Posted: 8/31/07

DOWN HOME:
You-know-what will break your heart

Football will break your heart.

There. Now I’ve said it. Be warned.

This is a prophetic utterance for fall. Unless, of course, you cheer for the Southlake Carroll Dragons or the University of Southern California Trojans. Your heart probably won’t be broken. But everybody else, get ready. As sure as linebackers block extra points, runners fumble, receivers muff passes and centers hike the ball over punters’ heads, if you love football, your heart is about to be pummeled, chop-blocked and penalized 15 yards for wanting too much from your favorite gladiators of the gridiron.

Even though Major League Baseball pennant races are heating up (just not in Texas), the local sports pages are overflowing with football.

This is as it should be. You’ve got to respect the basic law of supply-and-demand. The people want football. And since Texans are unencumbered by anything so distracting as a pennant race, the newspapers give us football.

Most of the ink in our section of the bleachers goes to the Dallas Cowboys, who appear to be endeavoring mightily to become America’s Team once again. They’ve got a new coach, Wade Phillips, whose daddy was the best person to ever simultaneously wear a cowboy hat and draw X’s and O’s. They’ve also got a bunch of talent stockpiled by the former coach, who apparently decided life is too short to waste it waiting for a Super Bowl ring. But over at Valley Ranch, they’re dreaming of silver football trophies again. And most of the folks in these parts think football might be fun in January.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what football fans in Houston think, because the newspapers in Dallas-Fort Worth only recall the Texans actually exist if they happen to play in Texas Stadium.

One of my favorite websites also sends me multiple updates on the Texas Longhorns, who are ranked No. 4 in the nation. They’d be more excited, except California hasn’t fallen into the ocean and Vince Young lives in Tennessee.

All that’s fun, but I’ve been paying closest attention to a page in the back of the sports section. That’s where they’ve been counting down the Top 20 football teams in the area. Unfortunately, my beloved Lewisville Fighting Farmers didn’t make the list. After two state championships in the ’90s and a slew of other great seasons, they’ve fallen on hard times.

But one of the things I like about high school football is its random unpredictability. On “any given Friday night” a mouse might whip a lion or, in our fondest dreams, a Farmer might slay a Dragon. High school boys are fun and vitriolic and emotional and entirely unpredictable.

That’s why high school football is a lot like life. Anything can happen. And it usually does. In life, we need God’s grace. In high school football, we need to remember these are boys playing a game. So, give ’em a break.

–Marv Knox

Posted: 8/31/07

Church swims upstream by moving downtown

By Rebekah Hardage

Communications Intern

WACO—Migration from downtowns to the suburbs doesn’t seem to be slowing down. And because families are moving to the suburbs, churches are moving there too. But one church in Waco is swimming upstream by relocating downtown.

Acts Christian Fellowship, a Baptist church, recently began renovation of property in downtown Waco where the church plans to turn a warehouse into a sanctuary.

Pastor David Booker explained when the church began to outgrow its suburban location, the congregation considered two options—add on or move.

Acts Christian Fellowship has a burden for the homeless and needy in Waco, so moving downtown seemed like the right thing to do, Booker said.

Last year, for example, instead of holding a traditional Christmas Eve service in their building, members of the church met in a parking lot downtown and gave out hot meals to the homeless. They fellowshipped with them and celebrated the true meaning of Christmas with a spirit of giving.

“We preach about God’s heart for the needy all the time from the pulpit,” Booker said. And now, the church had the opportunity to move down to the location of the heart of their ministry.

Acts was able to sell its suburban church property in just two weeks, much quicker than the two years they had expected. Booker immediately began to look for a location downtown, and he couldn’t stop thinking about the first building he saw.

The only problem was, the building wasn’t for sale. Booker approached the owner, who agreed to sell the building if the church would lease back to him the necessary parts. They agreed to gradually reduce the space leased until the property houses only the church.

Renovations quickly began, and the congregation showed up ready to work. During workday Saturdays and several evenings during the week, church members helped build walls, paint and clean the space in preparation for the big move.

The new location also will make other established ministries more effective. Acts offers a sack lunch Friday program to the homeless in Waco, as well as a hot lunch two other times during the week.

