Why Baptist Families are Fracturing

Wade Burleson raised a provocative question on his blog yesterday. He asked "Do Southern Baptists Set Women Up for Abuse?" His blog called attention to a guest column by Mary Gruben in the Abilene Reporter News entitled "Southern Baptist View of Women Needs Update."

Southern Baptist leaders have been working tirelessly to subjugate their women since 1979. That was the year when both Leon McBeth's Women in Baptist Life was published and the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC began. McBeth's book revealed the remarkable advances that women were making within the ministries of the SBC. The Fundamentalists thought resubjugating their women would save their families, but all they did was to accelerate the fracturing of families and divide their denomination.

By 1999, the Bible Belt, the heartland of the Southern Baptist Convention, had the highest divorce rate in America. Only Nevada, home of the quickie-divorce, had a higher rate of divorce than Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

SBC leaders still think the solution to the problem of divorce is to tell wives to “submit” to their husbands. “Submissive” wives don’t question their husband’s directions and they hold their tongues when they know their husband is leading the family astray. In the words of Dorothy Patterson, a drafter of the SBC’s 1998 family statement, "When it comes to submitting to my husband, even when he’s wrong, I just do it. He is accountable to God." In the Fundamentalist’s world, husbands give orders and wives obey. All relationships, even families, are structures of power and servility.

Unfortunately for Fundamentalist’s, most women in the real world of twentieth century America believe that marriages are built on love and respect. They got that idea from the Bible (Eph. 5:33), not from their culture, and they expect to be equal partners in a regenerate relationship. They got that idea from the Bible too (Gal. 27-28; Eph. 5:21-33).

Fundamentalists don’t deny that love is the basis for marriage. They just define love in the terms of pagan Roman culture rather than in the terms of biblical Christianity. For Fundamentalist’s, love is a struggle for power and marriage is a relationship between a master and a slave.

Christ, on the other hand, demonstrated in word and in deed, and in life and in death, that true love is sacrificial and self-giving. Christian love concerns itself with serving others not with ruling over them. That is the only kind of love with power to reconcile fractured and broken relationships.

Secondly Truth About Gaza

Brain Mclaren has posted a couple e-mails about the Israeli bombardment of Gaza from Hannah Mermelstein, a Jewish peace and justice worker in Israel.

She describes heartwrenching conversations with Palestinian friends as they endure the bombings. Regarding the Israeli rationale for their attacks, Mermelstein quotes Mourid Barghouti in his 2003 book I Saw Ramallah:

"It is easy to blur the truth with a simple linguistic trick: start your story from 'Secondly.' Yes, this is what Rabin did. He simply neglected to speak of what happened first. Start your story with "Secondly," and the world will be turned upside-down. Start your story with "Secondly," and the arrows of the Red Indians are the original criminals and the guns of the white men are entirely the victim. It is enough to start with "Secondly," for the anger of the black man against the white to be barbarous. Start with "Secondly," and Gandhi becomes responsible for the tragedies of the British. You only need to start your story with "Secondly," and the burned Vietnamese will have wounded the humanity of the napalm, and Victor Jara's songs will be the shameful thing and not Pinochet's bullets, which killed so many thousands in the Santiago stadium. It is enough to start the story with "Secondly," for my grandmother, Umm 'Ata, to become the criminal and Ariel Sharon her victim.

Israel's Response Disproportionate in Gaza

Editor & Publisher has posted a compilation of news analyses about Israel's response to the sporadic rockets coming from Gaza. The title, "Attack on Gaza -- Self Defence or Mass Murder?" suggests the thrust of some of the opinions.

Nearly all of the opinions cited are coming from newspapers within Israel and from Jewish writers outside Israel. Here's one of the most insightful quotes:

Daniel Levy, a political analyst in Israel who once served as an adviser to Ehud Barak, who is leading the military campaign against Hamas: "I don't see how this ends well, even if, in two weeks time, it looks like it ends well."

Adobe Complaint

Three weeks ago Adobe Systems announced that they were laying off 600 people -- about 8% of their workforce -- because sales of their new CS4 software was not meeting estimates.

I made personal note of these layoffs because I have been trying without success to buy Adobe's software and have found the company to be one the least customer friendly businesses on the planet. Here's a copy of a letter of complaint that I have been holding to send to their CEO on December 24th:

December 24, 2008

Shantanu Narayen, President
Adobe Systems Incorporated
345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704

Dear Shantanu,

This letter is written to call your attention to policies and procedures that have undermined my confidence in your company and irritated me to the point of exasperation. Frankly, I do not understand why your company insists on making it so difficult for customers to purchase your software.

On November 20, 2008 I attempted to purchase an academic version of the Adobe CS4 Master Suite. I filed the necessary paperwork and authorized a charge of $999.00 on my credit card and then had to wait for my academic credentials to be approved.

That evening I talked to my son about this purchase and he advised me that I really should purchase the full version of Adobe CS4 Master Suite in order to be able to take advantage of discounts on future upgrades.

On November 21, 2008 I received confirmation that my academic version had been approved and that it was available for download. I did not download any software. I called Adobe customer service and your agent confirmed that I needed the full version if I wished to receive a discount on future upgrades. I advised your agent that I wanted to pay the difference between the academic version and the full version and then be able to download the full version. He advised me that he was unable to upgrade my purchase. He also stated that he was unable to cancel the order for my academic version on that date and that I should try to cancel the academic order and then purchase the full version after November 24th.

Since November 24th I have contacted agents with your customer service on at least three additional occasions and have spoken to a customer service supervisor once. On two different occasions I have faxed statements to your offices swearing that I will destroy the academic version of the software that I never downloaded and have never had in my possession. Agents from your office have confirmed that they have received my faxes but they insist that they cannot give me a credit on my credit card. Instead, I must wait for a check with nothing but a promise that it will be mailed in three or four weeks.

Every time that I have spoken to your customer service agents I have informed them that I do not want a refund check, nor do I want a charge credit. All I want is to pay the difference between the academic version and the full version and then download the full version. All of your agents as well as your customer service supervisor have advised me that that is impossible. I find it incomprehensible that your company makes it so difficult for customers to pay an additional $1500.00 for your product.

I have been trying to resolve this problem for more than a month now. I still do not have any software in my possession. I still do not have a charge credit or a refund. For more than a month, your company has tied up $999.00 of my money and my credit.

I have a question I wish you would answer. If you were in my place, why should I continue to do business with your company?

Sincerely,

Dr. Bruce Prescott
Customer ID Number : 170243379
Customer Service Case: 201526534


Cc: Dr. Charles M. Geschke, Co-Chair of the Board of Directors
Dr. John E. Warnock, Co-Chair of the Board of Directors
Brandon Bailey, Mercury News

Reflections on the Life of Penni Bourque

Penni's funeral was held at St. Therese Catholic Church in Canton, Texas this afternoon. Here's the reflection on her life that I gave at her funeral.

