Associated Baptist Press
December 30, 2008 · (09-1)
David Wilkinson, Executive Director
Robert Marus, Managing Editor/Washington Bureau Chief
Bob Allen, Senior Writer
In this issue
Wide variety of Baptists, other faiths found in 111th Congress (614 words)
Baptist World Alliance responds to Muslim letter (775 words)
Griffin Bell, former Carter official, Baptist statesman, dies (545 words)
Robertson predicts economic recovery, 'socialism' in 2009 (711 words)
New Jersey sides with lesbian couple in dispute with church camp (445 words)
Opinion: The Bible demands economic justice (1,364 words)
Wide variety of Baptists, other faiths found in 111th Congress
By Robert Marus (614 words)
WASHINGTON (ABP) -- Baptists, they say, multiply by dividing. And the various Baptist churches and denominational groups represented in the incoming 111th Congress are emblematic of America's broad array of Baptists -- and of religious life in general.
While precise figures and specific answers on some lawmakers' church membership are hard to come by, there are 66 self-identified Baptists in the new Congress, according to a study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Baptists make up a slightly smaller percentage of the new Congress (12.4 percent) than they do of the United States' adult population at large (17.2 percent), according to the Pew study. It was based on biographical data that Congress members' offices provided to Congressional Quarterly. The nation-at-large statistics come from the results of a massive survey that Pew released last year.
An analysis of the new Baptist Congress members by Baptist blogger Aaron Weaver reveals that congressional Baptists are a broadly diverse lot in terms of denomination, race and political party.
For instance, congressional Baptists belong to churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, the three major African-American Baptist denominational groups, the American Baptist Churches USA and the Baptist General Conference.
There are also several members of Congress whose churches' primary affiliation is with para-denominational groups that resulted from the division between moderates, progressives and fundamentalists in the Southern Baptist Convention during the 1980s -- the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Alliance of Baptists.
At least one member of Congress -- North Carolina Rep. David Price (D) -- belongs to a church affiliated with the gay-friendly Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists.
In the House, self-identified Baptists are evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, with each party claiming 29 Baptist representatives. African-Americans make up 33 percent of House Baptists.
Several of the most prominent members of Congress on both sides of the aisle identify as Baptists. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the Senate's president pro tempore and the lone white Baptist Democrat in that chamber, is a member of Crab Orchard Missionary Baptist Church (ABC/USA) in Crab Orchard, W.Va.
Arizona Sen. John McCain, the failed GOP nominee for president in 2008, identifies North Phoenix Baptist Church as his home congregation. Although McCain -- who was baptized into the Episcopal Church as an infant and has not undergone believer's baptism as an adult -- is not technically a member of North Phoenix Baptist, his wife and their children are.
North Phoenix Baptist has the distinction of being the church home to two members of Congress -- McCain and Arizona Rep. Trent Franks (R).
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) still lists his denominational affiliation as Baptist, although he reportedly now attends Southeast Christian Church in Louisville. He was a longtime member of Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, but church officials said Jan. 5 he is no longer on their membership roll.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), is a member of Broadview Baptist Church in Temple Hills, Md.
Baptists are the second-largest religious group in Congress after Catholics, who make up 30 percent of lawmakers. The next four largest groups -- Methodists, Jews, Presbyterians and Episcopalians -- are represented in Congress in greater percentages than they are in the population at large.
The "religious group" most underrepresented relative to its share of the overall population is the religiously unaffiliated. Only five members of the 111th Congress failed to list any religious affiliation, according to Congressional Quarterly. But the Pew survey found that the religiously unaffiliated make up just over 16 percent of the U.S. adult population.
The 111th Congress is also home to Lutherans, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Pentecostals, Mormons, Seventh-Day Adventists, Muslims, Buddhists, Unitarians, Christian Scientists and a Quaker.
Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.
Baptist World Alliance responds to Muslim letter
By Bob Allen (775 words)
FALLS CHURCH, Va. (ABP) -- The Baptist World Alliance has issued its formal response to a 2007 letter, written to Christians by 138 Muslim leaders, describing love for God and love for neighbor as common ground between the two faiths.
BWA leaders agreed that the double love for God and neighbor "lies at the heart of the message of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels" but clarified that Baptists do not understand those commands as "the sum total of our two faiths."
The letter cited one example, the Trinity, as "troubling" for Muslims but "absolutely essential for us in confessing the oneness of God."
