Campolo Diminishes Himself in Oklahoma

I went to Oklahoma City yesterday to hear Tony Campolo speak on "Volunteerism" in an event sponsored by the Oklahoma Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and its parent organization the Oklahoma Department of Human Services along with the United Way and the University of Oklahoma.

I used to be a big fan of Tony Campolo. Until yesterday, I thought his form of faith and mine were nearly identical. In times past, I've heard him speak as an advocate for separation of church and state. Yesterday, however, his actions did not match his previous rhetoric on that subject.

The sermon that was delivered yesterday was vintage Campolo. It was a great sermon. It was an explictly Christian sermon. It was engaging and entertaining. I personally agreed with everything he said.

I even laughed heartily when he said, "You know the difference between a Baptist and a terrorist? -- you can negotiate with a terrorist," while suspecting that some of the event's organizers would think that the Baptist he was referring to was an ardent church-state separationist like myself.

I readily admit that I am reticent to negotiate about the dissolution of the disestablishment clause of the First Amendment. Campolo's sermon was the first sermon I've ever heard from a moderate or progressive Baptist that was solicited, endorsed and introduced by an agent of the state acting in an official capacity and supported by funding from U.S. and/or State of Oklahoma tax dollars.

I remain as strenuously opposed to the state using its power to endorse and support the faith of moderate and progressive religion as I am to the state using its power to endorse and support fundamentalist religion. The state must maintain a benevolent neutrality in regard to religion.

Religion is always diminished when it permits itself to be coopted and utilized by the state.

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 . . .

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: 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.

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.

Palin Wanted to Ban Baptist Minister's Book

Howard Bess, an American Baptist minister, wrote one of the books that Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin wanted to ban from the library in Wasilla, Alaska. Bess authored the book entitled "Pastor, I am Gay" about his experiences counselling homosexuals.

Here's a brief excerpt from an article about "The pastor who clashed with Palin" by David Talbot in Salon Magazine:

"She scares me," said Bess. "She's Jerry Falwell with a pretty face.

"At this point, people in this country don't grasp what this person is all about. The key to understanding Sarah Palin is understanding her radical theology."

Bess -- a fit-looking, 80-year-old man in a gray University of Illinois sweatshirt and blue jeans – spoke with me over coffee at the Vagabond Blues, a cafe in Palmer with a stunning view of the nearby snow-capped Chugach Mountains. The retired minister moved to the Mat-Su Valley with his wife, Darlene, in 1987, after his outspoken defense of gay rights at Baptist churches in the Santa Barbara, Calif., area and Anchorage landed him in trouble with church officials. In the Mat-Su Valley, Bess plunged into community activism, helping launch an assortment of projects, from an arts council to a shelter for the mentally disabled.

Inevitably, his work brought him into conflict with Palin and other highly politicized Christian fundamentalists in the valley. "Things got very intense around here in the '90s -- the culture war was very hot here," Bess said. "The evangelicals were trying to take over the valley. They took over the school board, the community hospital board, even the local electric utility. And Sarah Palin was in the direct center of all these culture battles, along with the churches she belonged to."

Parham and Mohler Debate Online at Washington Post

The "On Belief" section of the Washington Post has posted opposing essays about the effect that Sarah Palin's VP nomination is having on Southern Baptist theology. Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Robert Parham, Executive Director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, square off over whether SBC fundamentalists are being honest and consistent in their presentations of the role of women in public life.

Mohler, in an essay entitled "Palin and Baptist Theology" says,

Our confession of faith does not speak to the appropriateness of women serving in political office. It does speak to the priority of motherhood and responsibilities in the home, but it does not specify any public role that is closed to women.

Parham, in an essay entitled "Palin and Baptist Revisionism" says,

Well, no, the confession of faith doesn't speak literally to women running for office. But when his wife served on the committee that wrote the family statement, neither she nor he spoke up for women working outside the home.

In fact, when I said in June 1998 that Southern Baptist fundamentalists "hope to make June Cleaver the biblical model for motherhood, despite numerous biblical references to women who worked outside the home," fundamentalists responded with the claim they were only being faithful to the Bible.

Southern Baptists have a long heritage of "only being faithful to the Bible" when the interpretations they are being faithful to reinforce their personal prejudices. Southern Baptists first distinguished themselves this way by defending the legitimacy of slavery.