I've been asked to reflect briefly on Penni's life and influence. I am her oldest brother. I was eleven when she was born. She was eleven when I got married. Most of my memories of her are from her childhood. All of those memories are fond memories.

From the moment that Penni was born she was unflappable. Her happy, positive, self-assured spirit is visible even in her earliest pictures. Like every happy child, she didn't have a care in the world. And when she grew older and the circumstances of life began to weigh on her, she always found a way to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. No matter how bad the cards were in the hand that she was dealt, she found a way to perceive it to be a blessing and make the most of it. She did that to the very end.

Penni's life is best summarized as a life that was lived caring for others. Most of her working life was devoted to caring for new born babies who were born with lungs that were too pre-mature to sustain their lives. There are a lot of babies who would not be alive today had it not been for Penni staying beside them keeping their lungs filled with just the right amount of oxygen at just the right pressure. After she was sick with cancer herself, she was constantly by our mother's side caring for dad in the final stages of his struggle with pancreatic cancer.

My nieces on my wife's side of the family have remarked on several occasions that she was the most easy-going and pleasant person on either side of the family. Penni was a very unassuming person. I've never known her to be self-assertive, arrogant or conceited. She was a team player, a calming influence, someone you could always count on to pitch in and help without complaint.

Her one ambition in life was to be a good wife and mother. Nowhere is that more visible than in the stories about palliative care that were told by Lee Hancock of the Dallas Morning News and by the photos taken and the video produced by Sonya Hebert of the Dallas Morning News and WFAA TV. They made it possible for others to see what made Penni such a remarkable woman, wife and mother -- and my entire family is deeply grateful to them and the Dallas Morning News and WFAA TV for what they have done with her story.

All I have to add are three brief vignettes from moments in Penni's life that are revealing of her humanity and personality.

The first moment is from a time when Penni was a child. Once, when Penni was in pre-school, my mother invited one of her friends to our house for dinner. Her friend was a full-blooded Navajo and she had a little girl about Penni's age. At that time, none of us was sophisticated enough to call Navajo’s Native Americans. Mom just told Penni that "a real Indian" was coming to visit and she needed to be sure to share her toys with her. Later, after the woman and her daughter had been in our home for nearly an hour, mom sent me to get Penni and the little Navajo girl to come to dinner. As I went to Penni's room where the two were playing and having the greatest time, I heard Penni say to the little girl -- "After dinner a real Indian is coming to play. We have to make sure we share our toys with her too."

That was Penni all her life. She was completely color-blind, class-blind and race-blind. She always believed that all children are God's children and she treated everyone with equal dignity and respect.

The second vignette is from a moment when Penni was twelve or thirteen. The incident made a deeper impression on her than it did me. I forgot about it, she reminded me about it the last time I saw her.

When Penni was entering her teenage years, I was already married, out of the home and working as a police officer for the Albuquerque Police Department. One night when I was on duty, I saw a couple young girls walking down the street, after midnight, in a bad part of town. It was dangerous. I stopped my patrol car and got out to ask the girls what they were doing. Much to my surprise, one of the girls was Penni and much to her surprise, the policeman questioning her was her older brother. She didn't know if she was more frightened to be stopped by the police or by her big brother.

I discovered that Penni was spending the night with a friend and they decided to sneak out of the house and go to a K-Mart that was open all night. They didn't think anyone would ever know. From what Penni told me, she never thought she could get away with something like that again.

The last vignette is from a moment a few months ago when Penni talked to me about dying. Penni was raised a Baptist, made a profession of faith in Christ at the age of twelve, and was Baptized as a believer. Near the end of her life she became a Catholic and took great delight in the rituals of the mass and holy communion. She was not afraid to die, she was ready. But as death was becoming an ever present reality, she had some tough questions to ask and she expected her brother, now a Baptist minister, to give her some straight answers.

Essentially, Penni wanted to know why God ever created a world where people had to die. She knew that death was the result of sin, but she also knew that God foreknew that sin would enter the world before he ever created it. "So, what's the point?" She asked. "Why do we all have to go through this?"

She put me on the spot. I've talked to lots of people about death. If questions like this were on their mind, none of them were ever so bold as to ask their preacher. But, Penni wasn't talking to her preacher. She was talking to her brother and she expected me to have an answer for her.

By the grace of God, I had an answer that seemed to put her mind at rest, but it is the kind of answer that Baptist preachers are reluctant to express. We would much prefer to read a passage from the Bible than to suggest an analogy that is not clearly expressed in scripture. I share this analogy, then, as an example only of a thought that gave Penni a sense of inner peace.

I told Penni that "the world of death," as she called it, in which we now live only has meaning if there is something better beyond the grave. I reminded her of the premmie babies that she cared for at Children's hospital. Every one of those babies lived in an almost perfectly happy blissful world inside their mother's womb. It is the only life they had ever known. Then without notice and without their own consent their life was rudely interrupted by the painful experience of child birth. However happy they were with life in the womb, and however painful the experience of childbirth was, they were better off being born. They were created for something more than an isolated life in their mother's womb.

I didn't have to draw out the analogy for her. A tear came to her eye and a slight smile came across her face and she said, "You know, some of my premmie babies up there never had a chance to have a mother."

Penni's Obituary

The Dallas Morning News gave special attention to Penni's obituary. She died the day before she was featured in a story about palliative care.

The picture above is my last picture with Penni.

Penni's Story

Penni's Story was published in a front page article in today's Dallas Morning News -- "Baylor teams help families understand death, face it together."

Penni Passes Away

My sister Penni Bourque passed away this morning. She died of ovarian cancer. Here are a couple of my favorite pictures of her. Recent photos and video of her can be found here at the Dallas Morning News. She will be featured in a story about end-of-life care tomorrow.

The picture above is my favorite picture of Penni. I think this photo of Penni with my brother Pat and I was taken in the summer of 1980. She was about 17 years old.

In the picture below I am holding her the day she came home from the hospital. I was eleven years old.

CBF Missionaries and Unease in North Africa

The Washington Post has published a story distributed by Reuters entitled "Christian missionaries stir unease in North Africa." Cooperative Baptist Fellowship missionaries are mentioned in a misleading way in the story. Here's a quote:

Mission groups in North Africa range from broad alliances such as Partners International and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship to small Baptist and Pentecostal churches based in the Americas and Europe, according to their Web sites.

Their activity is growing as churches turn their focus to places where the Christian message is rarely heard, said Dana Robert, world Christianity professor at Boston University.

"With the internet and the increase in travel, you have a democratization of missions where anyone who feels like it can go anywhere they want," said Robert. "The new breed of missionary doesn't have the same historical training as the older established denominations, nor necessarily the cultural training, so there's a bull-in-a-china-shop effect."

It is misleading and just plain wrong for Tom Pfeiffer to leave the impression that CBF missionaries lack historical and cultural training. Many groups send untrained missionaries to the mission field, but CBF is not one of them. It is also wrong to insinuate that anyone associated with CBF might be among those who lack "restraint and discretion."

