Associated Baptist Press
November 14, 2008 · (08-110)
David Wilkinson, Executive Director
Robert Marus, Acting Managing Editor/Washington Bureau Chief
Bob Allen, Senior Writer
In this issue
North Carolina Baptists nix plan that forwarded gifts to CBF (578 words)
Baptist state conventions cope with budget woes (453 words)
Religious leaders ask Obama to ban torture through order (589 words)
Continued investigation sheds light on Baylor Election Day incidents (492 words)
CBF provides $10,000 in relief for escalating crisis in Congo (235 words)
West Virginia Southern Baptists support marriage amendment (249 words)
Opinion: Georgia Baptists isolate themselves (737 words)
North Carolina Baptists nix plan that forwarded gifts to CBF
By Steve DeVane
GREENSBORO, N.C. (ABP) -- North Carolina Baptist churches soon won't be able to support the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship through the state convention, messengers decided at their annual meeting Nov. 12.
The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina voted to kill that option in a new giving plan that becomes effective in 2010.
Messengers rejected a single giving plan with options proposed by a study committee by a vote of 431-354. The proposal would have allowed churches to designate 10 percent of their gifts to ministries of the breakaway moderate group.
The committee proposal was a conscious effort to make a way for North Carolina Baptist churches with an appreciation for the work of CBF to remain involved in the state convention.
"The Giving Plan Study Committee made a proposal to the convention as we felt led of the Lord," said Ed Yount, committee chairman. "It was approved without opposition by the board of directors. The great thing about being Baptists is our autonomy and the messengers have spoken. My prayer is we can move forward in Christ."
North Carolina adopted a multi-track giving plan in the 1990s. It allowed churches not supportive of the conservative leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention to shift a portion of their mission gifts to mission and ministry programs of the CBF. The moderate group formed in 1991 over differences with SBC leaders on issues such as biblical inerrancy and the role of women in ministry.
While some of the state's Baptists said the approach respects local-church autonomy, others said it is divisive and undermines a unified Baptist witness.
The vote will end the BSC's four giving plans in 2010, after 19 years of multiple options. One of the current options, Plan C, sends 10 percent to national CBF.
The study committee's recommendation would have allowed churches to support CBF by checking a box on the remittance form churches use to send their money to the BSC.
North Carolina Baptist churches have been among CBF's strongest supporters. In the past few years, many churches that have historically supported CBF through the North Carolina convention have started sending funds directly through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina.
The motion to remove the option of giving to CBF through the BSC came from the floor. Matt Williamson, pastor of Oak Forest Baptist Church in Fletcher, said he opposed sending money to CBF because the group does not support biblical inerrancy or the SBC's leadership.
"That does not seem to be good discipleship," he said.
Eric Page, pastor of Victory Baptist Church in Columbus, said refusing to take a strong stand would promote "tolerance" of a group with which most North Carolina Baptists disagree.
Page illustrated his point by saying the cartoon character Popeye took abuse only so long before he "popped out" a can of spinach and put an end to it.
"It's time for us to pop out a can of spinach and put an end to tolerance," he said.
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship issued a statement expressing gratitude for past partnership with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.
"We affirm the right of the convention to make this decision to no longer allow funding to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship through convention channels, but we regret the loss of this partnership," CBF leaders said.
"We look forward to continuing and growing our ministries and partnerships among the churches in North Carolina as together we are the presence of Christ in the world."
-- Bob Allen contributed to this story.
Baptist state conventions cope with budget woes
By Bob Allen
HENDERSONVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) -- Southern Baptist state conventions meeting around the country this fall are adjusting their finances to cope with a weakening economy.
In the opening session of the Nov. 11-12 Tennessee Baptist Convention annual meeting, Executive Director James Porch described a $1.4 million shortfall in the convention's budget.
Porch reported total receipts of $37,086,227, a 3.67 percent shortfall behind an annual budget of $38.5 million.
Porch challenged messengers returning to their homes to "examine the extravagance that we have in our own life -- the things that we can by choice limit -- and then we can sacrifice by choice even more to God."
Baptists in Georgia met Nov. 9-11 in Jonesboro with Cooperative Program receipts down more than 5 percent, from $52 million to $49 million.
