Associated Baptist Press - 12/16/2008

Associated Baptist Press
December 16, 2008 · (08-124)

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

In this issue
Southern Seminary facing budget shortfall (297 words)
Supreme Court orders new review of detainee religious-rights case (387 words)
WMU budget cuts include worker furlough (372 words)
Baptist peace activist lobbied to end El Salvador's civil war (572 words)
Guest Opinion: Spending God's money (695 words)

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Southern Seminary facing budget shortfall
By Bob Allen

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (ABP) -- The head of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is predicting layoffs and tuition increases to manage a $3 million budget shortfall.

President Al Mohler said in a Dec. 15 letter to the seminary community that cost-saving measures -- including a hiring freeze on non-essential positions and reduced travel -- have already trimmed the Southern Baptist Convention school's budget by $1.7 million.

That leaves a projected $800,000 to $1.5 million in further reductions projected over the next several months. Mohler said that would likely mean a reduction in the seminary's workforce and increasing tuition to boost revenue.

Mohler pledged "to do our very best to limit tuition increases" as a way to keep theological education affordable to as many ministers as possible.

Mohler attributed the shortfall to significant losses in the value of the seminary's endowed funds. He also said the school projects annual gift levels this year to be lower than usual and has been advised by denominational leaders to expect economic forces to eventually show up in reduced giving through the SBC.

Prior to the shortfall, Southern Seminary's 2008-2009 budget was $36,947,000. Just less than 40 percent of the school's income comes from tuition and fees. Nine percent is drawn from endowment revenue and 27 percent from the SBC's unified budget, called the Cooperative Program.

Mohler said work will continue on a 14,000 square-foot Welcome Pavilion under construction at the front entrance to the seminary's campus; it is designed to house admissions and the campus-security office. He also said other capital projects that are already funded and under contract will go forward, but all future building projects are on hold.

He said the current nation's economic challenge will likely be measured not in months but instead over the next two to five years.

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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Supreme Court orders new review of detainee religious-rights case
By Robert Marus

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- The Supreme Court has instructed a lower court to review its decision that terrorism detainees lack religious rights under United States law.

The justices issued an order Dec. 15 reversing the January decision by the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. The justices told the lower court to reconsider it in light of the high court's June ruling in Boumediene v. Bush, which found that detainees have some rights under the Constitution.

The ruling is a victory for supporters of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), one of the federal laws cited in the suit against U.S. officials filed by four former detainees held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The decision also provides a vehicle for the incoming administration of President-elect Obama to weigh in on the legal status of detainees.

President Bush's administration has argued repeatedly that basic constitutional rights enjoyed by other civilians and prisoners of war do not apply to terrorism suspects. Obama has expressed a broader view of constitutional protections for so-called "enemy combatants" and other detainees in the U.S. struggle against terrorism.

The plaintiffs were British citizens detained by American forces in Afghanistan and then transported to the high-security U.S. prison for terrorism suspects. After two years, they were released from Guantanamo without being charged.

According to the men, U.S. officials repeatedly subjected them to religious harassment, including forcing them to shave their beards, interrupting their prayer services and desecrating the Quran, the Islamic holy book.

The Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty -- which filed a brief in favor of the prisoners' RFRA claims -- welcomed the ruling.

"Individuals and faith communities from across the religious spectrum recognize that our country's commitment to religious freedom is one of its greatest attributes," BJC General Counsel Holly Hollman said, in a prepared statement. "RFRA is a limitation on governmental interference with religious practice. Its protections are intentionally broad and reflect the widely shared belief that religious freedom is paramount."

A broad group of religious organizations joined the BJC on the friend-of-the-court brief, including the National Association of Evangelicals, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the American Jewish Committee.

The case is Rasul et al. v. Myers et al, No. 08-235.

Robert Marus is acting managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.

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WMU budget cuts include worker furlough
By Bob Allen

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (ABP) -- Woman's Missionary Union has announced budget cutbacks affecting the nearly 100 employees of the Southern Baptist Convention women's auxiliary, founded in 1888.