Southern Baptists also have a long heritage of reversing their previous positions when it becomes politically expedient. It took them more than 140 years to repudiate their defense of slavery. Now they are repudiating their family statement within a decade. Progress is being made.

Isn't it a bit ironic that the woman they are elevating to national prominence comes from a Christian tradition that recognizes God's call of women to pastoral ministry?

How long will it be until it is politically expedient for Southern Baptists to acknowledge that God calls a lot more women to be pastors than he calls to be politicians?

On Women Heading Countries but not Churches

Christianity Today is reporting that Richard Land is ecstatic about the nomination of Sarah Palin for Vice President. He's also eager to label as "asinine" any question about the logical consistency of his theology and politics. Here's a quote from his interview with Sarah Pulliam:

The enthusiasm gap has been closed considerably. Let me answer a question you haven't asked me. I had two secular reporters ask me, "Dr. Land, you as a Southern Baptist believe that women are not to be pastors of churches and women are not to be head of the home. Wouldn't it mean that if Sarah Palin were elected vice president, her husband would tell her what to do? And I said, "If you don't mind my saying so, that's an asinine question, but I'll answer it." Mrs. Thatcher said that her husband was head of her home and she ran the country. Queen Elizabeth said that Prince Phillip was head of the home and she was head of the country. If Mrs. Thatcher had been an American, I would've enthusiastically supported her for president of the United States.

The only restrictions we find in Scripture are, that for whatever reason women are not to be in charge of a marriage and women are not to be in charge of a church. That has nothing to do with governor, or senator or the House of Representatives, or president, or vice president.

It is fairly simple to discern when you've identified a weakness in Richard Land's thought. Just probe a little and wait for him to insult your intelligence or integrity. Land always bolsters his weakest arguments with ad hominem arguments.

Land's most egregious use of ad hominem argument to bolster a weak case was at the 2000 meeting Southern Baptist Convention when he flirted with the unpardonable sin by insinuating that those questioning the revision of the denomination's confession of faith were influenced by "demonic spirits." That revision inserted a prohibition against women serving as pastors of Southern Baptist churches.

To grasp how conflicted many evangelicals are about Palin's nomination, one needs only to read some of the weblogs by conservative mothers.

It's going to take incrementally more bluster and nearly perpetual filibuster from fundamentalists like Land both to contend that women can be the "head" of nations and to continue to deny that they can be "head" of families and churches. They will not be able to maintain a static "dead head" understanding of headship for the family and church while at the same time affirming a "living metaphoricity" of headship for the nation. Ultimately, one perspective or the other will prevail.

On Baptist-Muslim Dialogue

Kudos to Robert Parham for his recent speech at the Islamic Society of North America Convention.

Too many Baptists are fanning the flames of conflict between Christianity and Islam. Parham is prominent among those Baptists who are working for world peace by finding common ground and building bridges of understanding between Christians and Muslims.

I hope someone in the Islamic community will take up Parham's offer to post opinion columns, commentaries, and movie reviews from an Islamic perspective on the Ethics Daily website. Baptists and Muslims will always disagree about many religious beliefs, but we could both benefit from fully understanding our divergences and from acknowledging every possible convergence. We can uphold each other's right to liberty of conscience and conviction while respectfully disagreeing with one another on matters of faith and practice.

Pictured above is T Thomas, Coordinator of the Cooperating Baptist Fellowship of Oklahoma, speaking to a girl who introduced herself to us in Kutaya, Turkey.

Evangelicals Conflicted About Palin

Desmoinesdem at Daily Kos has scoured the "mommy blogs" written by Christian conservatives and has found considerable uneasiness about casting a vote for Sarah Palin as Vice President.

The main concern is that it will send a mixed message that undermines their understanding of family values. They like her political positions, especially on abortion, but are concerned that the prominence of her position would undermine their witness concerning subordinate roles for women and their conviction that mothers should remain in the home and nurture their husbands and children.

Ironically, James Dobson, Richard Land and other vocal advocates for "family values" are also the most enthusiastic supporters of Sarah Palin.

Land's support for Palin is fairly strong evidence that the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention -- a takeover that was fueled by conservative opposition to both the equal rights amendment and the acceptance of women in the ministry -- was more about politics than theology. Among contemporary Southern Baptist fundamentalists, theology always takes a back seat to secular politics.