"Every year, it seems like an adjustment needs to be made," Dan Spencer, pastor of First Baptist Church in Thomasville and a leader in the Georgia Baptist Convention, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "We'll have to see how it pans out and what our churches will be able to commit to."
The Florida Baptist Convention met Nov. 10-11 in Lakeland with contributions more than $562,000 behind its 2008 budget. Executive Director John Sullivan attributed the shortfall to financial difficulties in local churches and said the convention's leadership would have to face "hard decisions" about programs and staff, according to the Lakeland, Fla. Ledger.
Stephanie Murphy, who regularly attends a Southern Baptist church in Alabama, told the Anniston Star that after balancing her family checkbook, sometimes not enough is left to drop anything in the offering plate.
She said she hears from others in the church parking lot who cannot afford to give as much as they once did. "There's a lot of guilt," she said. "It's not the church's fault. They depend on donations, but with gas prices, then mortgage rates and now all the troubles on Wall Street
people are worried."
"Going to church shouldn't be stressful," she said, "but everybody's feeling it."
The pinch is also being felt at other levels of Baptist life. In October Alabama's Mobile Baptist Association approved a budget of $594,905, marking a reduction of more than $13,000 from the 2008 budget.
Thomas Wright, executive director of missions, said the association's budget and finance committee identified several economic indicators that members thought might affect income to churches, and in turn, the association. According to the Mobile Press-Register, the weeks leading up to the annual meeting proved the analysis accurate.
One state group bucking the trend, the Mississippi Baptist Convention, approved a record-setting Cooperative Program budget Oct. 28-29 in Jackson. A 2009 budget of just under $35 million represents an increase of about 2 percent, or $676,866, over 2008.
Religious leaders ask Obama to ban torture through order
By Bob Allen
WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A multi-faith coalition of more than 200 religious organizations is calling on President-elect Barack Obama to, as one of his first acts in office, sign an executive order banning torture.
"This is an opportunity where one individual could with one stroke of the pen really change U.S. history," Linda Gustitus, president of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, told reporters in a conference call Nov. 12. She said an executive order by Obama "could turn the page on a very, very dark chapter and end U.S.-sponsored torture."
Nearly 60 delegations of people in 27 states and the District of Columbia contacted about 70 district and state congressional offices in a "National Day of Witness" on torture. They asked members of Congress to support a statement declaring the use of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment against prisoners as "immoral, unwise, and un-American."
"The use of torture by the United States in recent years and our refusal to renounce its use has diminished us as a nation -- not only in the eyes of our own citizens, but certainly in the eyes of the world," said John Thomas, general minister and president of the United Church of Christ. "We have squandered the international goodwill that was bestowed upon us after 9/11, and we have in many ways forfeited our role as a moral leader in the community of nations."
Thomas said "there would be no clearer signal of our intention to reclaim the religious and moral values that have historically informed our nation's character" for Obama, who until earlier this year was a long-time member of a Chicago UCC congregation, to issue such a declaration.
The coalition, formed in 2006, supports a "Golden Rule" approach to torture, where the United States does not authorize or use any methods of interrogation that Americans would find unacceptable if used against U.S. soldiers or civilians.
It also calls for one national standard about torture. The U.S. Army Field Manual, for example, sets one standard for interrogation techniques, but the CIA is not bound by the same limitations.
The coalition opposes holding terrorism suspects in secret prisons or transferring them to countries that use torture and calls on the government to hold U.S. officials who authorize, implement or fail to prevent torture accountable, regardless of their rank or position.
Leaders said use of torture since 9/11 has hurt the United States not only on moral grounds, but also has damaged the nation's credibility when criticizing other countries that violate human rights.
"It's time for the United States to get back on the right side of history, time for us to hear the hopes of our global friends and answer those hopes with action," Thomas said. "It's time for a fresh start with a new administration, time for the new president of the United States to join us and say clearly 'no' to torture."
U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) issued the first statement by a member of Congress in support of the effort.
"Torture tarnishes our nation's values and damages our credibility," Holt said. "While an executive order will not remove the need for legislation on the issue, it is a way for President-elect Obama to put an immediate halt to our government's use of torture during interrogations and to put an end to the practice of secret detentions. By exercising his authority and acting quickly, he will begin to restore our moral leadership on the issue and repair some of the harm that has been done to our international reputation."
