Further revelations are coming to light about the impropriety of Paul Wolfowitz giving his girl friend, Shaha Riza, a lavish salary at the World Bank. IPS is reporting that she has "undisclosed parallel employment" and several other conflicts of interest that are gross violations of World Bank staff rules.
While at the Pentagon, Wolfowitz was one of the chief architects of the American war in Iraq. The Wolfowitz-Riza scandal at the World Bank comes as Wolfowitz is spearheading a campaign to fight corruption, cronyism and promote good governance in Bank projects and loans.
There is hope that the Board of the World Bank will begin to hold Wolfowitz accountable.
Unfortunately, there is little hope that the messengers or agency boards of the Southern Baptist Convention will take similar action against the unaccountable leadership of the SBC.
Wade Burleson thinks the election of Frank Page to the presidency of the SBC marks the beginning of a pendulum swing back to the center of Baptist life. I think the pendulum has been broken by a seismic shift in the theo-political landscape in American religious life.
After years of outrageous mismanagement (see Mary Kinney Branson's Spending God's Money), Bob Reccord was removed from his position at the North American Mission Board. His replacement, however, comes from the Dominionist-leaning group that left the Baptist General Association of Virginia to form the Southern Baptist Convention of Virginia. The editor of Virginia's Religious Herald is already asking how Geoff Hammond can work with BGAV without compromising his integrity.
A clear indication of the continued unaccountability of SBC leadership is the failure of all but a few to disclose the information that Ben Cole has been requesting of them. These same leaders made much of the need for "doctrinal accountability" regarding missionaries who refused to sign the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message. Financial accountability for their own stewardship of God's money, however, remains off-the-table.
1 comment:
It is ironic that one of the main reasons given for wanting to force us to sign the BFM was that we must be "accountable" to those who paid our salaries. However, these leaders won't even account for their direct expendatures much less offer doctrinal or moral accountability. We, missionaries who were fired, were always accountable through evaluations, pre-appointment screenings, (for many) ordination councils and regular reporting to churches. We were required to keep strict records of all funds to which we had access and report monthly to the mission treasurer.
Of course, we didn't have the political connections required for 21st century SBC life.
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