Associated Baptist Press - 2/26/2009

Associated Baptist Press
February 26, 2009 · (09-27)

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

In this issue
Increasingly, Baptists turning to the observation of Lent (1,087 words)
Arkansas guns-in-church bill dies in state Senate (595 words)
Opinion: The church: Always in need of reformation (795 words)

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Increasingly, Baptists turning to the observation of Lent
By Bob Allen (1,087 words)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) -- Though traditionally viewed as a Catholic rite, increasing numbers of Baptists are discovering the discipline of Lent.

Belmont University, until recently affiliated with the Tennessee Baptist Convention, marked Feb. 25 with an Ash Wednesday service co-officiated by a Catholic bishop.

"As a Christian university, we are strengthened by marking the seasons of the Christian calendar," said Todd Lake, Belmont's vice president for spiritual development. "It is thanks to our sisters and brothers in the liturgical churches that we add these practices to our rich Baptist heritage at Belmont."

Growing from the free-church branch of Protestantism, Baptists traditionally have been highly suspicious of virtually all of the rituals associated with the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions. That began to break down in recent decades as more Baptist (and other Protestant) churches began observing the season of Advent, the four Sundays immediately before Christmas. Some of those congregations also began to incorporate other parts of the liturgical calendar into their worship planning, including the 40-day period of fasting and prayer before Easter known as Lent.

It begins with Ash Wednesday, in which Christians are reminded of their mortality and their share in Jesus' death on the Cross.

As Advent is intended to prepare Christians by identifying with ancient Israel in its long anticipation of Christ's birth, so Lent is intended to prepare Christians by identify with his sufferings in preparation for the Resurrection. For hundreds of years, believers have practiced small acts of self-denial during Lent, such as giving up favorite foods or other habits they enjoy.

Bo Prosser, coordinator for congregational life with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, said he sees interest in Lent growing in Baptist churches every year.

"It's not a program," he said. "It's an appreciation of liturgy."

Prosser incorporated an Ash Wednesday service into the ninth annual True Survivors conference for Christian educators held Feb. 23-25 in Orlando, Fla.

"I think it's the receiving of a blessing as you move into Lent that really has meaning for people," Prosser said.

"We're in the doldrums after Christmas, and now the economy is taking a hit, and I need somebody to say to me, 'This is going to be OK.' My pastor touches me and makes a sign of the cross and reminds me that God is with me," Prosser said. "I think it satisfies a need for a spiritual sign from God that God is still with us."

Not all Baptists are jumping on the bandwagon. Jim West, pastor of Petros Baptist Church in Petros, Tenn., said real Baptists don't observe Lent "because for Baptists repentance can't be confined to a mere 40-day period preceded by the most intense gluttony and occupied with the setting aside of trivial pleasantries and followed by a return to the same-old, same-old," he said.

"True repentance, real repentance, authentic repentance is a 365-and-1/4-day-a-year occupation which, if pretentiously or lightly observed, becomes nothing more than a joke and a charade and a mockery," West wrote in a blog. "That's who Baptists are.."

Randel Everett, who recently took over as executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, reported receiving a mild rebuke when he suggested a season of prayer, fasting and repentance for Texas Baptists during Lent.

"After I had mentioned this idea at a pastors' conference, one of the pastors helpfully reminded me that I was no longer in Virginia but back in Texas, and our Baptist churches don't celebrate Lent," Everett wrote in a column for the Baptist Standard. "He is right. Some of our churches emphasize Advent, but not many mention Lent. So, I began to say, let's celebrate 40 days of prayer between the first day of deer season and Super Bowl Sunday. Use whatever calendar works for each church."

Seasons of prayer and self-denial are nothing new in the Baptist tradition. Southern Baptist churches observe a "Week of Prayer" leading up to annual offerings for both home missions and foreign missions that are promoted -- like Lent and Advent -- during the seasons leading up to Easter and Christmas.

The notion of a 40-day focus on renewal gained traction in evangelical circles with the runaway success of Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life, written in 2002.

Warren, a Southern Baptist pastor, explained in a 2006 newspaper interview why he chose to spread his devotional readings over 40 days.

