Associated Baptist Press - 10/23/2008

Associated Baptist Press
October 23, 2008 · (08-101)

David Wilkinson, Executive Director
Robert Marus, Acting Managing Editor/Washington Bureau Chief
Bob Allen, Senior Writer

In this issue
Survey: On foreign policy, U.S. both blessed by God and on wrong track (743 words)
SBC seminary professor labels birth control a 'sin' (1,085 words)
Marse Grant, longtime N.C. editor, dies at 88 (846 words)
Counselor: Digital age poses pastoral challenges to church (767 words)
Opinion: Dark fears endanger America (925 words)


Survey: On foreign policy, U.S. both blessed by God and on wrong track
By Robert Marus(743 words)

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A new study described as the first of its kind suggests Americans believe the United States is both especially blessed by God and especially responsible to use its power wisely.

Echoing the results of another recent poll, the survey also found that younger evangelicals are to the left of their elders on most major social issues except abortion.

Results from the survey, titled "Religion and America's Role in the World" and sponsored by the U.N. Foundation and the PBS show "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly," were released in a Washington press conference Oct. 22. The poll of 1,000 adults -- plus an oversample of 400 evangelicals ages 18-29 -- found that majorities of the public believe that God has "uniquely blessed" America (61 percent) and that the United States should serve as a Christian example to the rest of the world (59 percent).

A similar majority -- 60 percent -- said the U.S. has a "moral obligation to have a role in world affairs."

However, other survey questions revealed what pollster Anna Greenberg called "a real ambivalence" about whether U.S. actions comport with the nation's blessings and responsibilities.

For instance, 79 percent of respondents agreed that U.S. involvement in foreign affairs sometimes causes more harm than good. And two-thirds (67 percent) said America's foreign relations "have gotten pretty seriously off track," versus only 25 percent who said they were headed "in the right direction."

Greenberg, vice president of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, which conducted the study, and other analysts found remarkable similarities in many areas across political and religious groups. Evangelicals were more likely to believe America was blessed by God and had a special moral obligation, more likely to be interventionist and more positive about the current state of U.S. foreign policy. But their numbers didn't depart dramatically from those of the public at large on most questions.

"We find very strong majorities favor the U.S. having a very active role in the world," Greenberg said. "Frankly, this was a surprise to me."

Timothy Shah, an expert on religion and foreign policy for the Council on Foreign Relations, said the results suggested to him that the American public has an almost Calvinist view of itself with regard to its international engagement.

"I think Americans, like Calvin and Calvinists, tend to have a sense that they are in a kind of covenant, a special relationship with God," he said. However, along with that covenant is a Calvinist "special vocation or sense of calling" and "an element of criticism" when policy decisions go awry.

"What the survey strikingly shows is that America and Americans, evangelical and non-evangelical, hold these things" -- that the U.S. is both blessed by God and responsible to be introspective in foreign-policy choices -- "in a remarkable tension," Shah said. "In other words, many Americans believe that they have this special relationship with God. But they also believe that America in fact falls short, and falls short pretty drastically."

Younger evangelicals were more liberal than their elders on a number of key diplomacy-related subjects. For instance, 58 percent of 18-29-year-old evangelicals considered combating global warming an extremely or very important foreign-policy issue, while only 47 percent of older evangelicals did.

Young evangelicals also were far more likely to consider global warming a challenge that required "immediate action." Their elders were more likely to say it was "a long-term threat" that required further study "before taking drastic action."

Younger evangelicals were slightly less likely than their elders to say the United States should set a Christian example to the rest of the world (77 percent of younger evangelicals versus 87 percent of older ones).

But, on abortion, younger evangelicals closely mirrored their elders, with significant majorities opposing legal abortion in most or all cases.

And young evangelicals were even more conservative than their elders in one area where views on abortion intersect with U.S. foreign policy: Approval for the so-called "Mexico City Policy," sometimes called the "Global Gag Rule" by abortion-rights supports.

The policy is an executive order, in effect from 1984 to 1993 and again from 2001 until now, that prevents non-governmental organizations from receiving federal funds unless they promise not to perform or promote abortion services in other countries. In the survey, 53 percent of white evangelicals 30 and over supported the policy -- but 70 percent of younger evangelicals did.

The survey, conducted Sept. 4-21, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.

