S.C. Baptist leaders back off from memo
___COLUMBIA, S.C. (ABP) --A South Carolina Baptist Convention employee who sent an e-mail urging churches to endorse attorney general nominee John Ashcroft acted without clearance from supervisors, a convention spokesman said.
___Joe Mack, director of South Carolina Baptists' Christian Life Concerns Department, sent an "action alert" memo dated Jan. 26 on convention letterhead. It said the Washington office of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission had asked South Carolinians to call Sen. Fritz Hollings' office and ask him to support Ashcroft's nomination.
___Hollings, a Democrat, earlier announced he would oppose confirmation of the appointment by President George W. Bush.
___The memo included a phone number that reportedly rings directly in Hollings' office. "Please keep calling until you get through," the memo to "concerned citizens" suggested.
___"I am asking all pastors to make this announcement from the pulpit this Sunday and to provide the senator's phone number to the congregation," Mack wrote. "We need to flood the Washington office with calls ... until the confirmation vote is taken."
___After news reports questioned the memo, convention officials issued a statement clarifying that Mack's memo went out through his office "without official clearance from the convention."
___"The South Carolina Baptist Convention, through its Christian Life and Public Affairs Committee, studies and may make recommendations regarding moral concerns of public interest," read the Jan. 29 statement by Scott Vaughan, director of marketing. "However, this work does not include taking positions on political issues; nor does this work speak for or against the endorsement of political candidates or political appointees."
___"Any decision you make to engage the political process, including the confirmation of Mr.Ashcroft, will be an independent decision of yourself and your local congregation," the statement said.
___Richard Land, president of the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said he does not endorse candidates for office, either, but he supports the Ashcroft nomination because he believes opponents are using "religious profiling" against the former senator.
___"If the people who want to practice anti-evangelical bigotry are successful, they will continue to do so, and the only way they will continue to do so is if the evangelicals are silent," the Columbia, S.C., newspaper The State quoted Land as saying.
___Land reportedly told the newspaper that the ELRC's Washington office had sent two memos to state Baptist offices. The second went out in late January to states whose senators were undecided on Ashcroft: South Carolina, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri and New Mexico.
___Associated Baptist Press obtained a forwarded copy of a Jan. 10 e-mail addressed to 50 leaders in the various Baptist state conventions. The memo, attributed to Shannon Royce, the ERLC's director of government relations and legislative counsel, said Ashcroft's opponents have "tried to vilify him" and engaged in "religious bigotry."
___"Sen. Ashcroft is a just man with impeccable integrity who is imminently qualified for this position," the three-page memo stated. It urged Baptists to "pray for a just outcome in theconfirmation process," to call and write senators in support of Ashcroft and to "forward this alert to other like-minded believers."
___Land said he didn't know what message had been sent to South Carolina pastors but that he would consider sending an e-mail to be an appropriate action.
The Baptist Standard
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