Acts has a long-term goal for the new downtown property as well. They hope to work with the City of Waco to provide supportive housing for the homeless in a building across the street.

“We want to keep the church and ministries together but separate,” Booker said. And the property downtown will allow them to do just that.

Posted: 8/31/07

Faith Digest

Colorado megachurch approves Haggard’s successor. New Life Church, the Colorado megachurch whose leader Ted Haggard was dismissed last year after a sex and drug scandal, has approved a new senior pastor. Brady Boyd, pastor at Gateway Church in Southlake, received more than 95 percent approval in a vote by the Colorado Springs congregation, a church secretary/treasurer announced in a message posted on New Life’s website.

Kennedy retires from Florida church. D. James Kennedy, who used his Florida-based television ministry to establish himself as a leading voice for religious conservatives, has retired from Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale. Kennedy, 76, suffered a cardiac arrest in late December and has not returned to his pulpit of more than 48 years since falling ill. Kennedy started the congregation, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America, in 1959. He became a well-known Christian broadcaster through his presidency of Coral Ridge Ministries, which broadcast his sermons. He also pioneered the Evangelism Explosion personal Christian witness training.

National Primitive Baptists mark 100 years. The National Primitive Baptist Convention has been modernizing some old beliefs and practices, but this year the group has been busy celebrating its past. The convention is observing its centennial year, including a weeklong meeting in Birmingham, Ala., that ended Aug. 24. The predominantly black denomination was organized in Huntsville, Ala., in 1907 and has about 1,500 churches and 600,000 members nationwide. When Primitive Baptists banded together to form a national group in 1907, many preferred to remain unaffiliated. That’s still the case. They clung to practices such as singing hymns without instruments. Nowadays, most churches in the convention have a mix of the old and the new. Worship usually starts with a cappella hymns from the traditional hymnal. But most churches now also have instrumental praise bands to augment the music at other points in the worship.

South African church lauded for AIDS work. A predominantly white congregation in South Africa has been awarded top honors for its fight against AIDS among blacks by two U.S.-based religious groups. Fish Hoek Baptist Church received the Courageous Leadership Award, a joint project by the Willow Creek Association and the Christian development organization World Vision. The South African congregation was selected from a pool of 100 entries and will receive $120,000 for its HIV-AIDS efforts. In 1999, the church established Living Hope Community Centre to combat the Cape Peninsula’s mounting health crisis. Living Hope today employs 147 paid staff members and has spread into six communities, offering services such as hospice and home-based care, food distribution, HIV testing and a range of counseling services. At the same time, it occasionally has come under stinging criticism from South Africa’s leading anti-AIDS lobby group, Treatment Action Campaign, for mixing evangelism with HIV/AIDS treatment and training.

Posted: 8/31/07

Ethicists debate morality
of enhancing genetics

By Kim Lawton

Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Scientists already know which genes are responsible for particular illnesses, and clinical trials are under way to find new treatments for genetically based diseases. But, ethicists ask, what if this newfound genetic knowledge is used not only to cure, but also to enhance physical and mental capabilities—and enable parents to select traits of their children?

“Aiming at giving our kids a competitive edge in a consumer society—that, in principle, is a goal that is limitless,” said Harvard University professor Michael Sandel, a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.

“There is no end. In fact, one can imagine a kind of hormonal arms race, or genetic race—whether it’s to do with height, or IQ—conceivably in the future.”

In 2003, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of human growth hormone for healthy children who have no defined cause for their short stature.

“The decision was controversial because there were a lot of people who felt that this was cosmetic treatment,” said Paul Kaplowitz of the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington. “If I see those children, I simply say, ‘This is not an appropriate use of growth hormone.’“

Sandel, too, said he supports the use of new biotechnologies to cure illness, but he strongly opposes its use for enhancement.

“My argument is that there is a moral difference between intervention for the sake of health, to cure or prevent disease, and intervention for the sake of achieving a competitive edge for our kids,” Sandel said.

Technologies also are moving forward that one day may allow parents to pre-select various traits in their children, including personality or temperament. Sandel opposes both sex selection and procedures to select personality traits of children.