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SBC seminary professor labels birth control a 'sin'
By Bob Allen(1,085 words)

FORT WORTH, Texas (ABP) -- A Southern Baptist seminary professor has sparked controversy with a recent sermon labeling use of birth-control pills a sin.

Thomas White, vice president for student services and communications and associate professor of systematic theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in an Oct. 7 seminary chapel sermon that using birth-control pills is "wrong," "not correct according to Scripture" and, in some cases, "murder of a life."

White said one of the three ways the pill functions is to prevent a fertilized ovum from implanting in the uterus seven days after conception.

"The seventh day is seven days too long, and it's murder of a life," he said. "When the egg and the sperm meet, you have life.

"If you ask theologians, they're going to tell you that the egg and the sperm meet when the soul is implanted," White said. "There's no other time to say that God creates the soul and puts it in than that point in time. And so at that point you have life. You have at the moment of conception life, and yet the third aspect of birth control is to say that life cannot implant onto the wall as it normally would, and so that life is going to be flushed down, and that, my friends, is wrong."

After comments critical of his sermon appeared in a report on a local television station, White said in an e-mail to the Dallas Morning News that he doesn't oppose all birth control, but just anything that ends life after conception.

In his Oct. 7 sermon, however, White seemed to suggest that all birth control was contrary to God's plan. He said the root problem is that American society views children as a hindrance rather than a blessing from God.

White confessed that, after getting married nine years ago, he and his wife made the mistake of using contraceptives "because of my own selfishness."

"I wanted kids, but I wanted kids in not God's timing, but in my timing," he said. "I didn't want kids when I was in my M.Div. program, when I was going to have another mouth to feed, and it was going to inconvenience my ability to finish my course work and maybe move on and do a Ph.D. and all these type things. I wanted kids, but I wanted kids my way, my time, the way I wanted to do it, so I could plan my family out."

"Folks, you are not in control of your destinies -- God is," he said. "And the sooner we recognize that we are sinning when we say, 'I am going to control every aspect of my family' and we're not giving control to God, we don't trust him, we don't believe that he knows better than we do -- we think we know more than God does, and just like I did, some of you are involved in that exact same sin."

White said Christians joke about the fertile families that Psalm 127 -- "Behold, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.... Blessed is the man whose quiver is full" -- seems to uphold as an ideal.

"It's my attitude, too," he said. "I think about ten kids running around the house, and I think to myself, 'Lord, is that really a blessing?' That's what [God's] Word says."

White also faulted couples who have children, but then pawn them off on others to raise.

"We want to take our kids and push them off to the day care," he said. "Then we want to take our kids and push them off to the public schools, and then we want to take our kids and push them off to the church. And then when our kids mess up, we want to blame somebody else for our kid's problems."

"It's not a day care's responsibility, a church's responsibility or a school's responsibility to rear your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord," he said. "It is your responsibility to do so."

Wade Burleson, an Oklahoma pastor who blogs on Southern Baptist Convention issues at Grace and Truth to You accused White of "preaching personal opinions as if they were mandates from God."

"This type of legalism will destroy not only the fabric of cooperation upon which our convention was built; it will ultimately destroy the powerful message of the gospel, because tertiary matters are elevated to a primary status of debate within the SBC and people who disagree are excluded," Burleson said.

Dwight McKissic, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, and a former Southwestern Seminary trustee, criticized White's message as "extremely problematic, overly simplistic and unscriptural."

McKissic resigned from the Southwestern Seminary board of trustees last year amid controversy over his own remarks at a 2006 chapel service. In them, he acknowledged that he had spoken in tongues in his private prayer life.

Southwestern President Paige Patterson and other seminary leaders have denounced the practice, which has been the subject of controversy at other SBC agencies in recent years.

In a statement released to a local TV station, McKissic said he sees a pattern developing at the seminary of "adopting views not supported by Scripture, but preached as if they are in line with Scripture." He cited examples of the recent firing of a Hebrew professor because she is a woman and attempts to disqualify missionaries not baptized in Southern Baptist churches.

"This is fundamentalism run amok," McKissic said. "I am concerned that this great Baptist seminary is slowly degenerating into a fundamentalist indoctrination camp."

"These views represent a radical shift in Baptist life in the past few years," McKissic said. "You would expect this kind of thinking to have come from Bob Jones University or some independent fundamentalist Baptist seminary, but not SWBTS. All of these aberrant views explain why the SBC is a denomination in decline."