"We are well aware that Muslims believe the Christian idea of the Trinity contradicts the affirmation that God has no other being in association with him," the Baptist leaders said, but Christians do not understand "the distinct reality" of God in three persons to mean that any other being is beside God.
"Rather, the church is attempting to express the truth that there are mysterious, unknowable depths to the personal nature of God," the letter said. "It is also aiming to be faithful to the truth of God which has been disclosed in the event of Jesus Christ in history."
The Baptist leaders said the letter is not the place for "a fuller exposition of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity" or an attempt to try to convince Muslims of its truth.
"We write in order to make clear that we ourselves cannot think of God as love except in terms of an eternal communion or fellowship whose unity is dynamic and relational," the letter said. "While we rejoice to confess with you that there is one God, it is not possible for us to speak of the one God without also speaking of Trinity."
In November 2007 a number of Christian leaders published a statement in the New York Times responding to A Common Word Between Us and You by Muslim scholars and clerics.
Signed by evangelicals including Leith Anderson and Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals, Timothy George of Samford University's Beeson Divinity School, David Gushee of Mercer University, Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Church, Richard Mouw of Fuller Theological Seminary and Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, the Loving God and Neighbor Together response expressed strong agreement with the Muslim letter.
After conservative evangelicals including John Piper, Al Mohler and Focus on the Family's CitizenLink newsletter criticized the Christian letter for not explicitly affirming the deity of Christ, some of the original signers had their names removed.
During a discussion of a Baptist response to the Islamic letter last summer, according to a report on the website EthicsDaily.com, some Baptists expressed concern about theological language in the original letter from Islamic leaders.
Meanwhile, some Baptists from areas of the world where Christians and Muslims clash questioned the need for dialogue.
After that meeting, BWA leaders drafted a formal response signed by BWA president David Coffey, General Secretary Neville Callam, Paul Fiddes of the Commission on Doctrine and Inter-Church Cooperation and Regina Claas of the Commission on Freedom and Justice.
The BWA letter thanked the Muslim leaders for their "generous initiative" and "irenic and constructive spirit" in the 2007 letter. The leaders proposed that future discussions take place not in a central commission of the BWA but rather in regional unions and conventions engaged in joint conversations and projects for aid and development.
They also called for education of both religious teachers and members of local congregations and mosques to "change attitudes and prejudices" that undermine values of respect and honor of others despite differing religious beliefs.
"Just one way this may happen is for religious teachers in both faiths to be careful about the rhetoric they use, which may have unintended effects on followers who are less aware of theological nuances, and which may even lead to violence," the leaders said.
"To be concrete, we have one suggestion for Baptist Christians, that they avoid words to describe evangelism (or telling the gospel story) which appear threatening to others, such as 'evangelistic crusades.' Nor is it necessary to be critical of another faith in order to commend what we believe to be true in ours; the story of Jesus has power to persuade in its own right."
"It is easy to slip into a violent rhetoric which arouses unpleasant memories of conflicts in the past," the letter said. "We do not venture to suggest examples of unhelpful rhetoric to you, our Muslim friends, but hope that you might be able to identify some for yourselves. Let our rhetoric be that of love, as you have already shown."
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
Griffin Bell, former Carter official, Baptist statesman, dies
By ABP staff (545 words)
ATLANTA (ABP) -- Baptist leader Griffin Bell, who served as the nation's attorney general during President Carter's administration and who was a longtime benefactor of Mercer University, died Jan. 5 after long battles with pancreatic cancer and kidney disease. He was 90.
Bell, who grew up in Americus, Ga., near Jimmy Carter's hometown of Plains, earned his law degree from Mercer in 1948. He worked more than 40 years at King & Spalding, an Atlanta law firm, and sat for 15 years on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
He left his law practice to become the 72nd attorney general of the United States in 1977, where he served two years before returning to the Atlanta firm.
Judge Bell steadfastly supported his alma mater, offering strong leadership as a trustee and helping raise more than half a billion dollars in gifts to Mercer. He served six terms on the university's board of trustees and was chair of the board from 1991 to 1995.
He was elected a life trustee in 2007 -- only the sixth person at that time to be named to the office in Mercer's 175-year history.
In 1983, he was named Mercer's first distinguished university professor and was a frequent lecturer and panelist at Mercer's law school over the years. Friends and colleagues raised $1 million in 1986 to establish the Griffin Boyette Bell Chair of Law at Mercer.
"Over the past four decades, no one has been more committed to Mercer than Judge Bell, and no one has done more to advance the university," said Mercer President Bill Underwood, in a statement released by the university. "I will miss his friendship. I will miss his sense of humor. I will miss his wise counsel. He was truly a great man."
