Associated Baptist Press
December 17, 2008 · (08-125)
David Wilkinson, Executive Director
Robert Marus, Acting Managing Editor/Washington Bureau Chief
Bob Allen, Senior Writer
In this issue
Evangelical leaders seek broad moral agenda in Cizik replacement (304 words)
Rick Warren to give invocation at Obama inauguration (327 words)
Pastor calls for 'un-blending' of secular, sacred Christmas traditions (959 words)
Time ranks SBC rejection of sex-offender database as 'under-reported' story (506 words)
Mike Huckabee says American Christians 'persecuted' (450 words)
Guest opinion: Infested with elves, indebted to the New York Times (809 words)
Evangelical leaders seek broad moral agenda in Cizik replacement
By Bob Allen
WASHINGTON (ABP) -- Fifty-nine evangelical leaders signed a letter requesting that whoever is chosen to replace ousted lobbyist Richard Cizik at the National Association of Evangelicals carry on Cizik's commitment to a moral agenda broader than opposition to homosexuality and abortion.
In a letter to NAE President Leith Anderson dated Dec. 16, the evangelical leaders expressed gratitude for Cizik's "broad Christian moral agenda that has helped define American Evangelicals' public witness."
Cizik resigned Dec. 10 as the NAE's vice president for governmental affairs after saying in a radio interview his view on gay marriage was shifting and he now supports civil unions for same-sex couples.
Anderson said that statement "did not appropriately represent the values and convictions of NAE and our constituents."
The letter from evangelical leaders acknowledged the NAE's right to choose its own spokesperson, yet urged that Cizik's replacement support "a broad Christian moral agenda" including not only the family and right to life but also human rights, peace and the environment.
Baptist signers included David Gushee, president of Evangelicals for Human Rights; Jonathan Merritt, spokesperson for the Southern Baptist Environment and Climate Initiative; Carey Newman, director of Baylor University Press; and Glenn Stassen, a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary.
Another evangelical leader, Jim Wallis of Sojourners, said the Religious Right is already using Cizik's departure in attempt to steer the organization toward a narrower social agenda.
"I personally trust Leith Anderson's and the NAE Executive Committee's commitment to the wider evangelical agenda beyond just abortion and gay marriage, but also feel deeply saddened by these events," Wallis said in a statement.
Wallis urged NAE leadership "to stay on the path they have chosen and resist the efforts of those who would again seek to narrow the evangelical agenda in unbiblical ways and make it again subservient to a conservative political agenda."
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
Rick Warren to give invocation at Obama inauguration
By Bob Allen
WASHINGTON (ABP) -- Rick Warren, founder of the Southern Baptist Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., will give the invocation at Barack Obama's Jan. 20 presidential inauguration.
In August Warren invited both then-candidate Obama and his Republican opponent John McCain to his California mega-church for a high-profile Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency. Obama landed in hot water when he tried to brush off a question from Warren about abortion by saying determining when a baby gets human rights is "above my pay grade."
Afterward Warren said he thought Obama should have been more specific in his answer.
"He should either say, 'No scientifically, I do not believe it's a human being until X' or whatever it is or to say, 'Yes, I believe it is a human being at X point,' whether it's conception or anything else," Warren said in a BeliefNet interview. "But to just say 'I don't know' on the most divisive issue in America is not a clear enough answer for me."
CBN's David Brody said including Warren in the inauguration "makes a whole lot of sense."
"Even though Warren and Obama disagree on the life issue, they do see eye to eye on many social justice issues," Brody said. "This move is also classic Obama because it is a signal to religious conservatives that he's willing to bring in both sides to the faith discussion in this country. Obama has never shied away from that."
In 2006 Warren, author of the best-selling Purpose Driven Life, drew criticism from fellow religious conservatives for inviting the Illinois senator to Saddleback Church for a conference on fighting HIV/AIDS.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, released the program Wednesday. Warren will be joined by luminaries including singer Aretha Franklin and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
Delivering the benediction is Joseph E. Lowery, co-founder with Martin Luther King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and considered the dean of the civil rights movement.
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
Pastor calls for 'un-blending'of secular, sacred Christmas traditions
By Bob Allen
LEAWOOD, Kan. (ABP) -- A Baptist pastor thinks he has a solution to the dilemma about whether it's more appropriate to say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" in secular settings like department stores.
