Associated Baptist Press - 10/1/2008

Associated Baptist Press
September 29, 2008 · (08-93)

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

In this issue
Palin terms sexuality 'choice,' sidesteps abortion in interview
American Baptist history archives reunited at Mercer University
Opinion: Being a people of the Word

Palin terms sexuality 'choice,' sidesteps abortion in interview
By Bob Allen

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin described homosexuality as "a choice" while sidestepping policy questions about it and several other divisive social issues in a television interview aired Sept. 30.

But the Alaska governor told Katie Couric of "CBS Evening News" that she is "not going to judge Americans and the decisions that they make in their adult personal relationships."

"One of my absolute best friends for the last 30 years happens to be gay, and I love her dearly," Palin said, when asked by Couric about homosexuality. "And she is not my 'gay friend,' she is one of my best friends -- who happens to have made a choice that isn't a choice that I have made. But I am not going to judge people."

Most gay-rights groups criticized GOP nominee John McCain for choosing someone with Palin's views as his running mate. "For Governor Palin to suggest that individuals randomly choose their sexual orientation based on nothing but a whim is wrong and it repeats the talking points of the anti-gay special interests which continue to control the McCain/Palin campaign and the Republican Party," said Jon Hoadley, executive director of National Stonewall Democrats, in a statement.

As a candidate for governor in 2006, Palin listed "preserving the definition of marriage as defined in our constitution" as one of her top three legislative priorities. She supported Alaska's decision to amend its charter to ban same-sex marriage.

She also said, during her gubernatorial campaign, that she disapproved of a recent Alaska Supreme Court ruling that the state had to provide spousal benefits to same-sex partners of government employees.

While Palin later signed legislation that enforced the decision, she said at the time that she would support a ballot initiative that would effectively overturn the court ruling by banning gay spouses from state benefits. While she vetoed a legislative attempt to overturn the ruling, she said at the time she was doing so only because attorneys informed her the law would have been unconstitutional.

Nonetheless, at least one pro-gay GOP group has expressed support for the Palin choice. Log Cabin Republicans President Patrick Sammon released a statement shortly after McCain picked her Aug. 29, saying Palin is "a mainstream Republican who will unite the party and serve John McCain well as vice president. Gov. Palin is an inclusive Republican who will help Sen. McCain appeal to gay and lesbian voters."

In the Couric interview, Palin accused the media of misrepresenting her church's promotion of a Focus on the Family conference designed to help individuals overcome unwanted same-sex attraction through counseling and prayer. When the news of the conference broke a couple of weeks before the interview, some bloggers and other media outlets claimed that Wasilla Bible Church had "sponsored" the conference. In reality, it simply promoted the conference -- held in nearby Anchorage -- in the church bulletin. Palin attends Wasilla Bible when she is in her hometown.

Palin told Couric that when the media gets it wrong, "It frustrates Americans who are just trying to get the facts and ... be able to make up their mind on, about a person's values."

"But what you're talking about, I think, values here, what my position is on homosexuality and you can 'pray it away,' because I think that was the title that was listed on that bulletin," she continued. "And you know, I don't know what prayers are worthy of being prayed. I don't know what's prayers are going to be asked and answered."

Palin didn't say much when pressed by Couric on how she would handle public policy related to homosexuality and other hot-button social issues like abortion, global warming and teaching religious theories of the origins of life alongside evolution in public schools.

She reaffirmed her view that human life begins at the moment of conception. Because of that Palin, who described herself as both pro-contraceptive and pro-life, told Couric she personally would not use "morning after" emergency contraceptives, which can prevent implantation of a fertilized egg.

Palin has, in the past, said she opposed all abortions except those performed to save the mother's life. Asked by Couric if it should be illegal for a 15-year-old raped by her father to get an abortion, Palin said she would "counsel the person to choose life" but added that nobody should "end up in jail" for having an abortion.

As recently as Aug. 29 Palin told the conservative magazine Newsmax she is a pro-life candidate. "I'll do all I can to see every baby is created with a future and potential," she said. "The legislature should do all it can to protect human life."

In the CBS interview Palin also backed away from a statement she made previously suggesting that both evolution and "intelligent design" should be taught in public schools. Asked if she believed evolution should be "taught as an accepted scientific principle or as one of several theories, Palin told Couric it "should be taught as an accepted principle."

"I won't deny that I see the hand of God in this beautiful creation that is Earth, but that is not part of the state policy or a local curriculum in a school district," she said. "Science should be taught in science class."

