Associated Baptist Press - 9/4/2008

Associated Baptist Press
September 4, 2008 · (08-84)

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


In this issue
Baptists continue Gustav relief with wary eyes on Hanna, Ike
NAMB sells former RTVC building to energy company
Opinion: Of teenage pregnancies and New Orleans levees

Baptists continue Gustav relief with wary eyes on Hanna, Ike
By ABP staff

NEW ORLEANS (ABP) -- Baptists continued to respond Sept. 4 to needs throughout the south-central part of the country in response to Hurricane Gustav and its windy, drenching aftermath.

The storm made landfall Sept. 1 between Grand Isle and Houma, La., about 75 miles south of New Orleans, as a Category 2 storm. Both its strength at landfall -- much weaker than 2005's Hurricane Katrina -- and its location helped prevent a repeat of the utter disaster that Katrina wrought.

But Gustav's effects included widespread power outages, flooding and the evacuation of nearly 2 million people from coastal parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Baptist disaster-relief teams headed into the affected area Sept. 2. Officials estimated Sept. 3 that, in some hard-hit areas, full restoration of power could take up to a month.

Originally destined for work in McComb, Miss., several units from the Baptist General Association of Virginia were redirected to Baton Rouge Sept. 3.

"Because disaster responses are dynamic situations and power had been restored to much of the McComb area, these units were diverted to Baton Rouge, where there was greater destruction and, therefore, greater remaining need for assistance," noted Paige Peak, the Virginia Baptist Mission Board's spokesperson.

Virginia Baptist volunteers are staffing a mass feeding unit capable of providing 15,000 meals each day, as well as a water purification unit.

Virginia's recovery unit, equipped with chainsaws and other tools, is assisting with debris removal and clearing mud. They also have provided a shower unit with laundry service for use by storm-relief volunteers. Two chaplains have accompanied the Baton Rouge team.

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship leaders are working with a number of partners, including the American Baptist Churches USA and the Save the Children Foundation, according to Charles Ray, CBF's disaster-response coordinator.

Reid Doster, Louisiana CBF coordinator, noted minor damage to some homes is being reported. Ray said CBF officials would assess reconstruction needs as soon as people are allowed to return to their homes.

Disaster-relief coordinators also are preparing for the possibility of additional deployments as they keep an eye on the progress of Tropical Storm Hanna and Hurricane Ike, both of which are expected to affect the Eastern Seaboard over the coming week.

"Our leaders are on the phones setting up volunteers to be prepared ... looking at teams ... and putting people on standby," Page said.

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NAMB sells former RTVC building to energy company
By Vicki Brown

FORT WORTH, Texas (ABP) -- The last vestige of a Southern Baptist Convention broadcast ministry that once had garnered an Emmy Award has been sold.

Chesapeake Energy Co. purchased the 87,966-square-foot building that housed the former Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission (RTVC) in Fort Worth.

The SBC began its broadcast ministry -- the SBC Radio Commission -- with "The Baptist Hour" in Atlanta in 1941. In 1955, the operation was moved to Texas, and its programming expanded.

The commission produced a variety of content, including the children's animated series, "JOT." In 1989, the agency earned an Emmy for the documentary, "China: Walls and Bridges."

The commission developed the American Christian Television System (ACTS) in the mid-1980s to try to increase market exposure. Soaring costs forced the commission to merge ACTS with another network. The SBC dropped out of participation in 2003.

In 1991, the commission purchased FamilyNet from fundamentalist Baptist minister Jerry Falwell.

A major SBC reorganization, implemented in 1997, merged the RTVC with the denomination's Brotherhood Commission and Home Mission Board to create the North American Mission Board. NAMB shifted some of RTVC's work, primarily radio programming, to its Atlanta-area headquarters.

As a not-for-profit that relied primarily on SBC funding, the broadcast ministry struggled financially throughout most of its existence. NAMB streamlined the operation in 2004, reducing staff and cutting the budget by more than half. It cut radio production completely the following year.