"You don't feel comfortable in something till you've done it for six weeks," he said. "In 40 Days of Purpose, I was trying to get people to feel comfortable with daily reading, a weekly small group. Some things like these become habits. And, in the Bible, 40 days is used over and over and over in many examples."

"Noah was on the ark for 40 days," Warren said. "Jesus was in the desert for 40 days. When Jesus resurrected, he spent 40 days with his disciples. There are lots of 40 days in the Bible.

Today, it's interesting, a lot of Catholic churches count 40 days during Lent and a lot of Pentecostal churches count 40 days of Pentecost, after Easter."

New Baptist resources focus specifically on Lent. Passport, Inc., a student-ministry organization and partner of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, produces a web-based Lenten devotional called d365.org. The Baptist Center for Ethics, another CBF partner, sells an online group study for Lent in PDF format that was produced in partnership with the Baptist World Alliance. Some churches write their own Lenten resources and share them with other churches on the CBF website.

Unbound by long traditions of Lent, some Baptist churches adapt the observation to custom-fit their particular congregational needs.

Steven Meriwether, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Nashville, recently moved to Tennessee from a church in New Orleans. He said he found it hard to observe Ash Wednesday without preceding revelry -- the season New Orleans observes as Carnival or Mardi Gras -- so he incorporated a Shrove Tuesday element into this year's Ash Wednesday service. The church's regular Wednesday-night meal featured a menu with hot pancakes. It was to be followed by a mini Mardi Gras parade with children before moving to the sanctuary for a service of hymns, prayer, confession and imposition of ashes for those who desire.

First Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, Tenn., has observed Ash Wednesday for several years, but does not use ashes. Instead the pastor invites worshipers to pick up a small square of sackcloth (the other dominant symbol for penitence in the Bible) and use it in private devotions during the 40 days until Easter.

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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Arkansas guns-in-church bill dies in state Senate
By Bob Allen (595 words)

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (ABP) -- A highly publicized bill that would have allowed worshipers to carry concealed weapons in Arkansas churches died Feb. 25 in the state Senate.

According to the Associated Press, the proposal to amend the state's concealed-weapons law to remove "any church or other place of worship" from a list of places where firearms are banned failed by a voice vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The bill, passed Feb. 11 by the Arkansas House of Representatives by a vote of 57-42, divided religious leaders, with pastors testifying both for and against the measure.

The bill's lead sponsor, Rep. Beverly Pyle (R-Cedarville), said churches should have the option of deciding for themselves whether or not to allow firearms in their buildings. The Arkansas Concealed Carry Association said the issue was not whether weapons ought to be in church but rather the separation of church and state.

"The issue is that self-defense is a moral decision, and that decision should not be made for churches by the state," opined a blog entry on the group's website. "Churches have the freedom to make this decision free of government coercion."

The Legal Community Against Violence says 48 states and the District of Columbia allow carrying of concealed weapons. Twelve states and D.C. are "may-issue" states, where officials have discretion about whether to grant or deny a concealed-weapon permit, while 34 are "shall-issue" states, meaning law-enforcement officials must issue a permit to anyone who meets statutory criteria.

Most states that allow concealed weapons place restrictions on where they can be carried. The majority prohibit weapons in schools, government buildings and places where liquor is served. Fourteen states prohibit concealed weapons in places of worship.

According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the carrying of concealed weapons was prohibited or severely limited in most states prior to the mid-1990s. Then Second Amendment advocates, stunned by losses in enactment of the Brady Background Check Bill and Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1993 and 1994, made overhauling state gun laws the National Rifle Association's legislative priority.

In the United States about 30,000 people die each year from gun violence, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

The Legal Community Against Violence, a lawyer group formed after an assault weapon rampage that began at a law firm in San Francisco in 1993, says Americans own an estimated 270 million firearms -- about 90 guns for every 100 people.

Firearms are the third-leading cause of injury-related deaths nationwide, and firearm homicide is the leading cause of death for African Americans age 45 and younger.

About 5,000 people a year die from unintentional shootings, and 43 percent of suicides are committed with a firearm. Guns also increase the probability of death in incidents of domestic violence.

Firearm-related deaths and injuries cost $2.3 billion a year in medical bills, half of which are borne by taxpayers. Factoring in legal and societal costs, the legal center estimated the total annual cost of U.S. gun violence at $100 billion.