Pfeiffer owes the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and its missionaries an apology and a retraction.

Podcast: Frank Schaeffer Interview

My 12-14-08 "Religious Talk" radio interview with Frank Schaeffer (28 MB MP3). Frank is the son of the late Francis and Edith Schaeffer. He is the author of several novels and books and the producer of the "How Should We Then Live?" and the "Whatever Happened to the Human Race" film series. We talk about his latest book, "Crazy For God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or almost all) of it Back."

My interview picks up where Terry Gross's Fresh Air interview with Frank for NPR left off. We talk about his and his father's involvement in the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, about their relations with Christian Reconstructionists, and about statements in his book regarding Billy Graham's family.

At the Edge of Life and Death

The Dallas Morning News has published a significant and extensive investigative series entitled "At the Edge of Life: Life and Death in 21st Century Medicine."

This series provides valuable information and help for ministers, families and physicians regarding end of life care.

I would recommend it highly even if my sister's story was not part of the series.

Living Fully to the End

The Dallas Morning News has been working on a feature story about palliative care for more than a year. My sister, Penni Bourque, who is terminally ill with ovarian cancer is one of the subjects of the story.

The article and still photos will be in this Sunday's edition of the newspaper. WFAA TV in Dallas (Channel 8) will run some of the Dallas Morning News video feature at 10:00 PM this evening.

Here's a link to a clip of the video of my sister -- "Penni Bourque: Living Fully to the End"

Prayers for Penni would be appreciated. Her latest goal is to make it to her birthday in the middle of next month.

Paperless Advent Calendar

Someone has created a very special "paperless advent calendar."

Be sure to click the pictures to see the videos. There's a video for each day of the advent season.

Hat Tip to Xpatriated Texan for the link.

On God and Abortion

Robert Tapp, in an essay on Religion Dispatches, asks a question that the anti-abortion movement refuses to address. He asks, "Is God the Supreme Abortionist?" The question arises from our knowledge of the number spontaneous abortions that occur by natural processes:

A major controversy in contemporary culture is the question of when human life begins. Religions have given different answers and the consequences that have followed have been very divisive. Does life begin at conception, or at implantation, or at quickening, or at birth, or…? Family planning and contraceptives have further complicated these controversies. Is pregnancy the normal/natural purpose/result of our sexuality—or is it an outcome that can be either intended or accidental (and thus probably undesired)?

We know now that perhaps 30 percent of fertilized human eggs spontaneously cease development and are thus aborted in the early stages of pregnancy—often undetected. A considerable number of embryos miscarry during later stages of pregnancy. If we use the phrasing of the country’s founders — Nature and Nature’s God — what do we make of this reality? Should we view Nature or God as the supreme abortionist? A friend of mine who is a churchgoing fertility specialist speaks of such events as “accidents” but the theological and philosophical implications are enormous. A current metaphor is that not every acorn can or does or should become an oak tree.

If nature is so wasteful toward human embryos, how can anti-abortionists be so sure that there is a divine imperative to preserve embryos that were produced by rape, incest and in instances where the life and health of the mother is at risk?

Frank Schaeffer on Fresh Air Today

Frank Schaeffer, son of the late Francis Schaeffer, will be on NPR's Fresh Air today at 3:00 PM ET. The promo suggests that he will be explaining why he is "Pro-Life -- and in favor of keeping abortion legal."

After listening to the interview, if you would like to ask Frank a question, send me an e-mail. Frank will be a guest on my radio program this Sunday morning. We will be discussing his new book "Crazy for God."

A Rare Medium Well Done

Ethics Daily has posted a brief video review of the work it has done over the past year. There's no other place like it on the web. It is truly a rare medium well done.

Here's a link where you can show them your appreciation by making a year end donation. Please be generous.

Podcast on NeoVouchers

My 12-7-08 "Religious Talk" radio interview (27 MB MP3) with Dr. Kevin G. Welner, associate professor of education and director of the Education and Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. We talk about Dr. Welner's book "NeoVouchers: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling."

Televangelist's Jet Not Tax Exempt

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is reporting that the Tarrant County Appraisal District has denied televangelist Kenneth Copeland a tax-exemption on his jet. The exemption was denied because his ministry refuses to disclose the salaries of the ministry's directors.

Perhaps Copeland needs to take a cue from automotive company executives and start travelling by hybrid.

Whitten Responds to Jeffress

Dr. Mark Whitten, author of the Myth of Christian America and Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Tomball College, has written a response to Dr. Robert Jeffress' assertion in a comment on this weblog that no "substantive error" had been demonstrated regarding his claim that America was a Christian nation. Jeffress is pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas. Here is the text of Whitten's response to Jeffress:

Dr. Jeffress,

You posted on Bruce Prescott's blog that it had yet to be demonstrated that you had made a substantive error in your claims that America is a 'Christian nation' and that the Supreme Court declared that Christianity was the 'established religion.'

Here is that demonstration of factual and interpretive error.

The Supreme Court decision Church of Holy Trinity v. United States (1892) was not a church-state decision. The issue was neither to decide nor to declare whether the America was a 'Christian nation.'

Like many advocates of the claim that America is a 'Christian nation' you fail to distinguish between two senses of 'Christian nation':

1. the institutional -- legal sense, in which the laws and political institutions have Christianity as their doctrinal-philosophical foundation.

2. the historical -- cultural sense, in which the American people and their cultural-social institutions are predominately influenced by Christianity.

Josiah David Brewer's majority decision makes it quite clear that he held that America was a Christian nation in the second sense, not the first,

"This is a religious people. This is historically true. From the discovery of the continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation. We find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth . . . These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation." [emphases added]

Brewer later wrote a book entitled The United States: A Christian Nation (1905) in which he made clear his view:

"But in what sense can the United States be called a Christian nation? Not in the sense that Christianity is the established religion or that people are compelled to support it. . . . Nor is it Christian in the sense that a profession of Christianity is a condition for holding office or otherwise engaging in public service, or essential to recognition either politically or socially. In fact, the government as a legal institution is independent of all religions." [emphases added]

Brewer's words are a part of the 'dicta,' providing the rationale of the decision. They were not a part of the 'findings' of the decision. Even if Brewer were asserting that America is a Christian nation in a legal-political sense, and he was not, dicta establish no precedent and establish no principle of law.

Nowhere in the decision is the term 'established' used to describe the relation of the Christian religion to the legal-political institutions of American government.

Beware of basing your case upon a corrupted text of the decisions that is widely disseminated among those who advocate your position. (The following words in italics are spurious -- they are not contained in the Holy Trinity decision.)

"Our laws and institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. And in this sense to the extent that our civilization and institutions are emphatically Christian . . . This is a religious people. This is historically true. From the discovery of the continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation. We find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth . . . These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation."

I will look forward to your acknowledgment that factual and interpretive errors in your case have now been demonstrated.

You can demonstrate your integrity by acknowledging this on Prescott's blog comments section.

