Associated Baptist Press - 2/24/2009

Associated Baptist Press
February 24, 2009 · (09-25)

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

In this issue
Yearbook notes membership declines for Catholics, Southern Baptists (822 words)
St. Louis church committed to its urban neighborhood for good, for God (1,127 words)
Baptists, liquor store owners united against Tennessee proposal (504 words)
Opinion: God and guns (1,070 words)

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Yearbook notes membership declines for Catholics, Southern Baptists
By Bob Allen (882 words)

NEW YORK (ABP) -- The nation's two largest Christian denominations are experiencing slight but statistically significant membership declines, according to the latest edition of the National Council of Churches' Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches.

Released Feb. 23, the 77th annual compilation of church statistics reports membership in the Roman Catholic Church declined 0.59 percent last year. It also reported a 0.24 percent drop in the Southern Baptist Convention's membership.

Roman Catholics are still America's largest denomination, with 67 million members. Southern Baptists still rank second, with 16.2 million. Given the groups' respective sizes, neither decline is earth-shattering, authors of the study said. But the report raises eyebrows because both groups have in the past grown steadily but now may be joining virtually every mainline church in experiencing persistent membership decline.

According to the 2009 Yearbook, just four of the 25 largest faith groups grew last year. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is up 1.63 percent, to 5.8 million members in North America. The Assemblies of God are up 0.96 percent, to 2.8 million members. Jehovah's Witnesses grew 2.12 percent and now number 1.09 million. The Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) is up 2.04 percent, to 1.05 million.

According to membership figures compiled by churches in 2007 and reported to the Yearbook in 2008, the Catholic Church lost 398,000 members in a year, while Southern Baptists lost nearly 40,000.

Churches with the highest rate of membership loss include the United Church of Christ (down 6 percent,) the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (down 3.1 percent) and the Presbyterian Church (USA), down 2.79 percent.

While still losing members, the American Baptist Churches USA cut its previous decline rate in half, from 1.82 percent to 0.94 percent.

Overall membership in the top 25 groups declined 0.49 percent, to about 146 million.

Eileen Lindner, editor of the 2009 Yearbook, said the annual ranking is often viewed as a gauge for relative vitality of communions reporting either increases or declines in membership, but in reality counting those numbers "is a rather imprecise art."

Some churches, Lindner said in a title essay published in the new Yearbook, count children who are baptized as infants as members, while others wait until they are confirmed. Still others rely on a "born-again" experience or "believer's baptism" for counting members.

Some churches, particularly Orthodox and African-American communions, estimate their membership based on numbers of their constituents living in a community. The National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., sixth-largest faith group with 5 million members; National Baptist Convention of America, Inc., with 3.5 million members and ranked No. 8; and Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc., ranked 11th with 2.5 million members, all fall under that category.

Further complicating the picture, Lindner said, many church members relocate, join other congregations or drop out of church without removing their names from the rolls. Some traditions, by assessing dues based on the number of parishioners, encourage local churches to cull their membership rolls regularly. But others, like those that reward numerical growth, encourage padding.

Non-denominational and megachurch congregations often permit or encourage people to attend but not join. Emergent-church fellowships don't always place emphasis on formal membership, but may instead measure church effectiveness by the number of meals served or other forms of ministry.

Studies show younger generations are either mistrustful of institutions or find them irrelevant, making them less likely to join a church.

Lindner said all this calls for rethinking church membership as a measure of congregational health.

In the 1960s, for example, growth of evangelical churches while mainline churches declined prompted some to believe that conservative churches grow because they maintain traditional teaching and place high expectations on members while liberal churches, by nature, become secularized and tepid.

Later studies attributed those patterns to demographics, suggesting that higher birth rates and younger memberships explain growth and decline better than theology.

Still others said declining numbers forecast a gradual secularization of American culture similar to what happened in Europe following World War II.

"Today it appears that another dimension of this discussion has been opened," Lindner wrote. "Now a variety of expressions of church has become a part of the American religious landscape, and these expressions have begun to alter, once again, the place of numerical assessment of patterns of religious affiliations."

"Whether or not church membership counts remain the most common measure of church vitality in the long term may be open to question," she wrote. "There is little doubt that the topic of church membership and its meaning are undergoing a review in the life and organization of many church bodies."

She said Rick Warren, for example, a Southern Baptist megachurch pastor and author of The Purpose Driven Life, has reasserted the importance of membership by developing an elaborate "Covenant of Membership" for those who would affiliate with his Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.