Continued investigation sheds light on Baylor Election Day incidents
By Ken Camp
WACO, Texas (ABP) -- According to Baylor University officials, continuing investigations into three Election Day incidents on campus revealed two apparently were not racially motivated as originally suspected.
In a Nov. 13 letter to students, faculty and staff, Baylor Interim President David Garland offered updates on investigations into the incidents. They included the appearance of a looped rope, originally thought to be a noose, hanging from a campus tree; a racially-charged disturbance outside a men's dormitory; and the alleged burning of Obama/Biden campaign signs in a campus barbecue pit.
Garland announced a student came forward Nov. 12 to claim responsibility for the hanging of the rope and to explain its origin.
"The student explained that he had been spending time with a group of friends on Fountain Mall the evening before the election and had discovered a rope he believed to have been from one of the tents during the university's homecoming activities. The students thought they could use the rope to create a rope swing," Garland said.
"The students tied one end of the rope to a limb of the tree and tied the other end in a loop from which they attempted to swing. Later, they abandoned the swing. The students strongly denied that the rope was intended to mimic a noose or to convey a message of any sort."
Garland reported "a diverse group of male and female students" who had been involved in creating the rope swing met Nov. 12 with student leaders who were planning a Nov. 14 unity march on campus.
"They conveyed their story, and I'm told that student leaders expressed appreciation for their courage in coming forward and understood the incident as an unfortunate misunderstanding," he said.,
Garland also reported Baylor police had identified and spoken with a number of students who participated in a post-election disturbance outside Penland Hall. Officials were expected to make referrals to Baylor's judicial-affairs department.
He also reported students met with Baylor police regarding the fire outside Brooks Flats. They described the source of the fire in the barbecue pits as computer boxes they found outside a parking garage -- not political campaign signs, Garland said.
"While we are all eager to move beyond the events of [recent] days and the negative light they have cast over our campus, this experience also calls our attention to the challenges that remain before us," Garland said.
"Relentless pursuit of campus unity is a work to which we must continue to commit ourselves if we are to truly embody our unique calling as a Christian university in the Baptist tradition."
He noted several positive initiatives -- launching the university's bias-motivated incident support team, prayer meetings for unity on campus, event-planning by leaders of student government and multicultural organizations, and ongoing dialogue involving diverse groups of students, faculty and staff.
"Faculty, staff and students have spoken out, decrying racism of any form on campus. All this good work must continue," Garland said.
CBF provides $10,000 in relief for escalating crisis in Congo
By Carla Wynn Davis
ATLANTA (ABP) -- The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has given $10,000 to ease the growing humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where increased violence from rebel fighters is killing thousands of civilians and forcing even more to flee to refugee camps and neighboring African countries.
Half the Fellowship's relief funds will aid CBF field personnel Jade and Shelah Acker, who serve in Uganda and are aiding Congolese refugees fleeing into the nearby country.
"The situation seems to be getting worse, and if fighting intensifies, then there will be many more refugees entering Uganda," said Jade Acker.
The remaining $5,000 will assist Baptist World Aid, the relief and development arm of the Baptist World Alliance, with their response to the crisis in the Kivu area of eastern Congo. There, Baptist leaders have reported violence, few resources, children being forced to join rebel armies, and Baptists being arrested and imprisoned on false charges. There is an urgent need for relief supplies such as food, medicine, blankets and clothing.
Baptist World Aid has worked in Kivu province since the 1994 genocide crisis in neighboring Rwanda. According to multiple news sources, ethnic fighting and violence in Congo worsened in late August when rebel fighters advanced to Goma, the provincial capital. Now, doctors are working to contain cholera outbreaks in refugee camps while United Nations peacekeepers attempt to ease the violence.
CBF is accepting checks designated for Congo relief.
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West Virginia Southern Baptists support marriage amendment
By Bob Allen
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (ABP) -- The West Virginia Convention of Southern Baptists passed a resolution Nov. 7 calling on church members to support an amendment to the state constitution to ban gay marriage.
The resolution called on members to "avail ourselves of the opportunity to affirm the historic, legal, and reasonable definition of marriage by supporting and promoting an amendment to the state constitution."
"Same-sex unions are not the same as opposite-sex unions," the resolution stated. "To believe otherwise is to ignore the uniqueness of each gender's design and undermines marriage."