Sincerely,
Mark Weldon Whitten

Setting the Record Straight

The Baptist History and Heritage Society, the most prestigous and reliable source for historical information about Baptists since 1938, recently released its Summer/Fall 2008 issue of their journal. The entire issue deals with "Baptists and the First Amendment."

Doug Weaver's historical overview of Baptists and the First Amendment alone is worth the price of a year's subscription. Particularly noteworthy is Weaver's treatment of the influence of Baptist Supreme Court Justices like Charles Evan Hughes (1862-1948) and Hugo Black (1886-1971) on the Supreme Court's decision making.

I just received my order of about a dozen single copies of this recent issue and plan to send copies of it to the Baptist county supervisors in Henrico County Virginia and to Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas. These prominent Baptists have been confused or misguided about the Baptist legacy in regard to separation of religion and government long enough. It's time we set the record straight.

Then again, you can lead a horse to water, but . . .

American Christianity Facing Shock Treatment

In my mind, Robert Parham's essay contending that "Financial Crisis Will Shape Long-Term Religious Ethos" considerably understates the challenges that American Christianity is about to face. Churches have not faced the economic challenges we are about to face and we are ill prepared to meet them.

Economists are warning that a protracted recession is just beginning and job losses are going to mount. The housing market, the credit market, and the financial markets have all experienced seismic shocks in the past year. More shocks are on the way. Our economic future is a mess. The balance of economic power is rapidly shifting from the west to the far east.

Every family in America is being effected and that includes church families. Will Willimon cites research on his blog that indicates serious conflict within the congregation is the number one predictor of congregational decline. Nothing creates serious conflict within families and churches like financial distress.

Willimon suggests that the keys to church growth in the future will be reaching out multi-racially, keeping people happy, and having more active males.

I tend to think that the economic strains we are about to face will alter the landscape of our churches. It's not the growth of churches that is important but the growth of God's kingdom. Big churches with their enormous economic footprints are a huge drain on the work of God's kingdom. They have too much real estate to maintain in a depression economy. Megachurch complexes and the mammoth debts that have been accumulated to build them may well make fine museums.

I pray that we see a revival of small churches that grow by multiplying and reproducing more small churches. The kind that are frugal with expenses on brick and mortar in order to devote the bulk of their resources to meeting the human needs of their communities. In my mind, the future of the church looks more like a mission outpost or a house church than a megachurch.

Footage of Third Trade Center Tower Falling (Revised)

In the Youtube video above, Fox News reporters comment as Tower 7 at the World Trade Center implodes.

Outside New York City, few people realize that three towers fell on 9-11. Tower 7 was not struck by an airplane. It is the only steel frame building ever said to collapse due to fire.

Happy Turkey Day!

And, Happy Thanksgiving.

Hat Tip to Zaius Nation for the picture.

Read Some Original Baptist Sources

Over the weekend Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, commented on my blog about the "Misguided Rhetoric at First Baptist Dallas." Jeffress quotes a commentary from former Supreme Court justice Joseph Story (1779-1845) as an authoritative interpretation of the original intention of the U.S. Constitution.

Associate Justice Story was a child when the Constitution was being written and was merely ten years old when it was adopted (1789). Undoubtedly, his understanding of the intentions of our nation's founders was from second-hand sources and hearsay evidence that would not bear scrutiny in a court of law.

Furthermore, Story was from Massachusetts, the state that was the very last state to disestablish the church and bring its state constitution into line with the federal constitution. Massachusetts did not disestablish its church until 1833 -- the same year that Story's commentary was published. On the topic of church-state separation, both Story and his native state were obviously out-of-step with the rest of the people in the country.

I've been suggesting to Jeffress that he read source documents instead of second-hand documents for his understanding of the intentions of the founding fathers and the mindset of revolutionary America. The primary source to read is James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance. Madison is the primary author of the Constitution and of the Bill of Rights.

Jeffress would know that if he knew his Baptist history. It was Baptist evangelist John Leland and the Baptists in Virginia who convinced Madison that he had better add the First Amendment if he wanted to get the Constitution ratified in Virginia. After the U.S. Constitution was adopted, Leland wrote a pamphlet entitled "The Rights of Conscience Inalienable" (1791) that explained the intention of the First Amendment and Article VI of the Constitution:

"The federal constitution certainly had the advantage of any of the state constitutions, in being made by the wisest men in the whole nation, and after an experiment of a number of year's trial upon republican principles; and that constitution forbids Congress ever to establish any kind of religion, or to require any kind of religious test to qualify for any office in any department of federal government. Let a man be Pagan, Turk, Jew or Christian, he is eligible to any post in that government."

(L. F. Greene, ed. The Writings of John Leland. New York: Arno Press, 1969, p. 191)

Regarding the inequities of the state constitution in Massachusetts, here's what Leland said to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1811:

Government should be so fixed, that Pagans, Turks, Jews and Christians, should be equally protected in their rights. The government of Massachusetts, is, however, differently formed; under the existing constitution, it is not possible for the general court, to place religion upon its proper footing. (p. 358)

In times past I could only quote the references and hope that readers would be able to find a copy of Leland's writings in a local library. Today, anyone can download the book from Google Books and check the reference for themselves at their leisure both online and on their own laptops and computers. So there is no longer any excuse for Baptists to not be familiar with the writings of the Baptist leaders who led the struggle for religious liberty in America.

Here's a link to "The Writings of the Late Elder John Leland." (1844)

Here's a link to Massachusetts Baptist leader Isaac Backus' "Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty: Against the Oppressions of the Present Day" (1773).

Podcast: Joann Bell Interview

Dr. Bruce Prescott's 11-23-08 "Religious Talk" radio interview with Joann Bell (27 MB mp3). We talk extensively about her experience as a Plaintiff against the Little Axe Independent School District in the early 1980's.

Podcast: Bell vs. Little Axe in a Nutshell

Here's a link to a brief (90 seconds) audio excerpt (mp3) from a Religious Talk radio interview I did several years ago with Joann Bell, Executive Director of Oklahoma's office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Joann summarizes her experiences as a complainant against practices and policies associated with before school prayer meetings at the Little Axe ISD in the early 1980's.

Joann is also featured in an ACLU video on "America's Constitutional Heritage: Religion and Our Public Schools." Here's what she said about her experience in the video:

Joann: I got my own obituary in the mail. My kids were threatened constantly -- their lives. I was told my kids were not going to survive. They said my house would be burned. The threats to burn my home was the one that I probably should have taken the most seriously. I just couldn't see in an civilized area -- I considered that these people would not ever do that. But my home was firebombed. Unless you've ever had a fire -- the devastation is something you cannot even begin to describe. To lose everything you've ever had. And with four children you really accumulate a lot of things -- the trophies. Everything that you saved, your baby pictures, the little things -- your marriage license. You lose everything. There's nothing hardly that can be saved. One of the things, the very few things that survived the fire was the christening dress of my daughter. We have three sons and we have a daughter that we're very proud of and this was her christening dress and that little hat was melted. It's one, it's one of the things that you'd like to pass on and let them use it for their children. This is just an example of things that were ruined and what our family lost in the fire. Because we essentially lost everything we had.