Mike McKinney submits that tensions that flare between Christians and secularists this time of year aren't about "taking Christ out of Christmas," as some religious observers believe, but rather because Christians have allowed their holiday to become too secularized by blending the celebration of Christ's birth with non-religious symbols like Santa Claus.
McKinney, pastor of Leawood Baptist Church in suburban Kansas City, is calling for a "reformation" of Christmas by separating secular and sacred aspects of the holiday.
McKinney says Christians and non-Christians alike would benefit from recognizing they are in fact celebrating two different holidays -- one a religious commemoration of Christ's birth and the other a winter festival marked by hustle and bustle with secular roots.
McKinney wrote the booklet titled Fixing Christmas for Everyone: A Plea for the Reformation of the Christmas Season proposing an un-blending of the "winter holiday" and "birth of Christ" traditions.
"It is simply not right to sing 'Silent Night' and 'Jingle Bells' as if they belong to the same holiday," McKinney says. "It is not right to honor the birth of Christ the Lord and to celebrate the arrival of Santa Claus the jolly old elf within the context of the same holiday."
McKinney says there is nothing wrong with singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or "Frosty the Snowman" in December -- in fact he enjoys much about the season -- but they simply don't have anything do to with Jesus Christ.
He says he is alarmed at how comfortable that both Christians and non-Christians have become with how Christmas is observed in America.
"Lots of folks are comfortable with blending Jesus with Santa, the Nativity with the North Pole, Angels with Elves, and Shepherds with Reindeer," McKinney says. "I am not!"
He says the mingling of secular and sacred is behind the conflict that arises every year over holiday greetings in the marketplace. The word "Christmas" is technically a religious title associated with the Christian faith, he reasons, so non-Christians can rightfully ask what winter shopping has to do with Christianity.
McKinney says for centuries Christians have commemorated the birth of Jesus Christ in their homes and churches with traditions, carols and Bible stories. Until fairly recently, he says, many Christians began their holiday on Christmas Day and followed it with 12 days of festivities ending with Epiphany on Jan. 6.
Many of the images now associated with the Christmas season didn't come along until the last century. The story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer appeared as part of a Christmas promotion in 1939 by Montgomery Ward and became even more popular when Gene Autry released it in song in 1949. Frosty the Snowman joined the Christmas lexicon in a song written and performed in 1950. A 1957 book by Dr. Seuss How the Grinch Stole Christmas introduced another character now affixed to the holiday.
McKinney says Christmas in the United States has evolved into a highly secularized and commercialized winter festival supporting various stories, traditions, characters and activities. Christians have adapted to the trend by ending instead of beginning their Christmas on Dec. 25.
In fact, he says, the phrase "Merry Christmas" no longer carries religious connotations in the public marketplace, but rather refers to a massive winter holiday season celebrated by people of all kinds.
"We truthfully have two separate and distinct holidays," he writes. "We should admit it and do something about it!"
McKinney says Christians and non-Christians together could "reform" the Christmas season by "slight modifications in our thinking and practices." He says doing so would benefit everyone, and no one has to lose anything.
"I suggest we separate the 'Winter Christmas' traditions from the 'Christian Christmas' traditions," he suggests. "I believe the two traditions can be 'unblended' without harming either. They can exist side-by-side in ways that can affirm both."
McKinney says people of all faiths would benefit from a clear distinction between a non-religious winter holiday and a highly religious Christian Christmas. He proposes the term "Christmas" be used only by Christians in a religious sense, while the secular celebration be renamed a "Winter Holiday."
The Winter Holiday would continue to begin many weeks before Dec. 25, enjoy the non-religious elements now associated with Christmas and end with post-Christmas sales on Dec. 26.
The Christian Christmas would follow preparation through Advent, begin Christmas Day, and continue into the New Year.
McKinney says Christians could choose to observe one or both holidays, while many non-Christians would be relieved to have the issue of Christ removed from a secular holiday.
McKinney said in an email he first went public with the idea two years ago, but didn't prepare the booklet until this year.
Last year he went on a radio talk show popular in Kansas City and talked with listeners both pro and con for two hours. He was recently interviewed for an upcoming article in the Kansas City Star.
McKinney said he has received emails from clergy supporting his idea since it received mention two weeks ago in a newspaper columnist's blog.
McKinney said Leawood Baptist Church, which is affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, is learning to think of Dec. 25 as the beginning of the Twelve days of Christmas.
