at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. bnewman@btsr.edu

Opinion: Developing 'Conservative radicals' in Christian higher education

By David Gushee

(ABP) -- In his recent book, The Great Awakening, Jim Wallis suggests that it is time to move beyond the conservative vs. liberal paradigm to a framework he calls conservative radicalism. This is true in American culture, in evangelicalism and certainly in Baptist life. As the new school year dawns, I find myself increasingly clear that this is the vision I want to try to impart to seminary students and undergraduates here at Mercer. Perhaps others in Christian higher education will find it relevant.

Wallis defines this new term in this way: "To be conservative means to be rooted -- in a tradition, in faith, in core values. To be radical also means to be rooted (radical comes from the Latin radix, meaning "root"), which gives one a consistent perspective on the world. So these two -- radical and conservative -- may not be contradictory but in fact deeply complementary."

In other words, conservative radicals are tethered so tightly to Christ that they are consistently capable of a radical obedience to him.

Let's unpack that a bit further.

Students need to be conservative in the sense that they should conserve a central focus on Jesus Christ, the Savior and Lord of the world and the head of the church. They should conserve a lived-out belief in the centrality, truthfulness and authority of the Bible. They should, if possible, learn to read the Bible in its original languages with the highest degree of skill and hermeneutical ability that they can muster and become adept in its practical application.

Students need to be committed to conserving the church and its sacred mission. Many of our churches are floundering in Baptist life, and in many colleges and seminaries a calling to serve the church is seen as second-class in comparison with other opportunities. We need to graduate from our schools generations of students who will instead love the church and consider local-church service a very high calling.

Students must be taught to be committed to conserving Christian tradition. This does not mean a slavish (or knavish) worship of Luther or Calvin, Augustine or Aquinas. But it does mean that they cherish the gathered cloud of witnesses who have gone before us in Christian history, and that they learn to think with the saints rather than against them or without them. Certainly there will be times for dissent from the tradition, but even dissent requires an informed, respectful familiarity.

Students need to conserve the personal piety and high moral code that so many imbibed in their families and local churches. After my conversion as a 16-year-old, youth leaders taught the practices of Christian spiritual formation and personal morality with sufficient clarity that our group was rapidly led to anchor each day in prayer and to clean up our personal lifestyles. May the freedom students enjoy in most of our colleges and seminaries prove to be an occasion for the personal choice to continue to live in a way that pleases God and bears witness to a life of high moral purpose.

I also want my students to be radicals. As Jim Wallis puts it, "what we need most are people rooted in 'conservative' values and commitments but willing to be 'radical' enough to apply those very values in the real world."

Students should be radicals when it comes to loyalty to Christ as Lord. This requires the subjugation of all other loyalties, such as loyalty to a job, a lifestyle, a denomination, or a nation. Only a radical is willing to lose their job at a church because they are, for example, unwilling to permit class snobbery or xenophobia to prevail in local church life.

Students need to be radicals when it comes to loving every person whom God loves. Only a radical is willing to welcome the AIDS patient, the ex-con, the illegal immigrant, the doubter -- or whoever else God brings our way in the local church.

Students should be radicals when it comes to defending the human rights of strangers. Only a radical speaks up for blacks victimized in the criminal-justice system, or for suspected terrorists who have been tortured, or for those evicted from their homes because of predatory lending practices.

Students need to be radicals when it comes to innovating how to do church in a postmodern age. Driven by a "conservative" evangelistic commitment and love for the church, they must be "radical" in finding ways to advance these commitments in an age in which traditional ways of doing church are often ineffective.

Students should be radicals when it comes to personally living out the teachings of Jesus. May all of us nurture students who will care for God's creation, who will forgive their enemies and those who hurt them, who will resist violence, who will pray daily for the reign of God, who will tell the truth even when it might cost them, and who will keep their lifetime marriage commitments if they make them.
Students need to be radicals in racial reconciliation and justice efforts. May they create interracial community now and interracial churches in years to come. May they read, think, and dialogue across racial lines. I dream of my black students quoting Clarence Jordan and my white students quoting Howard Thurman.

On my office wall at McAfee there is a display of photographs of people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, William Wilberforce, Dorothy Day, Mahatma Gandhi, and Mother Teresa. All of the women and men pictured there were conservative radicals in the sense outlined. May our Baptist colleges and schools nurture the kind of young people who will follow their path.

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