After consulting with the WMU Executive Board's finance and personnel committees Dec. 8, WMU Executive Director Wanda Lee informed employees Dec. 10 of budget cuts totaling $1.4 million. To avoid layoffs, cuts were made across the board. They include placing each staff member on a four-week unpaid furlough between January and August of 2009.

Lee said preserving jobs and maintaining affordable healthcare were top priorities in the decisions, made necessary by an economic crisis some analysts expect to be the worst since the Great Depression.

"None of the positions that we have are expendable," Lee said. "We already have a lean staff and need all the staff members we have to accomplish the work we do."

Other streamlining measures include a hiring freeze on all vacant positions, a freeze on merit raises and reducing employer contributions to each employee's retirement plan until Sept. 30.

"These were very difficult decisions to make and difficult ones for our staff to hear, but all indications are that the economic picture for our nation will worsen in 2009 before it improves," Lee said.

The revised 2009 budget is $9.6 million. WMU receives no funds from the SBC's Cooperative Program unified budget. It also receives no allocations from two annual SBC mission offerings WMU promotes. The organization supports itself through sales of magazines and other products as well as investments.

Assets held in a WMU Foundation established in 1995 recently surpassed $1 million, but most of those funds are earmarked for scholarships or other designated causes.

Lee said the cuts were designed to avoid a worst-case economic scenario while putting WMU in a position to continue its mission of encouraging personal involvement in missions and minstry.

"While our nation is experiencing some of the most challenging economic times in our history, we recognize jobs are scarce and we are doing everything we can do to protect jobs and ensure the future of WMU," Lee said. "We are simply taking proactive measures to successfully navigate these uncertain days in our nation's challenging economic climate in the event that it doesn't recover quickly."

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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Baptist peace activist lobbied to end El Salvador's civil war
By Bob Allen

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A Baptist peacemaker who lobbied Congress to stop the United States' funding of one side in El Salvador's 1980-1992 civil war has died.

Amparo Lopez Palacios, 69, discovered only weeks before her Nov. 14 death that she was suffering from advanced lung cancer. She died peacefully at a Washington hospice surrounded by her husband and three children.

With her husband, Edgar, Palacios led the Permanent Commission of the National Debate for Peace in El Salvador. The non-governmental organization worked to stop fighting between the nation's right-wing military government and a coalition of left-wing groups called the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).

The Palacios were forced to flee El Salvador in 1989 -- under U.N. troop protection -- and they moved to Washington. There, the activists lobbied Congress to end aid to a Salvadoran military responsible for the murders of tens of thousands of civilians through death squads that terrorized the countryside for a dozen years.

Some of the war's most infamous acts included the March 1980 assassination of Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was shot through the heart while celebrating mass two months after asking President Jimmy Carter to cease military aid to El Salvador. Later that year, forces allied with the government raped and murdered three American nuns and a laywoman.

As executive director of the Washington office of Debate for Peace, Amparo Palacios lobbied members of Congress to end the United States' role as a silent partner to El Salvador's military. U.S. aid finally ended after a Salvadoran National Guard death squad killed six Jesuit priests in 1989.

The Palacios were present at the United Nations General Assembly when El Salvador's warring factions signed a peace treaty in 1992.

Edgar Palacios is now associate pastor of Christian education at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington and a mission pastor for the Latino community. Calvary's senior pastor, Amy Butler, remembered Amparo Palacios as a "brave, courageous voice for justice," a "trusted friend" and the "funniest person at the party."

Palacios' untimely death "leaves a huge hole in the Baptist peacemaking community," according to a statement from the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America.

"Her lifelong work for peace rooted in justice took her from the war-torn streets of El Salvador to the halls of the U.S. Congress where she advocated tirelessly for policies that would support the safety and healing of the Salvadorian people," the group said. "Her deep personal gentleness belied the immense violence she had experienced throughout her life."

The BPFNA remembered Palacios as "a friend to all who struggled" and called her life "a lasting witness to all of us who would work for peace."

Miguel De La Torre, associate professor of social ethics at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, called her life "a cause for celebration."