Eventually, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit put an end to the unconstitutional endorsement of a fundamentalist Baptist religiosity in that school district.

Some of the most enduring reporting about the case was done by the National Catholic Reporter.

Joann will be a guest on my radio program again this Sunday. We'll talk a lot more about her experiences with the Little Axe ISD then.

TFN and the Texas SBOE Science Hearing

Kudos to the Texas Freedom Network for getting educators and scientists out in force to observe and testify at the Texas State Board of Educator's science hearing. They came to oppose teaching "intelligent design" in public schools.

TFN posted a live blog through the hearings yesterday. The SBOE's response to teaching sound science was not encouraging.

What the fundamentalist Christians who have taken over the Texas SBOE don't realize is that they are driving thoughtful, intelligent young people away from faith. In Oklahoma, one of the state's most prominent atheist organizations is filled with twenty- and thirty-somethings who grew up in fundamentalist churches, mostly Southern Baptists. When they carefully examined the evidence for evolution, as opposed to creation science and "intelligent design," they tossed the Christian faith right along with the pseudo-science they associate with it.

The chief problem with fundamentalist Christianity is that it's god is too small.

Shameful Behavior By Baptists

Robert Parham has posted a story on Ethics Daily about a shameful split vote among Baptist laymen serving as Supervisors of Henrico County, Virginia that denied a Muslim congregation permission to build a mosque and community center. Parham writes:

Baptists split their vote over an issue which essentially centers on the religious majority's commitment to the religious minority's right to religious liberty, the right to build a house of worship. Religious discrimination in the United States against Muslims isn't new. Nonetheless, it is surprising and disappointing when it takes place in the southern cradle of Baptist religious liberty.

I plan on sending Richard W. Glover and James B. Donati, Jr. a copy of a good book on Baptist history. Their education on Baptist history and distinctives is woefully deficient. I'm also going to send one to Baptist bystander Virgil R. Hazelett, the manager of Henrico County, who maintained a complicit silence during the vote.

It is particularly shameful for Virginia Baptists to discriminate against religious minorities. 230 years ago, when they were the minority facing religious discrimination, Virginia Baptists were at the forefront of efforts to separate church and state and secure religious liberty for persons of every faith.

What's the Matter with Preachers in Kansas?

Raw Story has posted a story and a video about a church sign in Wichita, Kansas denouncing the election of Barack Obama.

The pastor of the church knows that Obama professes to be a Christian, but he insists that "we have a Muslim President" and "This is a sin against the Lord." Placing himself upon the judgment seat of Christ (2 Cor. 5:10), the pastor declares that "The main point of the marquee is to cause the Christians to understand he is not a Christian."

What's the matter with preachers in Kansas? Fred Phelps isn't enough? Now we have Mark Holick. Do they have no shame about bearing false witness? (Ex. 20:16) Have they ever read the sermon on the mount? (Matt. 7:1-5) When are they ever going to discover that the gospel is "good news" (I Cor. 15:1-11) and start preaching about that?

Second Wave or Last Gasp

Mark Ray has posted an insightful essay entitled "Is the Second Wave of the Conservative Resurgence Coming to Fruition" for the Baptist Studies Bulletin. By "second wave" Ray is referring to the fundamentalist takeover of Southern Baptist State Conventions. He makes note of the recent resurgence of fundamentalist successes in relatively tranquil state conventions like Texas, Alabama and North Carolina and concludes:

As denominations continue a steep decline in attendance at annual meetings, diminished financial resources, and loss of talent pool through the severing of longstanding institutional ties, Fundamentalists may awaken one day to discover that it's unclear exactly what it is they've actually "won." That which remains may be unrecognizable or even non-existent.

I agree. Perhaps we should call this "second wave" the last gasp of a body suffering from fundamentalist induced asphyxiation.

On the Politics of Irresponsibility

Kevin Mattson hasw posted some valuable book reviews under the title "Has Conservatism Cracked Up?" at the Dissent Magazine website. Here's an insightful paragraph:

What makes conservatism so unpalatable today is its inability of its adherents to accept responsibility for the results of their own ideas and the consequences of their political theories. The conservative mind dreads having the historical tables turned on it. Since 1968, conservatives have blamed liberals for a failed track record—arguing, for example, that the Great Society didn’t tackle the problem of poverty and sometimes exacerbated it. Now with the track record of George W. Bush plain to see, conservative intellectuals fear liberals can return the favor. “Comeback” is the contemporary conservative circumvention. It is the call to ignore the historical record, to wipe the slate clean, as if ignoring the past can be squared with the conservative project of appreciating tradition. So we have the neoconservatives with their “what if” argument about Iraq or the conservatives who dissociate from—while simultaneously relying upon—the Christian right’s activist base. This is the most manifest form of a contemporary politics of irresponsibility.

Hat Tip to Robert Cunningham for calling my attention to this essay.

Krugman Calls for 600 Billion Stimulous

In an essay entitled "Depression Economics Returns", Economist Paul Krugman, recent recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, says the U.S. is already in the realm of depression economics. The size of the stimulous he says we need to pull us out of this depression is eye-popping:

All indications are that the new administration will offer a major stimulus package. My own back-of-the-envelope calculations say that the package should be huge, on the order of $600 billion.

News reports are already indicating that there was a record decline in retail sales last month, unemployment claims are soaring, state unemployment insurance funds are depleted, and the end is not yet in sight.

Some of the most alarming news is coming from the nation's third largest city and President-elect Obama's hometown, the city of Chicago. The mayor has advised the city to prepare for mass layoffs.

Info on New Baptist Covenant Regional Meetings

Ethics Daily has posted a story about the plans for New Baptist Covenant Regional meetings.

In January 2008 more than 15,000 Baptists from across the United States, Canada and Mexico met for the first ever meeting to celebrate a New Baptist Covenant. The covenant represented the commitment of more than 20 million Baptists in North America to fulfill our "obligations as Christians to promote peace with justice, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, to care for the sick and the marginalized, welcome the strangers among us, and promote religious liberty and respect for religious diversity." The covenant also reaffirmed our "commitment to traditional Baptist values, including sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ and its implications for public and private morality."

The leaders of the New Baptist Covenant, representing more than 80 Baptist Conventions, fellowships and organizations in North America, agreed to meet collectively every three years to renew this commitment. Between these triennial meetings, the leaders of the New Baptist Covenant called for regional meetings that would gather to unite Baptists from our various Conventions, fellowships and organizations to celebrate, exhort, network and encourage one another in fulfilling the obligations of our new Baptist Covenant.

Brian Kaylor's report on Ethics Daily provides information about three of the NBC regional meetings that have been planned -- in Birmingham, Ala., in January, Kansas City, Mo., in April, and Norman, Okla., in August.