“The norm of unconditional parental love, I think, depends on the fact that we don’t pick and choose the traits of our children in the way that we pick and choose the features of a car we might order.”

Posted: 8/31/07

New forum’s ambitious goal
—get the world’s Christians talking

By Adelle M. Banks

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Like cousins at a big family reunion, representatives of the various streams of Christianity from across the globe will gather this fall near Nairobi, Kenya.

The Global Christian Forum is a rare opportunity for Christians who don’t always speak to each other—and in some cases have never met—to spend a few days together and simply get to know one another.

It’s not, supporters and organizers say, meant to be a new large organization with a new large agenda for the world’s Christians.

“Enormous numbers of Christians do not talk to each other,” said Cecil Robeck, a Fuller Theological Seminary professor and Pentecostal who serves on the forum’s planning committee. “They talk about one another or they just try to do their own thing.”

Robeck and other committee members hope the gathering, set for Nov. 6-9 in Limuru, Kenya, will open new conversations that might not have occurred a generation ago.

Existing ecumenical organizations often have differed on whether evangelism or social action should be their focus.

Groups such as the World Evangelical Alliance and the World Council of Churches gather smaller circles of Christians and have differing ideologies or political persuasions that have kept them apart.

“I think, increasingly, a whole new generation is saying, ‘This is nonsense. This is a violation of what we should be about,’” said Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, a member of the planning committee and a president of Christian Churches Together, a U.S. group that shares a similar vision.

Some 250 representatives of Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Pentecostal and charismatic Christians will break into small groups at the global meeting and share their “faith journeys,” study the Bible and discuss the results of meetings that brought dozens of Christians together ahead of the gathering in Kenya.

The last regional meeting, held in June in Chile, included Latin American and Caribbean religious leaders. Members of Anglican, Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox, Pentecostal and Protestant churches attended.

Those involved in the upcoming meeting say it’s uncertain where it will lead. Another could be set for a future date or other regional gatherings could be planned.

Denton Lotz, outgoing general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, said he hopes Christians can gather and realize the basics of their faith on which they agree.

“We’ve been invited to a table to discuss and to see: Is a forum a potential avenue for Christians around the world to share with one another those things that unite us more than those things that divide us?” Lotz said.

Posted: 8/31/07

Illinois church knowingly placed
convicted sex offender in pulpit

By Michael Leathers

Associated Baptist Press

ROMEOVILLE, Ill. (ABP)—Despite warnings from a denominational official as well as another church, a Southern Baptist congregation near Chicago allowed a convicted child molester to preach for years.

In the end, it took media inquiries for Jeffrey Hannah, 42, to relinquish his leadership positions at, and resign as a member of, First Baptist Church of Romeoville, Ill.

The news about Hannah comes at a time when the Southern Baptist Convention is under heightened scrutiny about its role to protect children from sexual predators in the ministry. Unlike in more hierarchical denominations, Southern Baptist congregations have had few methods for vetting potential ministerial candidates. Many have unwittingly employed convicted sex offenders to work with children and youth.

“Clergy child molesters use their position of spiritual trust as a weapon. No matter how remorseful they may seem, that weapon should never again be placed in their hands,” according to Christa Brown, Baptist outreach director with Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and founder of StopBaptistPredators.org.

“They cannot be allowed back in the pulpit. It's a faulty forgiveness theology that would require kids to serve as the litmus test for finding out whether a child molester’s remorse is genuine.”

Hannah, by all accounts a charming and charismatic man, joined the Romeoville congregation shortly after his release from Graham Correctional Center in Hillsboro, Ill., in January 2001. He began preaching that same year, not long after the church’s pastor resigned. He continued to do so for at least three years and also served as a worship leader and adult Sunday school teacher.

He had served his sentence for pleading guilty in September 1996 to four counts of criminal sexual assault involving teenage girls. His plea-bargain agreement involved dropping several other counts.

The incidents happened while Hannah was a youth pastor at Crossroads Church, then located in Libertyville, Ill. He served four years and three months of his nine-year prison sentence and was on parole for an additional two years.