"In the midst of satanic forces that devoured the lives of Salvadorians during the 1980s, she lived the gospel message," said De La Torre, an ordained Baptist minister. "Not only did she fearlessly stand against the thugs of El Salvador, but also the powers and principalities in D.C. who provided the resources to the forces of death."

"The life she lived is a testimony to the liberating good news," De La Torre said. "May she be an example to all of us."

Since 1996 Palacios had been a family support worker at the Family Place, a drop-in center that serves expectant parents and families with small children.

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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Guest opinion: Spending God's money
By Christa Brown

(ABP) -- The secrecy of Southern Baptist Convention officials about a financial scandal at their International Mission Board wasn't anything unusual. It's the sort of thing we've seen over and over again.

Southern Baptists need to begin seeing the pattern rather than merely viewing these things as isolated cases.

It's a very common pattern: Without accountability, power corrupts. Religious organizations are no exception.

The corruption manifests itself not only in the cover-up of financial wrongdoing, but also in the cover-up of clergy sex abuse. For both types of corruption, the root of the problem is a systemic lack of accountability.

That's the root that Southern Baptists desperately need to remedy. Here are a few more illustrations showing the SBC's lack of accountability in the financial context.

-- North American Mission Board: The president of the North American Mission Board, Bob Reccord, resigned after a state convention newspaper published an extensive investigative piece about financial mismanagement.

At the time, Mary Kinney Branson was a marketing director for NAMB, and she's written a book that provides an insider's account of the extravagance and financial mismanagement there. Spending God's Money shows how a powerful religious organization goes wrong when it is unaccountable to the people who fund it and when its leaders lose touch with the higher purpose they purport to serve.

Branson provides details that implicate high Southern Baptist officials -- and those details are not flattering. For example, Reccord "had a $1 million fund he could use at his discretion, no questions asked and no receipts required."

Can you imagine any other organization that would allow an official to spend such sums with so little oversight?

When Reccord resigned, 41 Southern Baptist leaders signed a letter praising him and essentially whitewashing his "undisputed misuse of funds." One of those signers was Georgia pastor Johnny Hunt, who is now the SBC president.

-- Baptist Foundation of Arizona: The Baptist Foundation of Arizona was established with the pretense of serving Southern Baptist causes. During its history, it did indeed return about $1.3 million to Baptist causes. But it also "loaned" nearly $140 million to companies owned by three of the Foundation's directors. In doing so, the Baptist Foundation of Arizona cost thousands of investors their life savings to the tune of $570 million. It was called "the largest affinity fraud in history."

Also called "affinity scams," such frauds target investors who have a similar interest -- in this case, advancing "the Lord's work" through Southern Baptist churches.

Consider just one example: A Baptist Foundation of Arizona subsidiary called Arizona Southern Baptist New Church Ventures "had a stated purpose of financing new Southern Baptist churches in Arizona. Yet it raised most of its money by selling investment products to individuals and invested most of those funds in ... an allegedly phony company owned by one-time BFA director Jalma Hunsinger."

Many of the investors were elderly, and they learned of the investment "opportunity" through their church. They were promised high returns and that some of their money would be used to advance the Gospel. Brochures, distributed in Arizona churches, assured investors that their money "would be as safe as if kept in a bank."

"We were deceived," said a woman who invested $35,000 from her son's Navy death benefit with the Arizona foundation. She described the foundation's presentation in her church as being like "the moneychangers in the Temple," and she complained that Baptist officials were reluctant to discuss the scandal for fear that it "gives God a bad name."

-- Baptist General Convention of Texas: The "Valleygate" scandal showed the ugly side of the largest state-wide Baptist convention in the country. It involved $1.3 million in lost and mismanaged church-starting funds. According to the Texas Baptist Standard, "The investigative team faulted the BGCT Executive Board staff for poor oversight, uneven management, failure to abide by internal guidelines and misplaced trust."

Because the investigators' report indicated that some BGCT staff had "allowed the misuse to occur," it was determined that recovery of the funds would be difficult.

These are the sorts of disasters you get when an organization gives its leaders power without also insisting on accountability. Without accountability, power corrupts.

Christa Brown is Baptist director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. She runs the Stop Baptist Predators website. This column is adapted from her blog.