Last year, the convention sold FamilyNet -- the final broadcast operation -- to In Touch Ministries. That organization was founded by former SBC president Charles Stanley, pastor of Atlanta's First Baptist Church.

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Opinion: Of teenage pregnancies and New Orleans levees
By Benjamin Cole

(ABP) -- Before a convention of thousands and a television audience of millions Sept. 3, GOP vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin was given a historic election debut that had most pundits awarding high marks for her performance.

Joining the Alaska governor on stage after the speech were her husband, her three daughters, her Iraq-bound soldier son, and the youngest addition to the Palin family -- a 4 1/2-month-old boy born with Down syndrome.

And, clutching the hand of her 17-year-old daughter Bristol, was Levi Johnson, the girl's fiance and, according to Palin, the father of her unborn child.

The teen-pregnancy revelation sent modest shockwaves throughout the Religious Right, which had previously been quite giddy over Palin's surprise addition to the GOP ticket. If not for the threat of another tropical tempest breaching New Orleans' levees on the same day, the nation might have experienced wall-to-wall coverage about another sex scandal in American politics.

The party that mustered enough votes to impeach President Bill Clinton ten years ago this December and the country that had to endure endless hearings about the then-commander-in-chief's sexual indiscretions has reached a point where sex doesn't matter as much as it once did. Within the last 20 years, Americans have gone through the grueling confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the Bob Packwood peccadilloes, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's Minneapolis restroom foot-tapping fetish, the marriage troubles of Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston, and Mark Foley's inappropriate overtures to teenage congressional pages.

Eventually, America has come to recognize that leaders once hailed by the now defunct Moral Majority are about as moral, or perhaps as immoral, as everybody else.

If anything has been proven, it's that almost all political figures can weather a sex scandal, especially when the weather is working in your favor. The attention-deficit disorder of the American electorate has grown more pronounced, and for a while it seemed that the only people who cared much about the moral failings of elected officials were a cadre of leaders from the far Religious Right.

Which is why the unwed pregnancy of 17 year-old Bristol Palin intrigues me. Rather than sounding the alarms of the moral watchdogs in the Religious Right, there has occurred something of a celebration. The teen's decision to have the baby and marry the child's father -- commendable to be sure -- is held aloft as "Exhibit A" of pro-life politics in action.

And in an odd twist of ideological irony, the Religious Right finds itself thankful that abortion is still legal in America. If every unwed teenage mother were required to carry her baby to full term, pro-life leaders would be hard-pressed to find the moral ground upon which to champion the young Bristol Palin. Sadly, she would be just another teenage girl who sacrificed her moral purity for a few sordid moments with a high school hockey jock. Instead of celebrating her "choice" of life over abortion, the arbiters of American sexual ethics would have nothing to talk about but her "sin."

Of course, the Religious Right has also grown increasingly indifferent to the potential political risks posed by the private lives of candidates for the nation's second-highest office. For example, either Christian grace or common decency kept Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter from being an "issue" for the vast majority of them during the 2000 and 2004 elections.

Yes, times are different in America. We are arriving at a place where legalized abortion gives some political wiggle room for those most opposed to it, where neither Republicans nor Democrats can reasonably claim a moral high ground from which to snipe at each other, and where the private lives of public officials and their children are given greater refuge from merciless media assaults.

I have a sense that America is realizing something basic to our form of government. A single unwed mother in Alaska isn't as pressing as hundreds of thousands of people living in the path of a hurricane, and the national interest to protect the poor in New Orleans' Ninth Ward is at least as pressing as the interest to protect the unborn child in the womb.

We're also realizing that Bristol Palin's pregnancy has as much to do with Sarah Palin's qualification for high office as Jeremiah Wright's sermons have to do with Barack Obama's. Hopefully, neither distraction from the real issues of this campaign will surface to capture more headlines as America races toward the November election.

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-- Benjamin Cole is a former Southern Baptist pastor who now works on public-policy issues in the nation's capital.