The church brings out decorations on Christmas Eve and leaves them up through Epiphany. Many small groups and Sunday school classes have their Christmas parties after Dec. 25.
"We strive to think of Dec. 25 as the beginning of our sacred holiday and with the idea of spiritual renewal carrying the spirit of Christmas (Christ) into the New Year," McKinney said.
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
Time ranks SBC rejection of sex-offender database as 'under-reported' story
By Bob Allen
NEW YORK (ABP) -- Time Magazine ranked the Southern Baptist Convention's refusal to establish a database of clergy sex offenders one of the most under-reported news stories in 2008.
A ranking of under-reported stories in Time's "Top 10 Everything of 2008" special feature placed the story at No. 6, behind a mix-up that accidentally sent U.S. nuclear-warhead fuses to Taiwan, the Congolese civil war, violence in Sri Lanka, and new guidelines for insurance coverage for mental health and regulation of food from animals that are genetically altered.
"Facing calls to curb child sex abuse within its churches, in June the Southern Baptist Convention -- the largest U.S. religious body after the Catholic Church -- urged local hiring committees to conduct federal background checks but rejected a proposal to create a central database of staff and clergy who have been either convicted of or indicted on charges of molesting minors," the magazine noted.
"The SBC decided against such a database in part because its principle of local autonomy means it cannot compel individual churches to report any information. And while the headlines regarding churches and pedophilia remain largely focused on Catholic parishes, the lack of hierarchical structure and systematized record-keeping in most Protestant churches makes it harder not only for church leaders to impose standards, but for interested parties to track allegations of abuse."
Christa Brown, Baptist outreach leader for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, agreed the story was under-reported.
"It's such an extremely important story," she said. "The largest Protestant denomination in the land -- a denomination that claims 16.2 million members -- refused to even attempt to implement the sorts of proactive measures for routing out predators that other major faith groups have."
Brown, a survivor of clergy sex abuse, worked two years to draw attention to the problem of unreported sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches before seeing denominational leaders recommend against her suggestion of a national database.
Last month Brown and SNAP National Director David Clohessy wrote SBC President Johnny Hunt asking for a meeting about establishing a system to report abusive clergy.
"As president of the Southern Baptist Convention, you now have the opportunity to show genuine leadership on the issue of clergy sex abuse and cover-ups," the letter said. "This may be one of the greatest leadership challenges in the history of Southern Baptists."
The SNAP leaders said Southern Baptists' local-church autonomy makes it all-the-more imperative that congregations have enough information to make responsible decisions about whom they call as ministers.
"The only way people in the pews will find out about clergy child molesters is if victims feel safe in reporting them," they said. "And victims are never going to feel safe if they have to report abuse by going to the church of the accused minister."
"Telling clergy victims to 'go to the church' is like telling them to go to the den of the wolf who savaged them," the letter said. "It is cruel to the victim and unproductive toward the end of protecting others."
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
Mike Huckabee says American Christians 'persecuted'
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (ABP) -- Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says it is culturally acceptable in America to persecute Christians.
In an interview with the Florida Baptist Witness, the former Arkansas governor cited foot baths provided for Muslims at the University of Michigan as evidence that accommodations are made for people of "every faith except Christians."
"It's perfectly legitimate in our culture today to engage in outright persecution against Christians with seemingly no social penalty for doing it, whether it's tearing a cross out of a lady's hand in California who happened to support Proposition 8 or the denigration of Christian values by not allowing even the traditional Christmas carols to be sung at a school," Huckabee said.... "[W]e shouldn't have special rules for everybody but Christians and then those rules are pushed and we become the persecuted."
Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister and past president of the Arkansas State Baptist Convention, preached at a Florida church while on tour promoting his new book, Do the Right Thing: Inside the Movement That's Bringing Common Sense Back to America. He also has his own show on Fox News.
The former dark-horse presidential contender said he hasn't decided whether he will run again in 2012. He gave Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin high marks, calling her "a wonderful person" with a "bright future in the Republican Party."
Huckabee said Barack Obama won the presidency in part because he swayed some conservative voters. "The large, simple answer is that Republicans did not close the deal and make a case, because they had not lived up to the advertising of balancing budgets, standing against corruption, being champions for the family and for life as they have been in the past," Huckabee said. "Obama was able to convince people that he was a centrist."
Huckabee said many people told him they supported him but voted for another candidate in the primary because they did not believe he could win the general election.