After his release, Hannah married a woman from First Baptist of Romeoville. According to former First Baptist deacon Del Kirkpatrick, Hannah met his wife when she visited him as part of a prison ministry.

Kirkpatrick left the church last year over disagreements involving the remarriage of the congregation’s divorced pastor, Charles Hamby. Hamby resigned abruptly along with Hannah.

Kirkpatrick said Hannah had told the church about his arrest and prison time. “I felt like the man had confessed, was trying to make a new life and put it behind him,” he said. “We insisted he have nothing to do with young girls.”

Kirkpatrick later learned that Hannah did not disclose all the details of his past to the congregation. Those details included his sexual involvement with at least two young women, one of whom was underage, while he was at an Evangelical Free Church congregation in California in the mid-1980s. No charges were filed in that case, but the women contacted Illinois prosecutors after Hannah’s 1996 arrest.

After hearing “through the grapevine” in 2001 that Hannah was preaching at the Romeoville church Stephen Farish, pastor of Crossroads Church, contacted one of First Baptist’s leaders to warn the congregation about Hannah’s crimes. He discovered that First Baptist already knew.

Farish said that Hannah remains under the discipline of Crossroads Church, which had excommunicated him after they determined he was not being fully honest. “Jeff should ask us to remove the discipline from him even before he begins to preach at another church,” he said. Farish added that, if Crossroad’s board of elders is satisfied that Hannah is fully repentant, they will recommend to the church to remove the discipline and restore fellowship with Hannah.

Others do not believe Hannah should have the opportunity to return to a pulpit or serve in church leadership.

“I believe in restoring a person to fellowship, but not necessarily to leadership,” Dan Eddington, director of Three Rivers Baptist Association in Joliet, Ill., said. First Baptist of Romeoville is a member of the 38-church regional association.

Eddington learned about Hannah’s past in October, less than a month after Hannah was elected as the association’s assistant moderator. Eddington was tipped off by another Three Rivers congregation, which had been considering hiring Hannah as a worship leader until they found out about his past.

He advised Hannah that he would have to resign from his associational leadership positions. Eddington also urged Hamby, the Romeoville pastor, to seek Hannah’s resignation from church leadership position.

In January, Eddington learned that Hannah remained in his First Baptist posts and that some church members did not know the full details of his arrest and conviction. Upset congregants called a special meeting in February to air their concerns, but the majority voted to keep Hannah in leadership.

Eddington did not agree with the church’s position, but he respected their autonomy. He advised church members to establish criteria by which Hannah would be supervised, but he said he does not believe those guidelines were ever created.

Kirkpatrick said Hannah had ingratiated himself to the congregation. “Jeff was pretty popular and a lot of people liked his preaching,” he said. He was no longer a First Baptist member by the time of the vote.

Brown and others have been heavily critical of the SBC for not establishing systems by which churches can easily avoid hiring sex offenders such as Hannah. But some convention leaders contend they have no authority to intervene because local churches are autonomous in Baptist polity.

In June, messengers to the SBC’s annual meeting approved a motion to consider the establishment of a national registry of clergy and staff who have been “credibly accused of, personally confessed to or legally convicted of sexual harassment or abuse.” The denomination’s Executive Committee was charged with implementing the motion.

“Forgiveness does not require us to abandon wisdom,” Brown said. “I believe we serve God when we do everything within our power to protect the young against the soul-murdering impact of this horrific crime.”

No one has formally accused Hannah of any improprieties since he joined the Romeoville church. He could not be reached for comment for this story, and messages left at the church were not returned.

Media inquiries about Hannah coupled with Hamby’s resignation on Aug. 17 led the church to cancel its morning worship service Aug. 19.

Eddington said he will be meeting with church leaders to discuss First Baptist’s future. The church, organized in 1959, had an average of 48 people in worship and 30 in Sunday school in 2006. That’s about half of its attendance for worship and Sunday school in 1999, according to Illinois Baptist State Association records.

Posted: 8/31/07

Texas Baptist Forum

Moment of silence

The story about the “moment of silence” law in public schools (Aug. 20) is simply not believable. Every honest person knows the real motivation for such a requirement: It is an obvious and unconstitutional backdoor attempt to inject religion into the public schools.