As a trustee, Bell made the motion to establish the Mercer School of Medicine, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. In the late 1980s he helped steer the university through financial difficulties and stood by Mercer in debates with the Georgia Baptist Convention over academic freedom.
Chancellor Kirby Godsey, who preceded Underwood as Mercer's president and worked closely with Bell for 27 years, said his presidency was guided and enriched by Bell's leadership and by their "profound friendship."
"His thinking was always clear and precise, his voice articulate, his will resolute," Godsey said. "Judge Bell combined a high sense of integrity with a strong measure of grace. With his awe-inspiring wisdom and a rare quotient of insight, he made complex issues transparent, and he characteristically brought light and clarity amidst shadows of confusion."
A graveside service is scheduled at 11 a.m. Jan. 7 at Oak Grove Cemetery in Americus. Bell's memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Jan. 9 at Atlanta's Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church, where he was a member.
At Mercer's December 2008 board of trustees meeting, a bust of Bell was unveiled to honor his long association with the school.
His first wife, Mary, preceded him in death in 2000. He later married a longtime friend, Nancy Kinnebrew, who survives him. Other survivors include his son, Griffin Jr., two grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Robertson predicts economic recovery, 'socialism' in 2009
By Bob Allen (711 words)
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (ABP) -- Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said that God told him to look for a quick rebound of the economy in 2009 but warned against threats of long-term runaway inflation and instability in the Middle East.
In what has become an annual tradition for the Christian Broadcasting Network, Robertson shared on "The 700 Club" Jan. 2 his forecasts for the coming year. Robertson says he bases the predictions on messages he discerns from God during an annual prayer retreat.
Last year Robertson correctly predicted an economic recession and a major stock-market crash in the United States, with details including predictions that the price of oil would rise to $150 a barrel and gold would reach $1,000 an ounce. Oil prices peaked at a record $147 a barrel in July and gold hit a record $1,000 mark in March.
Robertson hasn't always been so accurate. In 2005 he predicted "triumph" for President Bush during his second term. In years past, he has also predicted that Russia would invade Israel (1982), projected a worldwide economic collapse (1985) and said U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) would be elected president (1996).
"I say it with humility," the 78-year-old television preacher and Christian Coalition founder said of his annual predictions. "I hope I've heard the Lord. I spend time praying and asking him for wisdom. If there's a mistake it's not his fault. It's mine."
Defying the view of many experts that the economy will continue to worsen, Robertson said he expects a swift recovery. "I think the stock market is going to turn around almost immediately," he said.
The downside, he said, is the danger of "hyperinflation" such as Germany experienced in the 1930s, before Hitler came to power.
"I've seen it in Zaire, for example," he said. "I met with the leadership in that country and warned them that if they didn't stop printing money they were going to have a social collapse, and indeed that's what happened. Their currency went from four to the dollar to about 40,000 to the dollar and exactly what I said was going to happen. There was rioting in the streets. The people began to loot and pillage, and there was terrible social unrest. And that's what can happen with hyperinflation."
Robertson predicted that Americans will "welcome socialism in order to relieve their pain," and "nothing will stand in the way" of a plan by President-elect Obama to restructure the economy in the same fashion as Franklin Roosevelt did after the Great Depression.
"The Lord said, 'He's going to get anything he wants,'" Robertson said of Obama. "And the tendency is going to be to set up another New Deal where you're federalizing many of the things that you're doing."
"It will be the largest transfer of power to Washington since the '30s, but people are just willing to accept it, because the pain has been so bad," Robertson said. "He'll be able to get anything he wants."
Robertson also warned that, "lacking strong leadership," dangerous dictatorships will threaten the peace and security of millions of people, and cited Russia as particularly dangerous. "What the Russians are getting ready to do is to put together a coalition in the Middle East to try to gain control of the oil," he said. "I think the time of the prophecy of Ezekiel 38 is at hand."
Ezekiel 38 is an apocalyptic chapter prophesying "the Magog invasion" of Israel by a coalition of forces from the north.
Robertson said Israel "is entering a period of extreme crisis" and that dealing forcefully with the Palestinians will bring international condemnation and sanctions against Israel's government, "but the Lord will uphold his people despite world opinion."
Robertson also said Islam "is losing its grip" on adherents around the world, leaving nominal Muslims open to accepting Christ. "The violence and bloodshed has turned many against this religion of hate," Robertson said. "And the Lord said: 'Expand your outreach to Muslims. They are ready to listen.'"