The 2009 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches is available for order at http://www.electronicchurch.org/.

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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St. Louis church committed to its urban neighborhood for good, for God
By John Rutledge (1,127 words)

ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- With 12,000 theater seats, 12 galleries and museums and more than 1,500 cultural events each year, St. Louis' Grand Center neighborhood is an arts lover's dream. In the heart of the historic midtown neighborhood stands Third Baptist Church, a congregation determined to be "in the city for good."

Third Baptist is a place of diversity. On any given Sunday, the congregation includes everyone from the homeless to millionaires, a variety of colors and ages. "It's not something we advertise or try to be," Pastor Warren Hoffman said. "It's just who we are."

The church has stood on the corner of Grand and Washington boulevards for nearly 125 years, and has been a part of St. Louis for nearly 160 years. When it first moved to its current location the church was on the far west end of town, said Leslie Limbaugh, minister of students and communication.

Since that time, the church has watched the demographics of the neighborhood change several times. They included the bustling days of 1920 to 1950, when streetcars passed the church, which grew to over 6,000 under the pastorate of C. Oscar Johnson; to the decline of the area, when many St. Louisans flocked to the suburbs; to the rebirth of the district as an arts mecca in recent years.

In the midst of decline, the church received an offer of land in the suburbs but voted to remain in the city. "We suffered with the city as it bled," Hoffman said.

The church's history of commitment to the city influences what it is today. "It's in the DNA of this congregation; there is more elasticity," Hoffman said.

Today, Grand Center's boosters describe the neighborhood as "a playground for the senses, full of exotic sights, amazing sounds, tantalizing smells and tastes and overwhelming feelings. We are the center of all that feeds the mind, body and soul."

Third Baptist believes their role at Grand and Washington is to be a good neighbor, providing the "fragrance of Christ" in the neighborhood.

To accomplish that role, the church practices hospitality. "We want people to feel welcome here, no matter their station in life. We want to be a safe and worshipful place," Limbaugh said.

This means that members and visitors don't stress about what to wear, what is put in the offering plate or what others pay for supper.

There is no "looking over the shoulder of self-righteousness," Hoffman said. "After four or five years ago," when the church was in survival mode after years of decline, he said, "we don't have the luxury of that."

If an individual or family can't pay for Wednesday night dinner or a church activity, a wink or nod from the pastoral staff will signal their ability to participate.

"We don't make a big deal out of it, but we make it [participation] happen," Limbaugh said. "We work to make sure everyone feels included and engaged. I'm sure it doesn't always work, but most of the time we are successful."

Limbaugh said she likes the fact that the lines and tables during Wednesday-night suppers display the church's diversity. "This is what God's kingdom will look like," she said.

Hospitality isn't limited to people attending church functions, however. Church staff members partner with Grand Center and other community organizations to keep a finger on the pulse of the neighborhood.

"When we hear of somebody else doing something, we ask 'couldn't we walk alongside and do this?' Or, 'could we piggyback on this event and do that?'" she said.

The church offers their building for community events -- sometimes as a concert venue or art space, other times as a place for dance troupes to change clothes. "We have a big space on prime real estate," Limbaugh said. The neighborhood "looks for venues for events, and sometimes we can provide that."

During these events, volunteers from the church act as greeters as well as security, crowd-control and concession workers.

Hoffman acknowledges that most of those who participate in the Grand Center events never will come to worship services. But by being hospitable, he said, Third is displaying the fragrance of Christ.

"We are still a missional place," he said. "We see the call to serve right around us, not just to send dollars to others to do it for us."

The church is home to a tutoring program, staffed mainly by local college students. Third has also served as a host for the local elementary school's summer-school program. This past summer, the church offered to provide an hour of arts education for each day of summer school. Third utilized its connections in the neighborhood to introduce various forms of music, performance and visual arts.

Hoffman invited the school principal to participate in the Sunday worship service on several occasions, to emphasize the church's commitment to the school. Recently, the principal came forward to join the church. "That was totally unexpected," Hoffman said.

With the variety of programs and partnerships with neighbors, "the building is well-used again," said Hoffman. The church was able to re-open an entire wing of the facility that had been closed due to lack of use. But now, the pastor said, "We need the space."

