January 5, 2000

"Soundbites"
___"While President Clinton did not create our moral ethos, he soiled it."
___ Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics

___"We have a Baptist in the White House. Maybe one day we'll have a Christian."
___ Evangelist Bailey Smith, speaking to the Southern Baptists of Texas
___ Convention

SCANDAL soiled Bill Clinton's presidency, not to mention public discourse, in 1999.

___"I guess I'm a literalist with the Scripture that says if we do not forgive our fellow man, then God will not forgive us. We have focused on forgiveness and redemption."
___ President Clinton's Little Rock pastor, Rex Horne, explaining the church's response to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal

___"The evidence of the presence of sickness in Scripture despite prayer and believing companions ... is so obvious that you just can't take prayer as a guarantee of healing and getting rid of all your problems. I do not

Also see 1999:The year in review

see anywhere in Scripture a promise that all people who pray real hard in faith are going to be healed."
___ Southwestern Seminary theology dean Tommy Lea, in an interview several months before his death from cancer

___"The truth of the matter is it takes more faith to live than to die."
___ Retired pastor Henry Adrion, explaining his multiple close encounters with death

___"Somebody, somewhere, love me."
___ Words found written at least a half-dozen times in the diary of Madalyn Murray O'Hair

___"Is there any other medical procedure not required by a life-threatening condition that you would consider doing on a minor without parental consent?"
___"Not that comes to mind, no."
___ Exchange between Rep. Ken Marchant, R-Coppell, and David Scott Miller, chief of obstetrics/gynecology at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center during a legislative committee hearing on a bill requiring parental notification before a minor obtains an abortion

___"The increased violence in this country ought to be a wake-up call to every Christian of every church and every decent-hearted American. We are doomed unless we become desperately concerned about the kind of movies, video games, music and websites seen and heard by our children."
___ SBC Executive Committee President Morris Chapman in response to the Columbine High School shootings

___"I thought they were trying to do something about Columbine to remind us."
___ 17-year-old Glen Bucy, explaining his reaction when he first heard gunshots inside the sanctuary of Wedgwood Baptist Church during a youth rally

___"The torch has been passed to us from Columbine, and we want to carry it well."
___ Jim Gatliff, pastor of First Baptist Church of White Settlement, speaking of the Wedgwood church shooting where members of his youth group were among the wounded and dead

___"It's just been a phenomenal blessing of the Lord."
___Youth minister Gary Covin of First Baptist Church in Edna, speaking of the congregation's annual "Judgement House" Halloween project

___"Abstinence is something to be proud of. What you are doing as part of True Love Waits is something to be proud of."
___Gov. George W. Bush speaking at a True Love Waits rally in Austin

___"The use of this metaphor was very unwise, as I would later learn. The Baptist newswriters seized on this to make me look like an angry monster."
___Paul Pressler, in his new book, "A Hill on Which to Die," commenting on his 1980 admonition that conservatives should "go for the jugular" in their fight for control of the SBC

___"I believe we can have a church in New York City running 5,000 or 6,000 in Sunday School in a matter of two or three years at the most."
___SBC President Paige Patterson, explaining his proposal for the SBC to buy an entire city block in Manhattan and start a new megachurch

___"Bro. Wiley, I love you, but you're just too nice a guy to go up against Barry Lynn. You need somebody with a mean streak like me."
___SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Richard Land, speaking to California pastor/activist Wiley Drake during a message at the SBC annual meeting; Land contended he should have been invited to represent the SBC on a CNN program rather than Drake

___"God is not welcome in our secularized schools. There is one thing that is not allowed in school under any circumstance, and that is prayer."
___Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, speaking on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in favor of a proposed Religious Freedom Amendment

___"I'm tired of the misleading and slanderous attacks on our leaders."
___Arlington pastor Dan Curry, in asking the BGCT Executive Board to appoint what has become the Committee on Baptist Integrity

___"To suggest that the BGCT's stands on a given issue is related to the action of another Baptist body because a person in a BGCT leadership role might be involved in both groups is fallacious and certainly the publishing of such is comparable to spreading graffiti writing on restroom walls or malicious gossip."
___Report of the Committee on Baptist Integrity, responding to the literature of Roger Moran of Missouri and Bill Streich of Wichita Falls

___"It's not guilt by association, but guilt by whom you choose to align with and whom you choose to condemn."
___Roger Moran, responding to criticism that literature produced by his Missouri Laymen's Association is built upon "guilt by association."

___"Texas Baptists give almost as much to theological education outside Texas as we do to care for neglected and abused children and families in Texas."
___Buckner Benevolences President Ken Hall in a speech advocating additional BGCT funding for human welfare causes

___"The only way the Baptist General Convention of Texas will be effective is to help every church and pastor to touch and love and reach the people of this state for Christ--being the presence of Christ in the towns, the communities, where they are."
___BGCT Executive Director-elect Charles Wade

___"We haven't moved."
___BGCT President Clyde Glazener, responding to a reporter's question about the increasing distance between the BGCT and SBC

___"I cannot have fellowship with those who do not believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God, who believe in culture over conviction, who believe it's all right to murder babies in the womb, who believe it's OK to ordain women as deacons and pastors."
___Amarillo pastor Stan Coffey, in his president's address to the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention

___"The article is not wrong in what it says, but is limited because it does not fully say what the Bible says. The Bible says we are to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ."
___BGCT Executive Director-elect Charles Wade, explaining why messengers to the BGCT annual session did not affirm the SBC's article on family added to the Baptist Faith & Message in 1998

___"Inevitably, there will come a divide in what is today known as the Southern Baptist Convention."
___SBC President Paige Patterson

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