Asked during a televised debate two years ago about teaching alternatives to evolution like creationism or intelligent design, Palin responded: "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."

Palin later attempted to clarify those remarks, saying she meant there should be no prohibition on debating the issue if it comes up in class, but it didn't necessarily need to be part of the curriculum.

In the Couric interview, Palin also said she doesn't know if global warming is induced by humans.

"There are man's activities that can be contributed to the issues that we're dealing with now, these impacts," she said. "I'm not going to solely blame all of man's activities [for] changes in climate, because the world's weather patterns are cyclical. And over history we have seen change there. But kind of doesn't matter at this point, as we debate what caused it. The point is: it's real; we need to do something about it."

Palin told CBS News she is not a member of any church, but she visits a couple of them when she is at home.

According to media reports, Palin was baptized a Catholic as an infant but began attending evangelical churches as a child with her mother. She was re-baptized at age 12 into the Wasilla Assembly of God by its then-pastor, Paul Reilly.

She attended there with her family on a regular basis until 2002, about the time she entered public service by running for lieutenant governor, when she switched over to Wasilla Bible Church. Political opponents at the time said she was trying to downplay her upbringing in the Pentecostal tradition, but Palin said the non-denominational church had a better children's program.

Wasilla Bible's pastor, Larry Kroons, said Palin and her family have been attending there regularly for about six years. They are "attenders" but not on the membership roll, which he said is not unusual in Alaska.

As governor, Palin has occasionally attended Juneau Christian Center, an Assemblies of God congregation in the capital, when she is there attending to business. Before running for governor she frequently attended another Wasilla church, Church on the Rock, for about a year and has visited a few times since.
What all Palin's churches share in common, says Howard Bess, a retired American Baptist pastor in nearby Palmer, Alaska, is they are "rock-solid fundamentalist" in their theology.

"Her churches are literalists and into [biblical] inerrancy," Bess said in a recent e-mail interview.

Bess said he clashed several times over the years with Palin's allies on local culture-war issues like banning library books.

Bess said he worries how Palin's "Christian triumphalism" and belief in dispensational views of eschatology might play out on a world stage and has encouraged the media to take a closer look at how her churches' teachings influence her worldview.

"Sarah is a charming person," Bess said. "I have always considered her moral and ethical. However, since her nomination, I believe she is shaving truth and rewriting history."

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-- Bob Allen is ABP's senior writer. Robert Marus contributed to this story.

American Baptist history archives reunited at Mercer University
By Bob Perkins

ATLANTA (ABP) -- Scholars and history buffs who want to learn more about Baptist history now can do so in one place.

The American Baptist Historical Society dedicated the Samuel Colgate Historical Library and Archives on Mercer University's Atlanta campus Sept. 27, bringing its vast collections previously housed at Valley Forge, Pa., and Rochester, N.Y., under one roof.

The space also represents something of a reunion for Baptists -- who divided over slavery in 1845 and have never reunited. While some questioned relocating the library and archives to Atlanta, particularly with American Baptist Churches USA headquarters in Pennsylvania, Mercer President Bill Underwood said Atlanta was the perfect location, because of the city's civil-rights history and the personal history of university founder Jesse Mercer.

The Georgia Baptist preacher whose financial contributions helped establish the university in 1833 also made a substantial gift to the American Baptist Publication Society. That, in turn, helped lead to establishment of the American Baptist Historical Society in 1853.

"This is a partnership between the leading Baptist research university and the largest Baptist historical resource in the nation," Underwood said. "I felt from the beginning this partnership could help both institutions advance their missions."

The building is also the new home for the Baptist History and Heritage Society, which was the successor to the former Southern Baptist Historical Commission. In addition, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship -- which was where most in the moderate camp of the Southern Baptist Convention's controversies of the 1980s migrated -- has announced plans to move into the building. And the building was formerly home to the Georgia Baptist Convention headquarters.

Albert Brinson, co-chair of a fundraising campaign for the American Baptist Historical Society, said the move is appropriate. Brinson was ordained at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta by co-pastors Martin Luther King Sr. and Martin Luther King Jr. He said both men thought Atlanta was a natural spot for bringing diverse people together.

"Our relationship with American Baptists makes this a special moment that now, in 2008, we celebrate the opening of the largest center of Baptist history," Brinson said. "We are a part of that Baptist history. Atlanta is a great place for bringing people together, and we are asking God to bless this place."

Roy Medley, general secretary of American Baptist Churches USA, said the dedication was momentous for those who treasure the nation's rich Baptist heritage. "This is a significant day for those who have prayed for the unity of the church," Medley said. "By joining with this storied institution rooted in Baptist life and in the South, it's another way in which God is healing the divisions, the scars and the wounds of Baptists in the past."

