June 4, 2001
EDITORIAL:
Your SBC contributions at work
___All across Texas, Baptist churches are thinking and praying about their identity. They're determining if they will continue to affiliate with the Baptist General Convention of Texas; if they will join the new Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, created to oppose the BGCT; if they will "dually align" with both Texas conventions; and to what degree they will relate to the Southern Baptist Convention.
___As if this weren't complicated enough, churches are choosing from among a myriad of options for expressing their identity through financial contributions to the Cooperative Program unified budget. The BGCT alone offers churches three giving options, with one a virtual blank check for funding exactly what each church intends to support.
___More than mere symbols of identity, churches' Cooperative Program contributions manifest that identity. Funding is the lifeblood that makes the conventions' ministries possible. Churches are the marrow that produce that lifeblood.
___As your church thinks about how to allocate your convention contributions, consider this: Cooperative Program gifts to the Southern Baptist Convention now fund attacks on and mistruths about the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
___The attacks primarily have come through Baptist Press, the public relations arm of the SBC Executive Committee. Unlike the Baptist Standard, which is funded through subscriptions, advertising and investments and receives no Cooperative Program subsidy, Baptist Press is funded by CP contributions.
___Several examples could illustrate BP's attacks on the BGCT, but two suffice.
___First, on May 15, BP carried an article in which two top SBC officials responded to the report and recommendations of the BGCT's Missions-sending Agencies Study Committee. The committee recommended no changes in funding for the SBC International Mission Board. It recommended retaining $1.28 million in annual contributions to the SBC North American Mission Board, equivalent to the amount NAMB returns to Texas for ministries conducted in conjunction with the state convention.
___The BP story claimed the recommendation would result in a loss of $600,000 to the International Mission Board, citing one of the SBC officials. Such a claim could not be further from the truth. The study committee explicitly and repeatedly stated the funding change would be structured so that the IMB would not sustain any reduction in BGCT funding.
___Yet the charge effectively claimed the BGCT was preparing to shirk one of the causes Baptists hold most dear--foreign missions. The claim can be seen as nothing more than a scare tactic based on falsehood.
___Second, on May 21, BP published a story promoting the work of Roger Moran, a Missouri layman whose guilt-by-association tactics repeatedly have been used to attack the BGCT. Here's how Moran's logic works:
___Mary is a member of the Band Boosters at the high school.
___Ralph, also a member of the Band Boosters, is a communist.
___Therefore, Mary is a communist.
___Moran's "research," which has been cited by numerous Texas Baptist churches "investigating" the BGCT, similarly has branded the BGCT as supporting homosexual practice and abortion. This is because individuals or groups affiliated with the BGCT have worked on select causes--usually religious liberty and religious access--with individuals or groups that are open to abortion and homosexuality. Never mind that the BGCT repeatedly has expressed opposition to elective abortion and homosexual practice and declared both actions sinful and outside the will of God.
___If the BGCT wished to use this logic, it could build a case that current SBC leaders support Mormonism, Judaism and the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon. But the BGCT does not, because, although affiliations exist on common causes, the SBC does not support those causes.
___Ironically, this article was written by a frequent BP contributor who happens to be the wife of the director of communications for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. She also was hired as news editor consultant for Southern Baptists of Texas. Using her to "cover" the BGCT would be like hiring Hillary Clinton to cover the Republican Party. Not only is it ludicrous, it's a clear conflict of interest and unethical. But that's how the SBC Executive Committee is willing to spend your contributions.
___ Marv Knox
E-mail the editor at marvknox@baptiststandard.com
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