Sex and the Pulpit

When I was a teenager at a Baptist church, preachers were constantly telling boys and girls not to hold hands during church services. Naturally, we perceived that as a challenge to do so and couples often came up with some creative ways to both openly and secretly defy ministerial bans on handholding.

As a teenager, I never quite knew whether the preacher's opposition to intertwined fingers was prompted by his own desire to control every aspect of our young lives or whether they thought God frowned on every form of premarital touching. I just know that holding hands with a girl was never more exhilerating than when it was done during a service at a Baptist church.

I mention this to provide some psychological background for my uneasiness with a new trend among preachers of Baptist churches. Gone are the days when Baptist preachers stand behind pulpits and issue mandates against handholding. Today, some Baptist preachers have become so hip that they preach from beds in order to exhort their married congregants to add daily sex to their list of spiritual disciplines. I'm not making this up.

I'm still not certain whether such preaching is prompted by the preacher's desire to control every aspect of his congregant's lives. I am fairly certain that if Jesus gave a sermon on a bed, it would have been recorded in the gospels right along with his sermon on the mount and the sermon on the plain.

I'm also a little worried that if more preachers make sex obligatory, it will start taking some of the fun out of sex.

Summarizing Bush's Faith-Based Initiatives

Bill Berkowitz has done a masterful job of summarizing the work of the Bush administration's faith-based initiatives. Here's the paragraph that leads into more detailed discussion of six of the worst examples of the corruption and cronyism perpetrated by this administration:

Despite the administration’s ceaseless touting of its “compassionate conservativism” and its desire to unleash the “armies of compassion” to deal with the nation’s social ills, Bush’s faith-based initiative never made it out of Congress; no effective legislation was passed. Team Bush was able to establish Faith-Based and Community offices at eleven federal agencies, and the initiative spread its tentacles into a host of other federal, state, and local government agencies. Thirty-five governors and more than seventy mayors, both Democratic and Republican, have established programs modeled on the federal Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, though it was rife with scandal. In short, despite the lack of congressional approval, Bush’s faith-based initiative has burrowed its way into the political landscape.

Unfortunately, as Berkowitz reveals, Obama plans to continue the office. Without doubt, we will be summarizing his administration's abuses whenever he leaves office. Giving taxpayer money to churches is a bad idea. Only the names and political orientations of the abusers will change.

It will be interesting to observe whether the right-wing religionists so eager to receive government funding start singing a different tune when the dollars begin to flow to liberal churches rather than conservative churches.

Regarding the Abortion Issue

The New Republic has posted a valuable essay by Damon Linker, author of The Theocons, discussing why the religious right will not fade quietly into the sunset after this election. The single issue that prompts millions of evangelicals to vote lock-step with the right is abortion. Linker offers some advice to president-elect Obama. Here's some of it:

Obama could follow the lead of Bill Clinton in combining a stalwart defense of the right to choose with an acknowledgement that the decision to have an abortion is a choice that troubles the consciences of many millions of Americans--including many millions who steadfastly support abortion rights. Clinton's "safe, legal, and rare" served him well in this regard, but surely an orator as gifted as Obama could forge an even finer phrase or passage of prose to capture the often tragic moral complexities surrounding this most divisive of issues.

I agree with Linker that finding some middle ground on the abortion issue is what Obama needs to do to address the concerns and allay the fears of American evangelicals. I disagree, at this late stage in the struggle, that "an even finer phrase or passage of prose" will be enough to make a difference.

Most evangelicals in America are too lazy to reseach both sides of an issue. They rely on authority figures to do their thinking for them.

Obama has the weight of office, but his rhetoric on this issue holds no weight in their thinking. The people whose rhetoric holds weight with them on this issue are their pastors. Most of them have already made up their minds. Their positions are now so rigid that foetal life increasingly trumphs maternal life.

Should any evangelicals decide to examine the complexities of this issue, I have a couple podcasts to recommend. They are an interview (split into two parts) that I did with a member of a church I once pastored. Here and here are links to my 11/28/99 "Religious Talk" radio interview with Rose Pena.

Remember the Poor During Economic Crisis

Last week, a journalist asked me for a comment on an article in the Baptist Times last week about Christian leaders urging world leaders not to forget the poor in the midst of the ongoing global financial crisis. That story has cycled off the Times' website, and no follow-up story has appeared, so I guess I'll post my response myself. Here it is:

I applaud those groups who have stepped to the forefront of efforts to assure that world governments honor their commitments to the U.N. Millennium goals. I encourage all moderate and mainstream Baptists to put this on their daily prayer list and make it a priority in their vocal and visible incarnational witnessing efforts.

The current financial crisis irrefutably demonstrates the interrelatedness of the human community and the imperfections of our economic systems. All Christians should measure the adjustments necessary to correct and amend our economic systems by the adjustments and improvements made to asure that the least among us have the resources and opportunities necessary for them to become self-sufficient.

The U.S. has pledged $16 billion toward the U.N. Millenium Development Goals. This amount is pitiful in comparison with the trillions recently committed to rescue the institutions of wealthy American financiers, brokers and bureaucrats whose reckless greed and irresponsible stewardship led to our current economic meltdown. If, or when, inflation and/or devaluation reduces the value of the dollar, Christians should insist that the U.S. meet its obligations toward the U.N. Millenium Development Goals with dollars equivalent to the value of our currency when our commitment was made.

On the Revival of Democracy

Evangelical Christians have long been praying that the United States would experience a third great awakening. Yesterday, when Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, they witnessed the most profound confirmation imaginable that their prayers have been answered.

Ironically, evangelical Christians (mostly Southern Baptists) are the Americans least likely to perceive that a new spiritual awakening has dawned upon our land. More than any other single group in this country, they are blind to the hand of Providence that has become visible at this moment.

A prodigal nation has come home. A loving father is running out to meet us with rings and new robes. The barbeque pit is smoking and the entire world is prepared to join the celebration. Only, the father's elder sons are missing.

Come to the party, evangelicals! This is truly one of democracy's finest hours.

Countdown to Change in America

This blog will automatically update itself as election results are released.

I'll do a little live blogging in the comments section. Reader comments and responses are welcome.

Will a Machine Win the U.S. Presidency?

Misguided Rhetoric at First Baptist Dallas

Robert Jeffress, Pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, preached a passionate sermon entitled "America is a Christian Nation" yesterday. The sermon was full of sound and fury signifying nothing except that the pastor is completely misguided regarding the meaning of the First Amendment to Constitution of the United States.

The source of Jeffress misguidance was cited early on in his sermon. He credits David Barton who spoke at his church not long ago.

The historical and legal inaccuracies broadcast in Jeffress' sermon are too numerous to waste time and space enummerating. Here's one of his most egregrious historical inaccuracies:

Jeffress states that Jefferson's 1802 letter to Danbury Baptists, the letter in which Jefferson uses the wall metaphor for separating church and state, was written to allay Baptist fears that he would establish the Congregational Church and thus deprive them of their religious liberty.