The sponsor of the failed Arkansas bill said she may try to submit the proposal again. On the same day the Senate killed the concealed-weapon bill, another Natural State lawmaker sought a measure making secret the list of people with concealed-handgun permits.

Rep. Randy Stewart (D-Kirby) filed legislation to make the names of license holders confidential and punish anyone who knowingly publishes them with up to $1,000 in fines and a year in prison.

The bill came in response to an online database to search for Arkansas handgun permits that has since been removed.

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

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Opinion: The church: Always in need of reformation
By David Gushee (795 words)

(ABP) -- "And if we glance again at Jewish history and see the strangeness and absurdity of the Jew, his obnoxiousness which repeatedly made him odious among the nations -- and now you may give the anti-Semitic register full play -- what else does that mean but confirmation of this rejected Israel, which by God was made visible at the Cross, but also of the Israel with whom God keeps faith right through all stages of his wandering?"

Who said this? Martin Luther? David Duke? Richard Williamson, the controversial Holocaust-denying bishop?

None of the above. These words come from Karl Barth, probably the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th century. In this same essay, drawn from 1946 lectures offered in a bombed-out Bonn university and published under the title Dogmatics in Outline, Barth writes: "Alongside the Church there is still a Synagogue, existing upon the denial of Jesus Christ and on a powerless continuation of Israelite history, which entered upon fullness [in Jesus Christ] long ago." And of God's relationship to Israel, Barth says: "He has never ceased to lead by cords of love this people which to His face has behaved like a whore." And: "It was no accidental matter ... that here in Germany it was said that 'Judah is the enemy.' We may say this and in some circumstances we must say it; but let us be quite sure what we are doing."

Think of when these words were spoken -- the summer of 1946! World War II had been over for one year. National Socialism had collapsed; its leaders were dead, missing or facing trials. But the regime had lasted long enough to murder six million Jews. How in the world could one of the church's most astute theologians say such things in the shadow of the catastrophe that had just befallen the Jewish people?

It is not as if Barth was unaware of that catastrophe. It runs like a subtext throughout this chapter. Israel for Barth is indeed God's chosen people. Israel is "the rock of the work and revelation of God." Nazism's attack on the Jews was therefore an attack on "the nation that embodies in history the free grace of God for us all." But this divine grace carries with it the sad necessity of being "a people in God's service," with a prophetic, priestly and kingly mission, which often involves "surrender ... even unto death" in the service of God. And the fact that, according to Barth, Israel has resisted its election and mission and, most significantly, "handed [Jesus] over to Pilate to be killed" means that Israel has "pronounce[d] its own condemnation" and is therefore "continually struck down and broken by the judgment which afflicts him just because he withdraws from grace."

Karl Barth resisted Nazism. He led theological efforts to resist the Nazification of the German church. He fled Germany rather than cooperate with that evil regime. History has judged him to be one of the very best leaders German Christianity had during the struggle for its soul in the early 1930s.

And yet, Barth left published words that are breathtaking and terrible; at least, they must seem that way to anyone who takes seriously the long history of Christian theological anti-Judaism and cultural/political anti-Semitism and its contribution to the Holocaust. As of 1946, at least, he had not reconsidered his theology of Israel in light of the grotesque evil of the Holocaust. (The book was published in English in 1959. Even 14 more years did not lead to a revision.)

Here is the point. Ecclesia semper reformanda -- in English, "The church is always in need of reformation."

It is a Lutheran slogan that would have been well known to Karl Barth himself. But Barth did not fully assimilate its implications when it came to how he talked about Jews and Judaism. His writing reveals evidence not just of a long Christian history of interpreting the Jewish people as God's reprobate elect who suffer for their rejection of Christ, but also shows traces of the anti-Semitic Nazi culture that, in so many profound ways, he had led in resisting.

If this could happen even to Karl Barth, one of the church's very best thinkers, what might that say about the rest of us? What are our blind spots? Where might we be in need of reformation?

This is a word that ought to speak to those hard-shelled traditionalists who have allowed their version of Christian faith to calcify and resist needed reformation prompted by new times, new tragedies and new insights. But it is also a word to those soft-shelled modernists who have allowed their version of Christian faith to stray from core convictions that must be held steadfastly in all times and places.

David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University.