• Jump to online-only letters below

Letters are welcomed. Send them to marvknox@baptiststandard.com ; 250 words maximum.

“Children rarely embrace spiritual principles and practices that their parents fail to demonstrate in their lifestyle.” George Barna Religion-trends reseacher (BP) “Now that reading has become more difficult, I probably read the Bible less but pray more. Of course, over the years, I’ve memorized many passages from the Bible, and I’m especially thankful now that I did this. I wish we gave more attention to Bible memorization in our churches today.” Billy Graham Evangelist (Minneapolis Star Tribune/RNS) “Watching one of your own children die is horrible, and many people in Africa have experienced that. Equal to that is knowing you are going to die and not being able to care for your children. This is why women in the U.S. are getting so involved in AIDS. We can look at women in Africa and realize they are just like us.” Lynne Hybels Co-founder of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., on the global AIDS crisis (Sojourners/RNS)

The common-sense remedy for a situation like this is not proper and thorough training for teachers. The solution is as Jesus commanded in Matthew 6:5-6. Apparently, what Jesus commanded is not sufficient for Texas.

Public school teachers can teach students about all of the religions of the world, but they have no business explaining anything about “prayer” to their students. “Prayer” is understood by all as a matter of religion, and it is dishonest to assert otherwise.

Gene Garman

Pittsburg, Kan.

ATMs in church

I had to laugh when I read Chuck Mann’s letter to the editor (Aug. 20.) He asks, “What would Jesus do if he walked into your church and saw an ATM?” 

My thought was, “What would Jesus do if he walked into any of our churches?”

 Ken Ansell

Waxahachie

Who’s uninsured?

Karen Wood appears to be surprised by the number of uninsured Texans (Aug. 20). Nowhere does she mention the millions of illegal aliens who are uninsured by choice. They simply have no need for insurance, because they all know that the rest of us will take care of their medical needs.

I know from experience in the field as an Internal Revenue Service officer that the government estimate of 11 million illegal aliens is a total fabrication. The number is probably closer to 18 million. The government is simply unaware of so many of them.

Van Kleiner

Dallas

Embarrassing events

What has gotten into the Southern Baptist Convention leadership lately?  It’s bad enough that Paige Patterson insults women both verbally and by establishing a dumbed-down seminary degree loaded with home economics courses. But now the recent second vice president of the convention, Wiley Drake, calls for “imprecatory prayer”—curses—against personnel of the Americans United for Separation of Church and State because they asked the IRS to see if his endorsements of Mike Huckabee for U.S. president are illegal (Aug. 20). 

“Let there be no one to extend mercy to him,” Drake says, quoting Scripture.  “Neither let there be anyone to favor his fatherless children.”

Doesn’t Drake remember the outcry when Ayatollah Khomeini invoked a fatwah against Salmon Rushdie? Can’t he recall Jesus saying, “Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you” (Luke 6:27b-28)?

Why didn’t Drake simply inform his congregation of his position with regard to his statements instead of enlisting them in a bizarre negative prayer campaign?  Why do these embarrassments keep occurring?

Dolan McKnight

Richardson

What do you think? Send letters to Editor Marv Knox by mail: P.O. Box 660267, Dallas 75266-0267; or by e-mail: marvknox@baptiststandard.com.

Posted: 8/31/07

BGCT sends $20,000 to help
Minnesota flood victims

By John Hall

Texas Baptist Communications

DALLAS—The Baptist General Convention of Texas has sent $20,000 to the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention to help victims of flooding in southeastern Minnesota.

Widespread flooding damaged more than 4,500 homes in the region. At least 243 homes were destroyed, and seven people died.

A Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention emergency food service team prepared more than 20,000 meals in five days in Winona, Minn. The team may continue serving for several weeks.

The funds from the BGCT will provide $1,000 grants to families in need. Each family will be identified by Cornerstone Community Church in Winona, which suffered some flood damage.

Leo Endel, executive director of the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention, said he is thankful for the BGCT’s assistance.