The resolution said changing the definition of marriage has "devastating moral, spiritual, economic, and social effects on the whole society."
"As ministers of the gospel, we are compelled to defend the institution of marriage as created by God -- in church and in culture," the resolution said.
Messengers resolved to "strongly encourage Christians throughout West Virginia to engage in the civic process in defense of marriage and in support of the government's leadership in defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman."
"As Christians, we cannot ignore our duty to speak the truth to culture," the resolution said.
"West Virginians want to define marriage for themselves," said Jeremy Dys, president and general counsel of the Family Policy Council of West Virginia, which supported the measure. "They do not want government setting a policy -- and they especially do not want a court imposing a system -- that knowingly deprives children of a mom or a dad."
Opinion: Georgia Baptists isolate themselves
By David Gushee
(ABP) -- On Nov. 12, in a front-page story, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution broke the news that the Georgia Baptist Convention has approved a new policy giving GBC executives the freedom to refuse donations from churches it finds to be out of step with Southern Baptist beliefs. The policy move is aimed (for now) at First Baptist Church Decatur, because it called a woman, Julie Pennington-Russell, to serve as pastor.
It happens that this is my congregation, and Julie is my pastor.
And so I would like to begin this unofficial, unauthorized response by saying that the daily Christian ministry offered by my wonderful church will not be at all affected by this decision. The preaching of the gospel, prayer, benevolence ministries, after-school programs for children, youth ministry, global missions, counseling ministry, women's ministry, care for homeless and abused women and children -- all of these will go on just as before.
The decision does apparently mean that the GBC would prefer not to receive the thousands of dollars that we otherwise would have chosen to send them, as we have done for 145 years. In a time of economic recession, with money tight all over, the GBC will choose to reject our financial support for their activities. This must be an unusual organization, sufficiently flush with funds that it can refuse money -- in this economy -- based on differences over a disputed doctrinal matter. Would someone else like our money?
This action gets the relationship between church and denomination entirely wrong. In a religious tradition that believes in congregational polity, state and national conventions exist as a result of the free decisions of congregations to work together on common projects. They pool their funds to do together what none of them can do as well on their own. State and national conventions exist to serve congregations, and congregations are the ones who get to decide whether the entities that they created to help them advance their mission are still worth supporting. But here, the situation is reversed. That's just wrong.
Baptists used to believe that God's plan is for congregations to order their own affairs, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in obedience to Christ.
First Baptist Decatur undertook a slow communal process of discernment in the months before they called Julie Pennington-Russell as their pastor. This 145-year-old congregation with 2,700 members did their biblical and theological homework, they prayed earnestly, and they finally emerged with the decision that they did.
It is more than a little insulting for other Georgia Baptists, and the GBC itself, to decide that this autonomous congregation made such a bad decision that our missions money is now tainted. This puts FBC Decatur in company with, as Journal-Constitution reporter Christopher Quinn reported after a conversation with GBC Executive Director Robert White, other "gifts from questionable sources, such as alcohol distributors." I'm sure that comparison will go down exceptionally well in our congregation.
Most Baptist churches are in a situation of flat or declining membership. Many are in serious trouble, fighting for their very survival.
But First Baptist Decatur is doing well. Many are coming to faith in Christ for the first time. Our innovative early worship service is booming, with many new visitors each week. I have the joyful privilege of teaching a Bible study class each week to dozens who have never really participated in adult Christian education before. We are actually reaching our community, and our congregation's increasing racial and ethnic diversity clearly attests to this happy fact.
At the heart of it all is Julie Pennington-Russell herself. The sober-minded search committee that called Julie saw in her what we have all now experienced.
She is a pastor, called of God. She has all the requisite gifts of preaching, teaching, leadership, and care for souls. She exemplifies the fruit of the Spirit. She loves people, and people respond accordingly. But by calling her, FBC apparently joined the morally questionable ranks populated by alcohol distributors.
Daily readers of the Atlanta newspaper know that religion news rarely makes the front page. But today it did, under this title: "Baptist change isolates church." Baptists made the newspaper -- not for loving people or serving the poor, but for a decision to reject one of their oldest, most significant churches.
"Baptist change isolates church?" Not really. The headline should read: "Baptist change isolates Georgia Baptist Convention." Our congregation will be just fine.
-- David P. Gushee is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University.
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