"Christians should never involve themselves in politics based on the process," he said. "It ought to be the principles, and what this last election revealed was that there were many people who had fallen into the trap of worshipping at the altar of process instead of adhering to the idea of godly principles."
"What I hope is that Southern Baptists in particular and evangelicals in general will recognize that if they are not the voice for life and traditional marriage, then don't expect the secularists to take up the cause," Huckabee said. "If we don't adhere to what we believe to be our biblical and eternal principles, then we have no reason to complain when we lose those principles in the public marketplace."
Guest opinion: Infested with elves, indebted to the New York Times
By Colleen Burroughs
I'm not sure when it began or which year my children started coming home asking for an elf. It turns out there is a way to write Santa and request one of his helpers to come spend the holiday with your family. On Christmas Eve your personal elf returns home to the North Pole with a promise to come back the following season.
The elves are epidemic at school. You can't drop a kid off or pick one up without an elf or two along for the ride. They each come with names and different rankings within the kingdom of Santa's workshop. There are worker elves and shelf elves. Everyone chit chats in carpool about what adventure his or her elf had been up to the night before.
It seems to me that Christmas time is right when Santa would need his elves the most, and don't parents have enough to do without a "helper" that rummages through the pantry opening all things related to sugar or toilet papers a room while the kids are at school?
Still, the subject of an exchange student from the North Pole has come up annually, and we finally caved. We know the innocence of youth doesn't last long, and all-too-soon our twins will be teenagers, completely uninterested in childhood mystery and wonder.
Our kids wrote Santa a specific request for a "nice elf." Her name is Larissa. She stays home and sleeps the day away -- or she gathers up the baby Jesus from all the nativities around the house and tries to feed them candy when we aren't looking. My kids love this about Larissa. She's sneaky.
Still, as my family sleeps snug in their beds at four o'clock in the morning, I am wide awake. I read an article the other day that won't let me sleep.
Half a world away in Zimbabwe there is a father who has just lost five of his children within a 48-hour period. The kids were playing in the streets one day, began throwing up at midnight and within two days they were dead. Just like that.
How is it that my children's world is infested with elves and theirs is infected with an epidemic of cholera? And what in the world can I do to bridge the gap of extreme poverty fueled, in Zimbabwe's case, by a corrupt leader?
In a Dec. 11 New York Times article, Celia W. Dugger wrote: "The outbreak is yet more evidence that Zimbabwe's most fundamental public services -- including water and sanitation, public schools and hospitals -- are shutting down, much like the organs of a severely dehydrated cholera victim."
With untreated national water systems, under-serviced sanitation and neglected sewers --coupled with an official inflation rate of 231 percent -- Zimbabwe's people are dying.
Children are showing up to school today hoping against hope that their long unpaid teachers will return again. The teachers can't afford the bus fare, much less the luxury of working for free. These children are losing any future possibility of pulling themselves out of the hole of poverty, should they actually survive into adulthood.
Just like my children, each of the children in Zimbabwe has a name. The father in the article came home to an unusually silent welcome and found that Prisca, Sammy, Shantel, Clopas and Aisha had died. Playing one day, gone the next.
Unlike our Christmas elf, these children will not be coming back to play again. Nor will their father hear them laugh like I will hear my children laugh this morning, running downstairs to find where Larissa has hidden baby Jesus swiped from the manger.
Today my children will head out the door to school where a teacher will be waiting to teach them to read, just like I did just over three decades ago as a missionary kid in Zimbabwe. The water in their drinking fountain will be clean and there will be toilets that flush.
There are plenty of places on the planet where the government is not being destroyed by men like Robert Mugabe. Global water poverty means that 2.5 billion people lack access to clean drinking water or safe sanitation. The harsh reality is that every 15 seconds a child dies somewhere around the globe because a preventable waterborne disease drains them of fluid.
All I know for sure is that if I'm willing to justify investing in wonder and mystery for my own children this Christmas, surely the very least I can do is stop and offer clean water to someone else's.
Here are ways to give water:
-- Water for Hope: A Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Initiative: Providing Safe Water in Jesus' Name.
-- Sponsor a child through World Vision.
-- Donate a gift through WaterAid.
-- Give water for Christmas by donating to Watering Malawi, a project of Passport, Inc.
Colleen Burroughs is executive vice president Passport, Inc., a national non-profit student ministry.
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