Associated Baptist Press - 2/18/2009

Associated Baptist Press
February 18, 2009 · (09-22)

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

In this issue
SBC Executive Committee postpones vote on ouster of Broadway Baptist Church (680 words)
Baptists gather in Rome for peace conference (375 words)
FCC to churches: Don't throw out your wireless mics -- yet (378 words)
Opinion: Faith versus science?

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SBC Executive Committee postpones vote on ouster of Broadway Baptist
By Bob Allen (680 words)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) -- The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee has asked a Texas church to clarify its views on homosexuality before determining whether its toleration of gay members violates a constitutional ban on churches that "act to affirm, approve or endorse homosexual behavior."

A motion referred to the committee by the SBC last June seeks to declare Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth "not to be in friendly cooperation" with the denomination.

While the original motion did not state the cause of the action, SBC leaders interpreted it to be in response to news stories about a controversy within the congregation over whether to allow same-sex couples to be photographed together in a church directory. Rather than vote up or down, the church opted for a compromise that used candid photos of members instead of separate family portraits to illustrate the membership.

The full Executive Committee voted unanimously and without discussion Feb. 17 for a recommendation "that the study of whether Broadway Baptist Church of Fort Worth, Texas, should continue to be considered to be in friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention, and further inquiries and continued communications with the church be made, with the goal of arriving at an appropriate report to the convention at its June 2009 annual meeting in Louisville, Kentucky."

The vote came after long discussions in two subcommittees open to the press under background rules forbidding direct quotation or attribution.

In written correspondence with the Executive Committee, church leaders said members hold a "variety of views" on homosexuality, but the church has not acted in a way that violates the constitutional membership requirement.

Several Executive Committee members said the church's clear declaration that it does not affirm homosexuality seemed in tension with the admission that five of its 1,400 church members are openly gay and two of the five are assigned to a committee.

The Executive Committee asked the church to provide more information about the congregation's views on homosexuality and the church before it reports back to the convention on the referred motion at the SBC annual meeting in June.

Church leaders appealed to Southern Baptist leaders to help them to get past a number of difficult issues troubling the church, adding that homosexuality isn't one of the major ones.

"We are not a church where homosexuality is a defining issue," church leaders said in a letter. "While we extend Christian hospitality to anyone -- including homosexuals -- we do not endorse, approve or affirm homosexual behavior."

The SBC, the nation's second-largest faith group behind Roman Catholics, changed its constitution in 1993 to exclude churches that are welcoming and affirming of gays. In the past, the amendment has been interpreted to apply to churches that take some formal action, like ordaining or licensing a gay minister or conducting a ceremony to bless a same-sex union.

In 2006, an SBC-affiliated state convention with a similar policy said a church could be expelled for simply being perceived as affirming homosexual behavior.

The next scheduled meeting of the Executive Committee is June 22, just prior to the SBC annual meeting scheduled June 23-24.

If Broadway Baptist Church is disfellowshipped, it will have implications for four of its active members who teach at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, including the church's choir director and Sunday morning worship leader. Southwestern requires all full-time faculty members to belong to a Southern Baptist church.

"We are pleased that we were received so graciously," Lyn Robbins, a Broadway member and the church's general counsel, said after the vote. "We believe that we are in friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention. Our purpose here today was to express that and also to share who Broadway is and what we are about."

Robbins said the church members at the meeting would relay the Executive Committee's request for more information back to the church, and he anticipates Broadway will be willing to have more communication.

"Nothing happened today that makes me believe that we cannot reach a conclusion that will be in the best interest of both Broadway and the SBC," he said.

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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Baptists gather in Rome for peace conference
By ABP staff (375 words)

ROME (ABP) -- Baptists active in non-violent struggles for justice convened Feb. 9-14 in Italy for a conference aimed at strengthening the Baptist peacemaking witness around the world.

Between 300 and 400 Christians, many from troubled and war-torn regions who had to struggle just to be there, gathered for worship, addresses, storytelling, training and encouragement at the Global Baptist Peace Conference. Though sponsored by Baptists, the conference was open to people from other denominations as well.

Plenary speakers included Anna Maffei, a conference planner and president of the Unione Cristiana Evangelica Battista d'Italia (Italian Baptist Union.) She spoke about the effects of violence on children in virtually every country in the world.

"There are 50 countries currently in armed conflict, but I do not think it is only 50 countries who have declared war on children," Maffei said.

She contrasted those who plan conflicts and violence as looking down from above and "playing God" instead of seeing the world from below as the victims do and as Jesus chose to do.

"We need to stop playing God and become human beings again," Maffei said.

Gustavo Parajón, a Baptist pastor and physician in Nicaragua, described trauma in his country resulting from conflict between the Sandinista government that led Nicaragua between 1979 and 1990 and the United States-backed Contra forces who opposed them. A leader in mediation efforts between the two parties, Parajón described of the church's non-violent witness that helped transform armed conflict into peaceful resolution.

Workshops covered topics ranging from a theology of peace to environmental concerns.

The conference concluded with a worship service at Rome's oldest Protestant congregation, the Waldensian Church, where the Italian Baptist Union has its headquarters.

It was the fifth international peace conference for Baptists held in the last 20 years. Previous conferences were in Sweden (1988), Nicaragua (1992), and Australia (2000.)

Sponsors of the 2009 gathering included the Italian Baptist Union, Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, International Ministries of American Baptist Churches USA, Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, Baptist Union of Great Britain and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

From Rome, the BPFNA delegation headed for a Feb. 12-March 2 friendship tour to the Holy Land, visiting sites in Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the West Bank, with transit through Syria.