No one of intellectual integrity who had invested even an hour reading source documents from the hand of Thomas Jefferson himself would contend, as Jeffress did, that Jefferson's wall metaphor merely opposed the establishment of any Christian denomination rather than opposing the establishment of any religion.

For the benefit of Jeffress edification and education, here are some links to more accurate information about the original intent of the First Amendment than he has been receiving from David Barton:

Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson (1779)
Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, Thomas Jefferson (1802)

While he's catching up on his education, it wouldn't hurt Jeffress to read the famous speech that George W. Truett, one of his predecessors at First Baptist Dallas, gave about Baptists and Religious Liberty.

Defining Progressive Faith

I think progressive faith has at least ten characteristics. It is conscientious, chastened, hopeful, strong, humble, growing, questioning, dialogical, active and interdependent.

1. First, and foremost, a progressive faith is a conscientious faith.

I understand conscience to be an exercise of human understanding or imagination that involves three steps.

The first step is an act of intellectual (mental) distantiation that produces self-consciousness -- it is the ability to step outside yourself (whatever "self" is) and look back at yourself (as though you were looking at yourself in a mirror).

The second step is an act of sympathetic imagination by which you look at the world from the perspective of another.

We often hear this described by the phrase, "Walk a mile in my shoes." My good friend Foy Valentine, now deceased, once told me jokingly that doing this had proven highly profitable for him. He said that, whenever he did it he got a new pair of shoes and was a mile away before the poor guy he took them from knew what was happening. That's one of the reasons why I think conscience formation requires a third step.

It requires an act of reflexive self-consciousness. In simplest terms, this is the ability to put yourself in the place of others and to look at yourself through the eyes of others.

Essentially, this defines progressive faith as a faith that practices the Golden Rule.

Jesus of Nazareth gave the rule a positive formulation when he said "Do to others as you would have them do to you," (Luke 6:31 (NIV)) but the Golden Rule is not unique to Christianity.

Judaism teaches, "What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man." (Hillel, Shabbath 31a.)

Islam teaches, "No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself." (Hidith)

Even Buddhists, some whom deny the existence of any God, teach, "Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." (Udana-Varga)

Some formulation of the Golden Rule or some principle of respect for other persons seems common to all religions and philosophies.

2. Second, a progressive faith is a chastened faith.  It is a faith that sorrowfully acknowledges the pain, suffering and injustice that its own community has inflicted on others.

Chastening occurs when persons of faith look at themselves and their faith through the eyes of people of different faiths.

Christians need to look at themselves through the eyes of Jews -- particularly, through the eyes of those who were herded into boxcars and slaughtered like cattle in the holocaust.

Jews need to look at themselves through the eyes of Muslims -- particularly, through the eyes of those who were displaced from their homes in Palestine.

Muslims need to look at themselves through the eyes of Bahai's.

We all need to look at ourselves through the eyes of the hungry and the homeless, the impoverished and the imprisoned.

All of us need to summon the courage to honestly look at ourselves through the eyes of others who are strange and foreign to us and/or who have been injured and ignored by us.

If we do that, I believe that we will begin to view things the way that God views them.

3. Third, a progressive faith is a hopeful faith.

It is a faith that exercises a sympathetic and creative imagination to transcend the past and present realities of self, family, community, and nation to envision a world with a more benevolent, loving and hopeful future.

Guilt, shame and sorrow all summon us to search for forgiveness, reconciliation, restoration, regeneration, renewal, recreation, transformation, a new birth, -- i.e., some better way of living.

If life is just an endless cycle of violence, conflict and strife, then there is not much reason for a hopeful future.

4. Fourth, a progressive faith is a strong faith.

It is a faith that is strong enough to demand both equal rights in civil life and genuine respect in social life for those who have other convictions and different worldviews -- while remaining firmly committed to its own convictions and worldview.

Fundamentalist faiths can achieve power, but they can never be strong. All fundamentalisms are weak faiths that compensate for their inadequacies by scapegoating those who differ from them.

Fundamentalists fear differences and social change and the "other." They react to their fears by fight or by flight. Whenever they fight, they demonize and destroy whatever makes them afraid and insecure.

Faith can never become strong until it overcomes its fears and insecurities and begins to respect the integrity of conscientious difference.

5. Fifth, a progressive faith is a humble faith.

It is a faith that acknowledges the finitude and fallibility of all humanity. It recognizes that all forms of interpersonal communication and understanding fall short of perfect comprehensibility.

Different faiths privilege different expressions of faith as conveyed by different texts, practices, and rituals. Some make absolute claims for the authority of their competing texts, practices, and rituals.

Generally, it is not necessary to directly challenge the authority of these differing truth claims. It should be enough for all to acknowledge that no matter how sacred, perfect and privileged these texts, practices and rituals are believed to be, all historical faiths are subject to differing interpretations and understandings by adherents within their own faith tradition. Humility, therefore, is proper for people of all faiths.

No system of communication is adequate to fully express the meaning of the Divine. No language is perfectly transparent.

While some interpreters of religious traditions may be considered authoritative, infallibility is an attribute that is best reserved for the Divine.

6. Sixth, a progressive faith is a growing faith.

It is a faith that is growing, expanding, striving for depth and never satisfied with its progress. It is a faith that is incomplete, unfinished, and has never arrived.

Progressive faith does not lay claim to human perfectibility in this life.

7. Seventh, a progressive is a questioning faith.

It is a faith that is undaunted by critical thought. It is not a blind faith that expects adherents to surrender their intellect.

Instead, it practices what Paul Ricouer calls the "hermeneutics of suspicion" because it desires to be more than a projection of human wishes and desires, more than an opiate for the masses, and more than merely a slave revolt by which the weak seek to gain power over the strong.

Progressive faith welcomes doubt and raises questions because it knows they are necessary for the extension of understanding, for spurts of growth and for the testing and strengthening of genuine faith.

8. Eighth, a progressive faith is a dialogical faith.

It extends itself both by random acts of kindness and by deliberate acts of compassion and mercy.

It refuses to extend itself by force of law or arms.

Whenever it seeks to convert others, it seeks to do so by persuasion and example shared in moments of genuine dialogue.

9. Ninth, a progressive faith is an active faith.

It gives more than lip service to love.

It puts love in action by waging peace and working for justice.

It is faith with the courage to put itself at risk by publicly opposing injustice and by actively resisting it by non-violent means.

10. Finally, a progressive faith is an interdependent faith.

It recognizes both the value and the interdependence of all life on this planet.

It is a faith that affirms and honors the claim that future generations have on the present by responsibly stewarding the resources that make life possible on this planet.

(This is reposted from a July 15, 2006 blog from the Progressive Faith Blog Conference.)