Last year, for the first time in decades, Third gained more members than it lost. "We knew the church had reached a turn-around, but this was a demonstrative display," Hoffman said. While he has no "grandiose vision of thousands" in worship, he believes the church will continue to grow.

Both Limbaugh and Hoffman agreed Third Baptist is what it is today because the church stays true to who it is.

In worship, that means being a "different type of contemporary." Praise and worship songs may not find a home in the service, but the church pulls from contemporary traditions such as Taizé and jazz. The sanctuary features a full pipe organ, and once a month the pastors wear clerical robes.

"I don't preach from the Lectionary, but we do follow the church calendar," Hoffman said, quick to note that they aren't tied to any particular liturgical trappings.

"We are still Baptists," he said. "We are free to do it [wear robes and follow the traditional Christian calendar], and we are free not to."

"The niche is smaller, but you have to be who you are," he said.
Limbaugh said the church really is blessed to have the facility that past generations built and maintained. "We are able to say: 'We have this building. What can we do here?'"

"This is who we are and where we are," she said. "And we're having fun."

"People know where they are loved," Hoffman added. "There is an oasis, a family here. It's hard to describe, but it feels good; it feels right."

John Rutledge is webmaster for the Texas Baptist Standard.

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Baptists, liquor-store owners unite against Tennessee proposal
By Bob Allen (504 words)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) -- They might seem like unlikely allies, but booze peddlers and Southern Baptists are teaming up in opposition to proposed legislation that would allow the sale of wine in grocery and convenience stores in Tennessee.

Currently Tennessee allows the sale of beer, but not wine, in food stores. Grocers are backing bills introduced in the Tennessee Legislature to create a new class of liquor license allowing the sale of wine at retail food stores in counties and towns that already permit package liquor sales.

The Tennessee Grocers and Convenience Store Association posted an online petition for consumers to sign up to support wine sales at stores.

Tennessee Consumers for Fair Wine Laws also support the measure, saying competition with other retail wine sales would result in lower costs for customers as well as an increase in the number of wine varieties and brands available.

Opponents say more than 500 independent liquor stores in the state would stand to lose half their business, jeopardizing jobs of the 3,000 people they employ. State law does not allow liquor stores to sell beer.

Recently the editor of Baptist & Reflector, newspaper of the Tennessee Baptist Convention, weighed in with an editorial urging the state's Baptists to oppose the bill as well.

"I find it ironic (even funny) that Baptists would be on the same side as the liquor industry, but it is true in this case, even though for totally different reasons," Editor Lonnie Wilkey wrote in an editorial reprinted Feb. 22 in The Tennessean, Nashville's main daily newspaper.

Wilkey said increasing the number of outlets selling alcohol would allow easier access to wine for those who shouldn't have it, including teenagers and alcoholics.

"Research has shown that increasing the number of outlets selling alcohol leads to more addiction, violent crime, underage drinking and car crashes," Wilkey wrote. "That's not only research-proven, it's just plain common sense."

Tennessee is one of a number of states currently considering loosening restrictions on liquor sales as a way to boost tax revenues. Georgia, Connecticut, Indiana, Texas, Alabama and Minnesota are all considering legislation that would end the ban on Sunday liquor sales. Two dozen states are looking to help their budgets by raising taxes on alcohol.

Legislation dealing with wine sales in Tennessee was deferred during the last legislative session for study until this year. A Senate committee took up the matter in a hearing at its first meeting of the year Feb. 10.

Wilkey said Baptists are not trying to "legislate morality" in opposing the change.

"Opposing this bill is not forcing our beliefs on anyone, because the alcohol can already be purchased," he wrote. "We are just opposed to making it easier and more convenient to buy."

"Tennessee probably will never be alcohol-free, but we can help limit its availability," he said.

The sponsor of the state Senate version of the bill is Sen. Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro). Sponsoring the companion House bill is Rep. David Shepard (D-Dickson). According to their legislative biographies, both are Methodists.

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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Opinion: Of God and guns
By Benjamin Cole (1,070 words)

(ABP) -- Count me among those Baptists who are about as likely to carry a leather-bound King James Bible as we are to carry a stainless-steel Colt Python .357.

Etched with almost equal prominence in my memories of childhood are my first Bible -- received in the first grade as a gift from the First Baptist Church of Longview, Texas -- and my first rifle -- received in the fifth grade as a gift from my late father.