“They are helping us be able to leverage our volunteers beyond anything we could do alone.” he said.

Wayne Shuffield, director of the BGCT Missions, Evangelism and Ministry Team, said the convention is committed to assisting Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptists.

“Texas Baptists gladly and prayerfully stand ready to assist our partners in the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention,” he said. 

“Our roots are deep with Minnesota-Wisconsin through more than 50 years in partnership and life-long relationships between convention staffs, Texas Baptist pastors and church-to-church shared ministries. We will do all we can for as long as it takes to assist our distant neighbors in this time of desperate need.”

Posted: 8/31/07

Investors with moral agenda are
bullish on faith-based mutual funds

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Religious activists with a moral agenda for corporate America used to rely primarily on consumer boycotts and sympathetic lawmakers to get Wall Street’s attention. But now their toolbox is growing—and there’s a lot more money in it.

Over the past decade, America’s market for religious investment products has grown by more than 3,500 percent, according to data from fund tracker Morningstar.

During the same period, faith-based mutual funds, which routinely agitate for social change in corporate board rooms or shun stocks they deem immoral, grew from about $500 million to more than $17 billion.

What’s emerging, observers say, is a market-based response to popular demand for ways people of faith can make their voices heard on issues closest to their hearts. And people of faith—especially social conservatives—are seizing what they see as a new opportunity to make a difference.

“It’s just a matter of growing up” and adding more sophisticated tools for advancing an agenda, said Ron Simkins, director of the Kripke Center for the Study of Religion & Society at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. “Now, instead of boycotting Disney, they’ll be investing in Fox Family Films.”

Religious conservatives are mobilizing to attach a voice to the cash they already have on Wall Street. For example, the Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Association is for the first time urging its 2.8 million online members to purge their investment portfolios of companies that support a “gay agenda” or “anti-family” practices.

Yet, as social conservatives increasingly tether their agendas to their investments, they’re hardly walking in lockstep. On the contrary, they’re choosing among a range of religious financial products—including 16 families of faith-based mutual funds—that vary in how they define corporate responsibility.

Evangelicals, for instance, are getting behind more than one vision. Some have contributed to the $600 million Timothy Plan, a family of mutual funds with evangelical roots and a pledge to avoid “securities of any company that is actively contributing to the moral decline of our society.” Translation: screening out companies—including many in the benchmark S&P 500 Index—affiliated with pornography, abortion, gambling, tobacco, alcohol and non-married lifestyles.

However, evangelicals also are behind much of the $900 million invested with Mennonite Mutual Aid Praxis Funds, which defies easy political categories. This group avoids companies such as Pfizer, which fund managers regard as manufacturers of abortion products. But it also lobbies on behalf of shareholders for eco-friendly corporate policies, and its pacifist orientation screens out stocks in defense contractors and bonds issued by the U.S. Treasury.

Mark Regier, stewardship investing service manager for Mennonite Mutual Aid, insists his firm hears evangelicals saying: “‘I want more. As an evangelical or conservative Christian, I do care about the environment. I do care about human rights. I do see the sense in being engaged with companies and encouraging them to move to more positive positions on social issues.’”

Promoters of what’s known as “morally responsible” or “biblically responsible” investing are expecting the values component to be a powerful drawing card.

Kingdom Advisors, a nationwide network of more than 1,200 Christian financial advisers, this year created a subgroup of those who offer biblically responsible investment products.

Centurion Funds, named after a faithful figure in the Gospel of Luke, launched less than a year ago with a pledge from company President David Lenoir to “not just avoid the ‘sin stocks’ but to look for the good in companies.”

And more than 600 investors, each committing at least $100,000 to private money management with Stewardship Partners in Matthews, N.C., have demonstrated there’s a market for customizing equity portfolios according to what CEO Rusty Leonard calls “red state (conservative) Christian values.”

For socially conservative activists, the process of engaging corporations has evolved gradually over two decades. Until now, the Mississippi-based AFA, for instance, has focused on consumer action.

Consumer pressure is easier than investor pressure to explain and to use in rallying a broad base of supporters, AFA President Tim Wildmon said.