Southern Baptists Selling Off Assets

The Fort Worth Star Telegram is reporting that Southern Baptists have sold the broadcast facilities of its former Radio and Television Commission.

After the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Radio and Television Commission was turned over to the North American Mission Board (NAMB). As chronicled in Mary Kinney Branson's Spending God's Money: Extravagance and Misuse in the Name of Ministry, NAMB was so badly mismanaged that trustees eventually relieved its fundamentalist president of his duties.

The North American Mission Board is not the only agency of the Southern Baptist Convention to sell off assets. The International Mission Board has been selling off valuable assets all over the world.

The Southern Baptist Convention has been imploding both financially and in membership ever since the fundamentalist takeover. It's death is progressing so slowly that few people realize how hollow this body has become.

One who is not surprised is Dallas Morning News reporter Christine Wicker whose book The Fall of the Evangelical Nation thoroughly documents the numerical decline of this denomination.

On Sarah Palin's Qualifications

Richard Land has endorsed Sarah Palin for Vice President:

Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission: "Governor Palin is a vice-presidential selection which shows that John McCain at the age of 72 today is still able to think outside the box. Governor Palin will delight the Republican base. She is pro-life. It appears that Senator Obama played it safe in picking Senator Biden and Senator McCain made the bold and unconventional choice in picking Governor Palin."

I find it ironic that Land was so quick to endorse the nomination of Sarah Palin for Vice President of the United States.

In Richard Land's eyes, Sarah Palin is fully qualified to be a heart-beat away from having the authority to lead the most powerful nation in the history of the world. Powerful enough to incinerate our entire planet with nuclear weaponry at a moment's notice.

In Richard Land's eyes, however, neither Sarah Palin nor any other woman will ever be qualified to have the authority to lead even the smallest Southern Baptist church.

How long will it be before Southern Baptist churches stop discriminating against women? Their secular politics leaves much to be desired, but it is still more Christian than their ecclesiology.

Vernon Nominated for BGCT Associate Executive Director

The Baptist Standard is reporting the Steve Vernon, pastor of First Baptist Church of Levelland and past president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, is being nominated to be an Associate Executive Director of the Convention.

Kudos to the search committee for this wise and prudent nomination.

Garland Tapped for Interim at Baylor

The Waco Tribune is reporting that David Garland, Dean of Truett Seminary, has been appointed Interim President of Baylor University.

Congratulations to Board President Howard Batson and the other Regents for this wise and prudent choice. Garland would make an outstanding choice for a permanent appointment as President of the University.

Florida Church Stands on Principle

Baptist churches around the country have been in the forefront of efforts to oppose public lotteries, gambling and gaming. The poorest, most desperate and destitute members of society are disproportionately tempted to squander their resources on a long-shot chance at reversing their fortunes. They've got little left to lose and they often salve their consciences by promising to give God a tithe of their winnings. As a result, thousands of children go hungry and do without because mom and/or dad wasted the families resources on lottery tickets, slot machines, and roulette tables.

Recently, one backsliding Baptist in Florida bought a lottery ticket and hit the jackpot. He won $6 million dollars and thought a tithe to his church could remove the stumbling block example he set for the children, young people and poor of his community.

Kudos to First Baptist Church of Orange Park, Florida for declining to accept the $600,000 tithe from his lottery winnings. Their stand on principle is worth more than the entire 6 million dollar lottery ticket.

Genuine Christianity teaches people to lay their treasures up in heaven, not on earth.

The Shock Doctrine and the SBC

Joe Alain, pastor of Hebron Baptist Church in Denham Springs, Louisiana sent me a noteworthy comment regarding the use of "shock and awe" doctrines within the Southern Baptist Convention. Here's Alain's analysis:

I am about half through a book that I think you would find insightful and interesting. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) by Naomi Klein is a fascinating work. The basic premise of the book is that many economists in the Chicago School tradition of Milton Friedman have employed shock doctrine tactics around the world by bringing their particular brand of capitalism to countries in the midst of crisis. As countries and economies are reeling, policies are able to be enacted that under ordinary circumstances (i.e., by being honest with the people) would have never been tolerated. Stated another way, people in countries that are undergoing crises (real or imagined) are willing to give up their voice and personal rights to the so-called experts (enter Friedmanian economists) no matter what the costs.