-- Katie Cook for Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America contributed to this report, which included information from a blog by Molly Marshall, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary.

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FCC to churches: Don't throw out your wireless mics -- yet
By Norman Jameson (378 words)

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- Churches: Don't throw out your wireless microphones -- yet.

With the shift of the nation's broadcast communications from analog to digital, early indications were that wireless microphones might become outdated or even illegal.

A Federal Communications Commission official said Feb. 17 that rules were still being written to address those issues, even though Feb. 17 was the original day the switch was to be made.

The national deadline for switching to digital broadcast is now June 12. Television stations in some smaller markets made the switch by the original deadline and there will be a "rolling" switchover, said the official who spoke only on condition that he not be identified.

He said rules governing the digital channels that microphones would use will be finalized "soon," which he defined as "in the coming days and weeks."

The background: Signals broadcast through the air occupy a specific band or channel. Digital signals can be compressed much more efficiently and they occupy less air space, or fewer channels. Consequently, a national switch to digital opens space, into which will slide new commercial and public digital services, including "interoperable" radios that will put fire, police, rescue and emergency response services on equipment through which they can talk with each other.

Recent large-scale disasters have exposed major difficulties in communication and coordination for response teams in ways that have proven catastrophic.

While television stations occupied the spectrum in channels 2-69, the digital compression is packing them into channels 2-51. Now new services and the interoperable systems will locate in channels 52-69, the empty space in which many church wireless-microphone systems operated. The government auctioned that air space for $20 billion.

Church wireless-microphone systems will need to find a home in channels 51 and below. That availability varies city by city, depending on what other services are there.

It actually is not the microphones that will be out of date, but the transmitters that send the signal to the amplifier. Some can be reconfigured. Others will be no good. Churches will generally have more flexibility if their sound-system equipment is new or high-end.

The equipment manufacturer should be able to help local-church audio crews, as well as help them with what channels are vacant in their areas, the FCC official said.

Norman Jameson is editor of the Biblical Recorder, the newspaper of North Carolina Baptists.

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Opinion: Faith versus science?
By Marv Knox (678 words)

(ABP) -- Talk about a pointless war. The battle between faith and science just doesn't make sense.

The whole world seems to be thinking about the relationship of science and religious faith this week, as we mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. (In fact, the Baptist Standard and our New Voice Media partners recently prepared an entire package of articles on Darwin, evolution and the varieties of creationism, which you can read on this website.) Nothing this side of Galileo has inflamed so many Christians as Darwin's evolutionary tome, On the Origin of Species.

Still, I must confess: I just don't "get" the fight between religion and science or faith and reason.

Missing the point

Oh, I understand the arguments. Some Christians feel threatened by the scientific assertion that the world came to be as it is through natural selection and an infinite number of mutations. On the other side, some scientists feel Christians who disagree with them willfully ignore plain evidence of observation. (I know those are gross oversimplifications, but I'm just pointing to the parameters. This is a column, not a book.)

It's just that the folks who argue most stridently miss the point -- not only of their adversaries' purpose, but of their own.

The faith/reason or religion/science debate would go away if people simply acknowledged the role of each.

God & science in creation

Take creation -- please.

The Bible's account in the Book of Genesis seeks to explain the "Who?" and "why?" of creation. In the beginning, God launched the process that resulted in humanity because God desired a loving, reciprocal relationship with other sentient beings. Genesis offers two accounts of creation (in the first two chapters) that do not specifically harmonize with each other, much less current approaches to science and history. But they reinforce the Who and why of creation.

Science, on the other hand, seeks to explain the "what?" and the "how?" Darwin proposed a model for explaining how the species as we currently find them came to be. Both before and certainly ever since, scientists have been proposing and testing hypotheses to demonstrate the chemical and biological processes that bring them along.

Two purposes

So, religion and science have two different purposes. No amount of logic must deduce they oppose each other. They're asking different questions, which lead to different answers, but not necessarily contradictory answers.

Religion errs when it seeks to dictate the range of answers science can discover. Science errs when it claims all its answers are final, and nothing -- or, more specifically, no One -- lies behind them.

I've been listening to this debate my whole life, and I've decided I'm a Christian who's comfortable with theistic evolution. The Bible -- my authoritative guide for faith and practice -- tells me God is the Who behind creation and God's love is the why. Science seeks to explain how life developed on Earth through the millennia.

Annoyed and/or embarrassed

Sometimes, atheistic evolutionists annoy me. They overstep their bounds, confident that because they feel they have good answers for the what and how of creation, they do not need a Who or why. But more than annoy me, they make me sad. For when they close their minds to the possibilities outside their sphere, they also close their hearts to a relationship with the God of love, Who has transformed my life and filled it with meaning and purpose. I feel sorry for them.

Almost always, however, hard-line creationists embarrass me. I guess it's because we're fellow believers, part of the same family. Your kinfolk can humiliate you far more intently than neighbors and people you don't even know. Their arrogance is bad enough, but their lack of faith is worse. They think they've figured out how God did creation, and they deny the possibility of any other process. Don't you see the irony? They become the ones who would limit God.

And worse still, their stridency, anger and mean-spiritedness gives God a bad name and drives unbelievers away. That never was God's divine plan for creation.

Marv Knox is editor of the Texas Baptist Standard. This column is adapted from a Feb. 12 entry on his blog, FaithWorks.