From a research perspective, proximity to other historical collections at Emory University and Vanderbilt University make the new site convenient for researchers, said Anthea Butler, assistant professor of religion at the University of Rochester and a participant in the dedication ceremony. "It's important for the archives to be in Atlanta because it puts it in great proximity to all the great Baptist research sites in the South, all within a 500-mile radius," said Butler, a Baptist historian.

Trinette McCray, president of the historical society, echoed that proximity is important. "To have our collections together under one roof makes it easy for researchers and history buffs to see our historical documents," she said. "Atlanta is perfect because it is one flight from almost any city in the country, and researchers and students won't have to search for documents in two locations."

The archives hold tens of thousands of artifacts of Baptist history, some from as early as the 1500s from Dutch and German Baptists, according to Deborah Van Broekhoven, the historical society's executive director. She called the new library and archives an exciting place where learning is still taking place."

We're always stumbling upon a wide variety of stories," Van Broekhoven said. "People come from all over the world to use our collections because part of their history is in our archives. Probably the most exciting thing is they tell us more about the story, from different perspectives, because it's a piece of their own history."

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Opinion: Being a people of the Word
By Beth Newman

(ABP) -- Who was the sage who observed that "no matter how cynical you become, it's impossible to keep up?"

The latest example of this particular eternal verity is the procession of the secretary of the Treasury Department, the chair of the Federal Reserve, and other assorted experts appearing before Congress to explain that we stand on the edge of national financial disaster. Of course, these same persons were assuring us only a few days before that the foundations were basically sound.

And these are the experts.

Let me say here that I see something more threatening in this drama than even the threat of another Great Depression. The breakdown in trust between a people and their leaders makes any idea of a commonwealth impossible.

Another news story illustrates the same problem, albeit on a level much less likely to receive any national attention. Lifeway Research has commented on a newly discovered "disconnect" between pew and pulpit on the issue of biblical authority. Basically, according to these surveys, while Southern Baptist pastors are united in affirming the "inerrancy of Scripture," at least one quarter of the persons in the pews don't regard the Bible as "the authoritative source of truth and wisdom for daily living."

Of course, a division between clergy and laity over the authority of Scripture is nothing new. But in the past (I speak from the experience of being both a student and teacher in seminary) the questions about authority were usually on the clergy side. Anyone who has been exposed to the historical-critical method of studying Scripture has wrestled with questions about how much of what one has been taught about the Bible can actually be shared from the pulpit without risking one's job.

The new division is something else.

On one level, I'm sure it's a reflection of the so-called postmodern rejection of any notion of any objective and authoritative truth. Another explanation might be the supposed freedom of each Baptist to interpret Scripture for him or herself.
The deeper problem is this: the questions are framed in a way that reflects a lack of consensus as to what the Scriptures are about in the first place. Without a common vision on what the Bible is, there can be no consensus on how to allow it to form a way of life together.

On one hand, take the question of the "inerrancy of Scripture." As an issue, this arose during the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early 20th century and, as many before me have observed, the inerrantists shared with their opponents one assumption: that the Bible can be properly read and understood in the absence of the gathered community of the church. An example from my youth would be Josh McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict.

The alternative is what one might call a "therapeutic" view of Scripture that is reflected in language about the Bible being a source of "wisdom for daily living." Certainly the Bible contains much wisdom of this sort, but so does The Old Farmer's Almanac. And in neither case do we need to accept the sources as completely authoritative to profit from them.

As I observed earlier, the differing conceptions about the role and value of Scripture reflect the difficulty we are currently experiencing at many different levels within our society. The way through (if not the way out) is not for either side of the biblical divide to convince the other, but for all of us who bear the name of Christ to recapture a full vision of what it means to be a people of the Word.

To do this, I want to suggest we need to leave behind the dichotomies of our earlier debates and enter fully into the story that the Bible narrates: God is working to restore ourselves to him. This involves God creating a people -- first Israel and then, we believe, the church.

This process, of course, did not end in the first century. God continues to create a people through his Word, grafting them onto that great communion of saints that stretches across time and place.

It is certainly true that a modern myopia easily leads some to domesticate God's Word -- turning it into an historical text or private faith document. And yet, to hear God's Word faithfully is to be drawn, by grace, into God's adventure of re-creation. The exciting task, both for the preacher and for the congregation, is to discover for ourselves our place within this cosmic story.

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