Richard Land, head of the SBC's ethics-and-public-policy agency, reacted to the controversy over White's remarks by saying he would not oppose all birth control. However, he did seem to oppose surgical sterilization as a form of contraception.

"The Southern Baptist Convention is not opposed to the use of birth control within marriage as long as the methods used do not cause the fertilized egg to abort and as long as the methods used do not bar having children all together unless there's a medical reason the couple should not have children," he said, according to WFAA-TV.

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Marse Grant, longtime N.C. editor, dies at 88
By Steve DeVane (846 words)

RALEIGH, N.C. (ABP) -- Marse Grant, editor emeritus of North Carolina Baptists' Biblical Recorder, died Oct. 17 at his home in Raleigh. He was 88.

Grant edited the Recorder from 1960-82, longer than any other editor in the paper's history. He previously was editor of Charity and Children, a North Carolina Baptist Children's Homes publication, from 1949-59.

Grant became one of the best-known North Carolina Baptists, attending more than 50 North Carolina Baptist State Convention annual meetings. Under his leadership, the Recorder's circulation peaked at more than 120,000 in 1978.

He had previously served as editor of two secular North Carolina newspapers, the Lincoln County News and the Morgan News-Herald. After his retirement, he wrote columns for the Charlotte Observer and the High Point Enterprise.

Grant was profiled in The North Carolina Century --Tar Heels Who Made a Difference, 1900-2000. The article, by former Fayetteville Observer editor Charles Clay, details how Grant took an unpopular stand on race relations in just his second month at the Recorder.

"God loves all people," Grant wrote. "To think that he prefers one over the other because of the color of skin is inconsistent with the teachings of the Bible."

Grant warned about turmoil ahead following what is some now call the "Conservative Resurgence" in the Southern Baptist Convention. In July 1982, he wrote an editorial saying political groups should not use the SBC.

"Marse was among the Baptist editors who had to try to make sense of the sea change in Baptist life that occurred near the end of his tenure," said current Recorder Editor Norman Jameson. "That he interpreted the changes through a lifetime lens of what he felt was being lost should be no surprise.

"I trailed Marse's career both as editor of Charity & Children and as BR editor. Marse and the Recorder ran stories I wrote as feature editor of Baptist Press. Additionally, we are members of the same church [Hayes Barton Baptist Church in Raleigh], so our lives have intertwined my entire career.

"Marse and his doting wife Marian have always been encouragers, strengthening my resolve and lifting high both the responsibilities and the possibilities of Baptist journalism. I am continually amazed at how many times an acquaintance from another era or another part of the country would call Marse's name and inquire about him. Until recent years when strokes disabled him, I could say he was doing well. Now I can say, 'well done.'"

R.G. Puckett, also a Recorder editor emeritus, said Grant was "Mr. North Carolina Baptist" during his tenure as editor.

"As a layman, he understood the view from the pew and traveled and worked incessantly for those causes that would enhance Baptist work and the well-being of the people of North Carolina," Puckett said. "He was a leader in spiritual and civic matters. He was deeply committed to what he would define as 'we the people.'"

Wilmer C. Fields, who was public relations director for the Southern Baptist Convention during much of Grant's tenure, said Grant dedicated himself "24/7" for 33 years to journalism in the Baptist cause.

"His vocational commitment set high marks for his contemporaries and all who would follow," Fields said. "Somewhere, somehow, there is newly written beside his name in the Lamb's Book of Life, 'Well Done!'"

When Grant announced his retirement in 1982, Tommy Payne, then chairman of the Recorder's board of directors, wrote an editorial calling Grant a fighter.
"Agree with him or not, you have to admire the effort that he puts into issues he believes in," Payne wrote.

Grant fought hard whenever he saw discrimination, Payne said.

"In the early 50's when it was costly to say segregation was wrong, Marse Grant did just that," Payne said. "He was one of the few early voices in our state to speak strongly about the needs of our black citizens, and the need to change laws as well as attitudes."

In an editorial just after Grant announced his retirement, the Raleigh News and Observer called him "a prod to the conscience of readers."

"Never one to fudge the issues or to apologize for his deeply held views, Grant turned what could have been a mere Baptist housekeeping chore into a lively and stimulating publication," the editorial said.