Robertson said "there has never been nor will there ever be a more propitious time for the gospel."
"People by the tens of millions will be seeking answers," he said. "They will gladly receive the forgiveness of sins that was bought by the death of Jesus Christ."
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
New Jersey sides with lesbian couple in dispute with church camp
By Bob Allen (445 words)
OCEAN GROVE, N.J. (ABP) -- A New Jersey department said a Methodist group discriminated against a lesbian couple by denying them permission to hold their civil union on its beachfront property.
New Jersey's Division on Civil Rights announced Dec. 29 that it found probable cause that Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association's refusal to allow the ceremony violated the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.
The association, a Christian retreat ministry on the Jersey shore, denied Harriet Bernstein and Luisa Paster permission to rent its Boardwalk Pavilion for their civil-union ceremony because it conflicted with beliefs of the United Methodist Church.
State officials, however, said the Camp Meeting Association had been permitting the public to use the Boardwalk Pavilion for weddings and secular events and obtained tax exemption from the state Department of Environmental Protection nearly 20 years ago by pledging the pavilion would be open to the public "on an equal basis."
"When it invites the public at large to use it, the Association is subject to the Law Against Discrimination, and enforcement of that law in this context does not affect the Association's constitutionally protected right to free exercise of religion," the ruling said.
The case is at the center of a controversy pitting gay rights against religious freedom.
"Religious organizations have a right to use their property in a way that's consistent with their religious beliefs," said Brian Raum, senior legal counsel for Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association in a lawsuit.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the couple, welcomed the ruling.
"Just two weeks after the Civil Union Review Commission found that civil unions are separate and unequal, we have a flesh-and-blood case illustrating how couples are treated differently," said Ed Barocas, legal director for ACLU-New Jersey. "This decision brings us one step closer to stopping a parallel system of unequal rights."
The ruling by the Division on Civil Rights does not resolve the dispute, but only says the state believes the anti-discrimination law was violated. The issue must be settled by an administrative law judge.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, meanwhile, is in the process of deciding whether the division has proper jurisdiction for the dispute or if it should have been handled in the courts.
Founded in 1869, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association is part of a long tradition that grew out of frontier revivalism in which families would have to travel a long distance to attend evangelistic meetings, which were held outdoors and would last for several days. It is a non-profit organization governed by a board of trustees, who must be members of the United Methodist Church.
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
Opinion: The Bible demands economic justice
By Miguel De La Torre (1,364 words)
(ABP) -- Even before the economy crashed we were using oxymoronic terms like "a living wage" or "the working poor." Shouldn't all wages sustain a life? Should those who work remain poor?
Somehow we have moved away from the biblical principle that not paying a living wage is stealing, for we steal from our employees when we extract a full week of labor and refuse to compensate them with the basic necessities to live a full week.
Full-time workers who are paid the legal minimum hourly wage still fall thousands of dollars below the poverty line, thus proving that in this country, hard work can no longer lift the poor from poverty.
Jesus teaches us that the employer has certain responsibilities toward the laborer. Take the biblical parable in Matthew 20:1-16.
One early morning a vineyard owner set out to hire laborers. He found willing workers, negotiated a fair day's wages (a denarius) and sent them to his fields. Several hours later, he employed additional workers and also sent them to his fields. This process was again repeated at noon, and in the mid and late afternoon. At the close of the day, the vineyard owner first paid those who were hired last and only worked a few hours, using the wage scale offered to those first hired. Some worked all day, some just a few hours, yet everyone got the same amount of money.
Reading this parable from a position of middle-class privilege leads to a spiritual interpretation that reduces the meaning of the parable to symbolism. The denarius signifies grace, which all receive equally regardless as to when they come to the Lord.
Jesus, however, preached this message to the poor of his time, fully understanding that poverty prevented those who were created in the image of God from participating in the abundant life he came to give.
A literal reading of this text reveals that Jesus attempted to teach us economic justice.
These workers had no control over when they would be hired to work. Regardless of when they were chosen, they needed a denarius to meet their basic needs: food, shelter and clothing.
To be chosen to work for only half a day and to be paid half a denarius was insufficient. Half a denarius meant that several family members would not eat that day. Only an uncaring and unmerciful heart will declare it just that these laborers leave without being able to meet their basic needs.
The biblical teaching is that those who are economically privileged, like the vineyard owner, are responsible for those who are not, while laborers are responsible to provide a full day of work unless prohibited by circumstances beyond their control.