Nightmare on Your Street

Joe Conn, Communicators Director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, has posted the most alarming blog I have ever read. Entitled "Invasion of the Constitution Snatchers: Bush Judges Scare the Halloween Out of Me," Conn documents the ongoing threat to the Constitution posed by the judges Bush has appointed. Here's a quote:

“Republican-appointed judges, most of them conservatives, are projected to make up about 62 percent of the bench next Inauguration Day, up from 50 percent when Mr. Bush took office. They control 10 of the 13 circuits, while judges appointed by Democrats have a dwindling majority on just one circuit.”

Many of these judges are looking for every opportunity to roll back precedents safeguarding church-state separation and individual rights.

Baylor Chisels Away at Wall Separating Church and State

Baylor University used to be known as a stronghold of advocacy for separation of church and state. Then Robert Sloan took over the reins at the University and started slipping church-state accomodationists onto the faculty at the J.M. Dawson Institute and proponents of Intelligent Design onto the faculty of the Michael Polanyi Center. Sloan is gone now, but his contempt for the historic Baptist distinctive advocating church-state separation remains.

Monday the University announced that Jay F. Hein has been accepted as a Distinguished Senior Fellow and Director of the Program for Faith and Service at Baylor's Institute for Studies of Religion. Hein was deputy assistant to President George W. Bush and director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from August 2006 until September 2008.

In April 1996, when "Charitable Choice" legislation was under consideration by Congress, Baylor hosted a prestigous conference bringing together the country's most prominent religious scholars and religious liberty advocates to discuss the dangers the legislation posed to the integrity of both Church and State. Practically all of the abuses that David Kuo described in his book Tempting Faith were predicted. In those days, Baylor University was at the forefront of opposition to the union of church and state in social work.

Today, Baylor is demonstrating that it intends to stand at the forefront of the institutions encouraging the church to trade its birthright (its prophetic independence and integrity) for a mess of pottage (government funding).

God, help us.

Wired to Hate?

British researchers say they have identified brain circuitry linked to hate. The intensity of the hate is related to the strength of activity in this region of the brain. Here's a quote:

In this study, 17 female and male volunteers underwent brain scans while they looked at photos of a person they hated, along with photos of a "neutral" person. Looking at images of hated people triggered activity in an area that includes structures in the cortex and in the sub-cortex as well as components that generate aggressive behavior and translate it into action.

I'd like to ask these researchers a few questions. What if you don't hate anybody? Are the circuits used for something else or are they just dormant? Do you have to learn to hate to feed the circuitry or is hate a spontaneous response to a perceived threat?

Why is it that every time I read about research on the brain I'm left with more questions than answers?

On Real World Health Insurance Costs

Uwe Reinhardt, a health-care economist and a professor at Princeton, reacted the same way I did when John McCain declared that the average cost for a health-care policy is $5800 -- we both nearly fell out of our chairs.

It has been more than 20 years since the health insurance policies available to me as a Baptist minister were anywhere near that range. I know from personal experience that McCain's claim is way off base. Reinhardt, however, provides more than anecdotal evidence for the price of health insurance. Here's the money quote from his commentary in today's Philadelphia Inquirer:

According to a highly respected annual survey of employer-sponsored health insurance in America, conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Heath Research Educational Trust, the average annual premium for the type of insurance employers provide is $12,600.

That includes the employer's and employee's contributions to the premium, but not the family's out-of-pocket costs, which have been rising steadily in recent years. According to the Milliman Medical Index, based on millions of privately insured Americans, average medical costs for the typical American family when out-of-pocket spending is included are $15,600.

Dembski Lectures at Baylor Again

Like an irrepressible stalker from old Halloween horror flick, William Dembski starred in a rerun of his act as a scientist at Baylor University last week. Dembski lectured on "Darwin's Unpaid Debt" to an aspiring chapter of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA). The ASA is an organization committed to demonstrating that science reconciles with literal interpretations of the Bible.

Dembski's act was definitively reviewed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania in 2005. Judge John E. Jones issued an 139 page scathing review of Dembski's work and the entire Intelligent Design movement.

The key witness against Dembski and his ID cronies was Dr. Barbara Forrest, professor of philosophy at Southeast Louisiana College. Here's a link to a podcast (27MB MP3) of my Religious Talk radio interview with her about Dembski and the Dover vs. Kitzmiller case.

CBFO Mission Project in Gulf Port

My blog postings are thin this week because I am with the CBF Oklahoma mission group working on the new facilities for Grace Temple Baptist Church in Gulf Port, Mississippi.

Grace Temple's facilities suffered severe damage during hurricane Katrina. They've purchased some land further inland from the Gulf.

Pictured above are CBFO missioners T and Kathie Thomas, Jodie Williams, and Bill Rozelle trimming a wall panel.

On the IMB's Shamelessly Political Commissioning Service

When the Southern Baptist Convention wants to send a signal to it 16 million members, nothing communicates like a missionary commissioning service.

Commissioning services used to be about missions. Today, they are less than subtle mechanisms by which the denomination signals which candidates are approved in national political elections. That is why the SBC's International Mission Board recently hosted the first ever commissioning service in Palmer, Alaska.

Commitment to missions was the cause that originally led many fiercely independent Baptists to work together. Nothing used to unite Baptists like the desire to share the gospel with the whole world.

Southern Baptists in particular were noted for their missionary zeal. Literally thousands of missionaries were sent and supported financially by the combined contributions of millions of Baptists in America. The Cooperative Program successfully combined the willingness of all Baptists in the South to make personal and financial sacrifices to share the "good news" about Jesus with others.

That was before fundamentalist preachers with a political agenda tookover the denomination and redirected its resources to influencing the political landscape of the United States. They have been gaining increasing political clout for more than a quarter century and their get out the "values voters" efforts were widely credited with making the margin of difference in the 2004 political election.

Fundamentalist Southern Baptists used to keep up the charade that they were focused on the mission of spreading the gospel. This year they have finally lowered the fascade and brazenly exposed the political mission and purpose that has become the focus for all of the denomination's efforts.

Before Sarah Palin was nominated for national office, Palmer, Alaska was the last place on the face of God's still green earth (no thanks to Southern Baptists) that the International Mission Board would have held a commissioning service.

Mark Crispin Miller on Bill Moyers Tonight

Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies at New York University, will be a guest on Bill Moyer's Journal this evening. Miller is the author of "Fooled Again" -- a book that documents the wideranging evidence of voter fraud in the 2000 and 2004 elections. Particularly worrisome are allegations that many of the problems with electronic voter machines (such as the lack of a paper ballot for recount purposes, on some models) were "features" not flaws.

It is rare for me to beat Bill Moyers to an interview, but in this instance, I did. I interviewed Miller in March of 2006. Here's a link to a podcast of that interview. I'll also be rebroadcasting that interview this Sunday morning at 10:00 AM CST on KREF radio in Norman, OK.

Mutant Gene Gives Rise to Thought

The Daily Galaxy is reporting that Chinese scientists have discovered that type II neuropsin, a protein expressed in the central nervous systems of humans, is a recent evolutionary mutuation that distinguishes humans from apes and monkeys.

Type II neuropsin is a protein that plays a role in memory and learning.