In an editorial announcing his retirement, Grant said many North Carolina Baptists had told him over the years that they didn't always agree with him, but were glad the Recorder could express itself when differences came up in Baptist life.
"I like to hear that, and the Recorder will remain free," he wrote. "North Carolina Baptists like it that way. They don't want their state paper to become a house organ."

Grant, whose first name was James, was born Sept. 13, 1920 in High Point, N.C. In addition to Marian, his wife of 66 years, Grant is survived by three daughters, Susan Grant Rawls of Statesville, N.C.; Marcia Grant Morton of Raleigh; and Carol Grant Potter of Raleigh; six grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; a brother, Truett Grant of Greensboro, N.C.; and a sister, Carolyn Grant DeLapp of Greensboro.

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Counselor: Digital age poses pastoral challenges to church
By Bob Allen (767 words)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) -- A mother and son were estranged. She demanded his password for a social-networking website to make sure he wasn't doing anything untoward. He refused because he felt it invaded his privacy. With such an impasse on his mind, Chris Hammon asked a group of fellow counselors what they were doing with pastoral-care issues related to social networking.

"They kind of responded, 'Well, what's social networking?'" Hammon, administrator for online learning at the Wayne E. Oates Institute in Louisville, Ky., told a group of Tennessee ministers Oct. 21. "I knew immediately we were in trouble."

Hammon followed up by trying to find people to write on the topic of social networking and pastoral care and counseling for a special issue of the *Oates Journal,* which he also edits.

"I'm having a very, very hard time finding anybody that can address that issue," Hammons said. "This is a big concern area that I'm hearing from young people who are struggling with this, but we don't have a pastoral-care group up to speed on even what it is in a lot of cases."

Speaking at a dialogue on "Crossing the Digital Frontier" co-sponsored by the Oates Institute and Tennessee Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Hammons said that is just one of the challenges facing churches in a digital age.

Hammon divided history into four separate eras based on the changing ways in which people have received and processed information.

The oral tradition, with its story form that produced the biblical text, gave way around 1500 to print. That in turn spawned the Reformation and led to the modern construct of authorized or official "gatekeepers" of information, such as government sources, religious authorities and newspapers.

Baby Boomers grew up in the broadcast eras of radio and television, with juxtaposed stories that trained their minds in non-linear thinking. Today's younger generation is the first to grow up with computers and by-the-minute news and networking as part of their daily lives.

For the first time, Hammon said, people from three different communication eras now exist in the same community, posing a myriad of leadership issues for today's "five-generation" church.

Today's young people process information like they learn to play a new video game, he said. They jump into the experience, go online for information they can use and network with others who share their interest. That is a far different experience than they find in a traditional church, where they are expected to sit in orderly rows and listen.

One response to that, Hammon said, is the emergent-church movement. But, he added, that doesn't help traditional churches, because if they lose their younger members they are also losing their future leaders.

Retaining them, on the other hand, presents the challenge of the "multi-layered expectations" of a younger generation looking for a church community relevant to them while an older generation that wants to worship the way they always have.
"The worship wars of the 1990s are about to come back with a new vigor," Hammon predicted.

"This group is going to want this, and the 'digitals' are going to want to be part of the conversation," he said. "The older people, that's not what they want to happen. So there's some tension there."

Hammon gave an example of one church where about 35 food-service workers who work night shifts and make most of their tips on weekends wanted to meet for a worship service at 1 a.m., after they got off work and before they went home. The church said, "No, we can't do that."

"We've got numbers of people who are working in healthcare and the younger the person the less seniority, and they get that 11-to-7 shift," Hammon said.

"Computer technology people work 24/7. Sunday's just not always the best time for their schedule. So what do we do about that?"

"One of the challenges is how we perceive our call in ministry," he said. "Is our calling to do most of the ministry of the church, or is our calling to empower and equip the ministry of the church?"

Many churches, he said, have been educated in the mind-frame that ministers are paid to do the ministry of the church. He said that is going to have to change in a day and age of multi-layered expectations and extra demands coming within religious communities.

"How do we use professional status to equip and empower this collaborative energy that is coming into congregations to help energize and empower these communities so that people are connected with one another and not just sharing space at different times?" he asked.