Jesus defines justice as ensuring that each worker obtains a living wage, regardless of the hours worked, so that all can share in the abundant life.
Contrary to U.S. capitalist paradigms, it did not matter how many hours a laborer worked. What mattered was that at the end of the day, she or he took home a living wage so that the entire family could survive for another day.
When we consider that Jesus spoke more about money and its use then he did about grace, salvation, heaven or any other topic, we are left asking why churches ignore or avoid dealing with unjust economic arrangements. To continue ignoring economic injustice, or worse justifying it in spiritual terms, threatens our very democracy.
The collapse of the middle class can usher in the collapse of our democratic ideals as the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few imposes their will (through, among other ways available to them, political action committees).
While some of my colleagues of the cloth, from the safety of middle-class privilege, provide some excellent textbook analyses that justify the maintenance of our present economic system, the fact remains that such classroom theories simply collapse when applied to the economic realities of the disenfranchised.
While such pundits may see the cause of poverty to be laziness or buying too much tobacco and alcohol products, the poor realize they are trapped in an economic structure designed to keep them impoverished.
For our economy to work at top efficiency, an "acceptable" unemployment rate is required. Corporate America needs a reserve army of under-skilled and under-educated laborers to keep wages depressed. Not surprisingly, these under-skilled and under-educated laborers are usually people of color.
Full national employment means companies are paying too much to attract and retain employees, which negatively affects their profits. Our economic system is designed to prevent segments of our population from keeping part of God's Third Commandment, "Six days you shall labor."
During the '80s and '90s, the United States experienced the greatest growth in wage inequality among Western nations, contributing to the smallest (proportionately) middle class among 17 industrial countries. This wage inequality means that the richest nation in the world has the highest percentage among other industrial nations of its residents living in poverty, of which 14.5 million are children. Among all industrial nations, the U.S., at 14.8 percent, has the highest rate of child poverty!
How can this be? During the booming economy (1990 to 1995) when most corporations reported profit increases of up to 50 percent, the average CEO's pay rose from $1.9 million to $3.2 million, while the average worker, during that same time period, experienced a pay drop from $22,976 to $22,838.
Yet as the doomed middle class continues their downward spiral, do they look toward the economically privileged segments of our society as the cause of the economic plight? No, because they blame downward.
Job loss is attributed to scapegoating (i.e., affirmative action and undocumented immigrants stealing "our" jobs are the culprits du jour) who are offered up as sacrifices to the gods of capitalism, redeeming the privileged of their sin of hoarding.
No wonder the words of the prophet Jeremiah are ignored by "Christian" capitalists today, "Woe to the one who builds their palace by unrighteousness, their upper rooms by injustice, making their compatriots work for nothing, not paying them for their labor."
To make matters worse, we have moved away from any resemblance of true capitalism as this present economic crises continues the strategy of socializing losses while privatizing profits. The sight of corporate leaders of the automotive industries sitting before Congress asking for a bailout best demonstrates this point.
Their bailout, through the use of taxpayers' funds, spreads corporate losses among all of us. Yet to suggest that any profits they might eventually make also be spread among the taxpayers would raise accusations of communism. Why is socialism acceptable when we talk about bailouts but not profits?
It is inconceivable for me to understand how any minister who reads the biblical text, specifically the message of the prophets to assist society's most vulnerable members (the widow, the orphan, the alien), can choose to make a preferential option for the rich by accepting another's suffering as necessary for the general good. But I must be patient. For you see, I too once fused and confused fancy abstract economic theories with religiosity to justify my own privilege.
For 13 years I ran a real-estate company of 100 agents. I founded it when I was 19. I paid the minimum wage to my seven-year secretary while company earnings soared to six figures.
I shook my head in disbelief when she used her 18-percent-interest-rate credit card to pay for her son's medical bills (I refused to provide health care).
Supply and demand justified my stealing of her labor, based on the fact that desperate and plentiful replacements gratefully sought the chance to catch scraps from my bountiful table.
May the Lord forgive the sins of my youth, for even though I was a deacon at my Baptist church, it wasn't until I made a preferential option to be in solidarity with the poor that I found my own salvation. My penitence is to fight for economic justice for those who lack voice.
Please join me in the call for a living wage, even in these difficult economic times, so that the words of Jesus could be fulfilled, "The worker is worth their keep (Mt 10:10)."
-- Miguel De La Torre is associate professor of social ethics at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver.
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