For many American boys, these two moments are among the most significant rites of passage to form the framework within which we learn our constitutional heritage. As humans, it is our natural right to worship God freely according to the dictates of our conscience and apart from government intrusion or coercion. As Americans, it is our constitutional right to keep and bear firearms.

I'm not sure many young men conflate the two, as if somehow our freedom to worship is safeguarded by our freedom to pack heat. But this month, the 87th General Assembly of the State of Arkansas is considering a bill that is causing critical reflection about these two separate-but-equal constitutional guarantees.

On January 27 Republican state Rep. Beverly Pyle of Cedarville, Ark., introduced House Bill 1237 to amend a state law that prohibits licensees from carrying a concealed firearm into houses of worship, schools and several other kinds of public spaces. The bill passed the House Feb. 11, and is now awaiting approval by the Arkansas Senate. Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe has promised to sign it into law if it is passed. The effort, according to the bill's sponsor, is a response to the growing incidence of church shootings across the nation.

As would be expected, Baptist pastors across the state are weighing in on the issue. And like every other issue about which Baptists squabble, there is no shortage of opinions. Some ministers oppose the bill because they fear that concealed weapons in their worship services would disturb the "tranquility and sanctity of church." Others oppose the bill on a more substantive theological basis, advocating instead an ethic of Christian non-violence. Still others default to the separation of church and state and argue that the government is constitutionally restricted from interfering in church affairs.

For some reason, the question of God and guns always ignites our passions.

Most of us, at the moment of crisis, are unable to engage in the serious task of weighing moral responsibilities. Adrenaline kicks in, and the flight-or-fight instinct trumps our previously planned course of action when confronted with a choice between life and death.

As a staunch advocate of the Second Amendment who believes that the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear firearms is a double bulwark against both totalitarianism and anarchy, I bristle every time the Left tries to restrict my gun rights. As a thinking Christian who is able to weigh the moral distinction between passive resistance and self-preservation, I'm aware that the Second Amendment does not supplant the gospel call to suffering injustice for Christ's sake.

The question for me is one of competence. That is, who exactly is competent to tell me when and where to worship? And who, exactly, can tell me when and where to carry a gun?

Perhaps this is where it is helpful to read both the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence side-by-side, for the latter draws a distinction between alienable and unalienable rights while the former draws a distinction between the jurisdictions of federal and state governments.

It seems to me that these are two different rights grounded in two different laws and subject to two different facets of ordered liberty. The freedom to worship is a freedom of the individual conscience grounded in the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," to borrow a Jeffersonian formula. This right, as the Founders aptly saw, is among those unalienable rights that men possess irrespective of their age, race, creed or position in society. Not even a death-row inmate loses his right to worship God freely, for there is no shackle on earth than can constrain the soul.

The freedom to keep and bear firearms, however, is not an unalienable right. It is a constitutional one, lawfully and rightly retained by citizens who do not oppose just and reasonable laws. It is not a right to be retained by the irresponsible or the unlawful. We cannot keep a crazy man from worshiping a stick of butter, for instance, but we can certainly keep him from attempting to shoot those who prefer to prostrate themselves before a crock of margarine.

What House Bill 1237 has truly exposed, rather than a question of drawing lines between church and state, is the brilliance of federalism. We are beholding the people of the state of Arkansas determine, through a process of representative democracy, what the laws of their state shall be. And it is prudent that this question is determined by the state legislatures and not by the United States Congress.

I say it is prudent because of the cultural differences that exist between the states. A boy growing up in Longview, Texas, for instance, is more likely to receive a gun from his father than a boy growing up in Newark, N.J.. The fear that a gun rack in the back of a pickup truck would cause in Arkadelphia, Ark., is much different than it might cause in San Francisco.

So I cannot say that a Christian should or should not carry a gun to church. Nor can I determine whether or not the state of Arkansas should allow it. All I can say is that until a man is compelled by the democratically determined greater good of his society to relinquish his right to carry a concealed weapon to church, he is free to do so. Because he is free, however, does not mean that he is obliged. As a general rule I'm committed to maximizing the freedoms of citizens and limiting the power of government, though I realize a society where fathers do not take the care to raise responsible law-abiding sons might require the intervention of government to preserve ordered liberty.

On the other hand, no government has the authority to bind a man's conscience in matters of worship. Fortunately, no major religion in America requires its adherents to worship the Almighty with both shotgun shells and chorus bells.

-- Benjamin Cole is a former Southern Baptist pastor who now works on public-policy issues in the nation's capital.