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Opinion: Dark fears endanger America
By David Gushee(925 words)

(ABP) -- The last two weeks of a presidential-election campaign are not likely to mark a high point in rationality and love. But still, one cannot help but be deeply disturbed by the dark divisions that descend on this nation every four years. No wonder we can't actually solve any of our problems. We're too busy hating each other.

In this election there are abundant signs of a strange and dispiriting paranoia. I would like to be able to say that the paranoia runs equally strong both ways, but in this case it seems more one-sided.

I get all kinds of communications suggesting that millions of Americans believe that Barack Obama poses a mortal threat to America. They further believe that anyone who could support him is morally deficient or worse. I don't really see those kinds of e-mails in relation to John McCain. Many millions don't prefer him as president. But they don't think he's the Antichrist.

Some of the rhetoric has at least points of continuity with that of previous campaigns and some contact with real policy issues. When Sen. McCain or others call Sen. Obama a "socialist," they reflect a long-standing debate over the progressivity of the federal tax code. It's harsh rhetoric, but at least it reflects a standard policy debate between Republicans and Democrats.

Rhetoric suggesting that Obama is weak or naïve because he's expressed a preference for engaging in diplomacy with enemy regimes is also par for the course. This is but the latest incarnation of a long-standing and often-effective strategy in which Republicans try to position themselves as tougher on defense and better able to defend the nation than Democrats.

The most anguished policy-related emails I have received have to do with claims that Obama is not only for abortion, but also for infanticide. Again, the argument about abortion policy is a long-standing one. In this case, Obama does indeed have a very liberal voting record on abortion. It is a major objection to his candidacy. But he is not in favor of infanticide. His votes on the particular bills that have attracted such charges, as factcheck.org has shown, were aimed at protecting abortion rights from legislative moves that he and others feared might undermine such rights.

Let's grant that attacks on Obama's positions on taxation, negotiations, and abortion are fair game in a political campaign. What's not fair game is what some have called the "othering" of Obama. By this is meant the effort to position Obama as a strange alien outsider who is "other" to the rest of America.

It's an othering strategy when critics persist in calling him "Barack Hussein Obama." Or when they say he "pals around with terrorists." Or that he hates America because he went to Jeremiah Wright's church. Or that he's a closet Muslim or an Arab in a terrorist sleeper cell. This escalating rhetoric is rubbing salt into our nation's cultural and racial wounds. It is also leading to early signs that the legitimacy of Obama's election will be challenged if he wins.

Already the groundwork is being laid for conspiracy theories. There is already the theory that Obama is supported by the "liberal media elite," which is essentially conspiring to engineer his election. This is taken as an article of faith by many. But incipient conspiracy theories gained more powerful fuel with the news of irregularities in ACORN's voter registrations. If Obama wins, and especially if it is close, many will claim that the election was rigged or stolen. And, once again, we may descend into the abyss of a president whose legitimacy is not accepted by a high percentage of those who did not vote for him. No matter whom one supports for president, surely no one can desire such an outcome. It would be disastrous for our nation to have another presidency whose very legitimacy is disputed. We cannot bear it.

Where are evangelical Christians in all of this? To the extent that evangelicals have bought into the anger, hysteria and othering of Obama, we have once again proven to be a source of cultural conflict and division rather than agents of reconciliation, as all Christians are called to be.

I fear that the Christian right will find in Obama, if he is elected, a useful target for their fund-raising appeals and constituent mobilization. However, they will be speaking to a dwindling number of Americans, as polls of younger evangelicals clearly reveal their movement away from the vision and agenda of the right.

These polls support my thesis that there is an emerging evangelical center, which has a broad moral agenda that includes -- but is not exhausted by -- abortion. My guess is that exit polls will show that Obama has made only partial inroads into this evangelical center, because of his voting record on abortion. Future Democratic candidates whose voting records are more moderately pro-choice or pro-life will do much better with centrist evangelicals. Black evangelicals will support Obama overwhelmingly, and recently released polling shows that Hispanic evangelicals are swinging toward Obama and the Democrats in a decisive way. This has significant implications for the future religious and political alignment of our nation.

My plea to all Christians is to remember who we are and whose we are. Jesus is our Lord. We are not free to engage politics in a way that violates his Lordship. This Lordship is interpreted differently by different Christians in terms of who they vote for. But on issues like civility, respect and truthfulness, our calling is more than clear.

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-- David P. Gushee is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University.