"From Chile in 1973 to Iraq today, Klein shows how Friedman and his followers have repeatedly harnessed terrible shocks and violence to implement their radical policies" (book jacket). Joseph Stiglitz of the New York Times Book Review states, "Klein provides a rich description of the political machinations required to force unsavory economic policies on resisting countries and of the human toll. She paints a disturbing portrait of hubris, not only on the part of Friedman but also of those who adopted his doctrines, sometimes to pursue more corporatist objectives."

Come to think about it, many leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention have been using shock doctrine tactics for some time, creating imagined crises and enemies, then supposedly supplying the authoritative (doctrinally correct) magic fix. Usually the solution that is authoritatively mandated down from the top involves the rank and file church members ceding more cherished Baptist doctrines, such as the freedom to interpret Scripture, have a differing view on a non-essential doctrine, or vote on a matter of church polity. Unfortunately, most Southern Baptists are not aware just how much they have lost because they either never appreciated what they had or they themselves are still reeling from the "awe." Sadly, the average Southern Baptist member today has little knowledge of the fundamental and philosophical shifts that have been made in the SBC. Even as a pastor, busy working my parish, I did not realize until recently just how far things had gone. Something akin to Rip Van Winkle waking up after a twenty-year nap, I too have been awakened and dismayed.

I heartily agree with Alain. Fundamentalism has been as disastrous to Baptist life as Friedman's economics has been to capitalism.

Unity or Integrity?

A week ago, David Gushee wrote an essay bemoaning the absence of Southern Baptists from the Baptist World Alliance. He chided "a generation of wounded "exes" for "their public airing of the hurt and anger that resulted from the SBC controversy" and called on "wounded ex-Southern Baptists to renounce SBC bashing, and to seek the Spirit's power to forgive."

What David Gushee doesn't realize is that forgiving Southern Baptists for leaving the Baptist World Alliance is relatively easy for many of us. We are constantly praying "father forgive them, they know not what they do." We don't seek the Spirit's power to forgive them, we seek it to forgive the myopia of those, like Gushee, who insist that unity is more important to Baptists than moral integrity.

Southern Baptist churches are full of people who know that the fundamentalists controlling their Convention have treated God's servants unjustly, have infused secular politics within their churches, and have shattered world peace by championing unjust, preventive wars. Like Gushee, they think unity is more important than integrity. They are quick to forgive unrepentant offenders for injuries caused to others and tireless in their efforts to silence the outcry and protest of those who are injured. For nearly forty years now, their self-righteous piety has been like a glove protecting and concealing the brass-knuckled fist of the neighborhood bully who takes delight in beating senseless anyone who gets in his way.

Unity on Southern Baptist terms, and those are the only terms by which unity can be achieved, is the last thing that the world needs today. Southern Baptists have completely undermined the integrity of the Baptist witness in the eyes of the world.

More than anything else, the world needs to hear that all Baptists are not like Southern Baptists. They need to know that all Baptists are not champions for a violent clash between Christian and Islamic civilizations. They need to know that all Baptists are not advocates for unjust, pre-emptive wars. They need to know that all Baptists do not condone torture and brutal interrogations. They need to know that all Baptists do not support secret renditions and indefinite imprisonment without opportunity for adjudication. They need to know that some Baptists put their loyalty to Christ and his Kingdom high above any patriotic allegiance to their flawed and fallible nations.

Today, there is no way to maintain moral integrity as a Baptist without distinguishing yourself from Southern Baptists. That may look like "SBC bashing" to some. To others, it looks like an apology to the world on behalf of Baptists and a call for all Christians to repent.

PFAW's Take on Richard Land

Kyle at People for the American Way has posted an expose of some of Richard Land's most recent electioneering activity. Land is Director of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Here's a quote:

Land goes on to rule out potential VP’s like Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge while praising Mike Hucakbee, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Eric Cantor, and reiterating his attack that Barack Obama is the “most radically pro-abortion candidate to ever be nominated by a major party” and predicting that Obama will have no success in his efforts to “peel off a sizeable chunk of white evangelicals” because they have no intention of “surrendering their pro-life values.”

But still Land insists that not only is he not endorsing any candidate, he’s not even supporting one, while still making his preference clear to anyone who can connect the dots:

Why do Southern Baptists put up with someone who shades the truth as the head of their ethics agency? Why would people supposedly concerned with ultimate truth put up with anything but absolute honesty from any of their leaders.

What kind of witness is this?