But he insists his organization has been remiss in letting agenda-driven investing be the near-exclusive province of left-leaning mutual funds with a “socially responsible” label.

“We just dropped the ball on that,” Wildmon said. “We haven’t been very smart in that regard. But now that’s about to start changing.”

Posted: 8/31/07

North Carolina WMU decides
to leave convention’s control

CARY, N.C. (ABP)—The Woman’s Missionary Union of North Carolina board has voted to remove the missions organization from the North Carolina Baptist Building—and the state convention executive director’s attempt to assert authority over its staff.

The dramatic move culminates 16 months of tension between the state WMU and the rightward-shifting Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

Conflict between the missions-promotion group and the North Carolina convention has simmered since April 2006, when the WMU leadership voted to change the term that described its relationship with the convention from “auxiliary” to “cooperative partner.”

At that time, it also assumed final authority in its own personnel matters, although it committed to stay aligned with Baptist State Convention personnel policies.

At issue was who could make the final call on potential new hires—a responsibility claimed by the state convention’s executive director-treasurer because each state WMU staff member is a convention employee.

However, North Carolina WMU staff positions mainly are funded through a state missions offering WMU members promote.

Several meetings took place between WMU and North Carolina Baptist leaders to resolve the issues.

However, they reached an impasse when neither side would budge from their position on ultimate authority in hiring WMU staff.

North Carolina Baptist Executive Director Milton Hollifield said in a prepared statement he was “grieved” that the longstanding relationship between the state convention and WMU had “moved to this level of consequential uncertainty.”

North Carolina WMU Executive Director Ruby Fulbright insisted Hollifield has taken a more active role in hiring matters.

She said in previous state convention administrations, WMU was wholly responsible for hiring and managing its staff and the North Carolina Baptist executive director merely signed paperwork to enter new WMU employees into the payroll system.

Fundamentalists supportive of recent decades’ rightward shift in the national Southern Baptist Convention solidified their control of the North Carolina convention—long a moderate bastion—in the years just prior to Hollifield’s appointment in 2006.

Posted: 8/31/07

Congregations aid flooded church in Oklahoma

By Carla Wynn Davis

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship

CHICKASHA, Okla.—Members of Cowboy Country Church in Chickasha, Okla., put hours of work into transforming an old building into their new church home. But after worshipping there just one Sunday, the building became uninhabitable.

The new church became infested with mold after flooding from Tropical Storm Erin, which blew through Chickasha Aug. 18-19. 

When Pastor Lynn Walker, arrived at the church to survey the situation, he found that a nearby creek and river had become one large rushing body of water. The church was flooding, and Walker waded through chest-high water, trying to save the congregation’s music and sound equipment.

But despite Walker’s efforts, the church lost about $10,000 in furnishings, rent, sound equipment and musical instruments.

So far three Oklahoma churches have offered funds to help the cowboy church recover some losses. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has contributed $2,000 toward the church’s recovery efforts, and more support could come from other state and regional CBF organizations, said Charles Ray, the Fellowship’s disaster response coordinator.

Members of First Baptist Church in Oklahoma City and NorthHaven Church in Norman, Okla., helped clean the damaged building. 

On Aug. 22, the church held Wednesday services outside the damaged church building, and for now, members have begun moving to another location. 

“They’re not giving up,” said T Thomas, Oklahoma CBF coordinator. “They’re moving ahead.”

Posted: 8/31/07

Louisiana College to open law school
named for SBC fundamentalist leader

By Greg Warner

Associated Baptist Press

PINEVILLE, La. (ABP)—Baptist-affiliated Louisiana College will establish a new “biblical” law school named after Paul Pressler, the Texas appeals-court judge better known for leading the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The college hopes to open the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law in 2009, said Joe Aguillard, president of the 1,000-student school. The school wants to have as many as 40 students in the first year and grow to 300, he said.

Louisiana College is affiliated with the Louisiana Baptist Convention, which elects its trustees. Like the SBC, the school has shifted in recent years to a more narrowly conservative stance. Some faculty members complained academic freedom was being curtailed, and the school’s accrediting agency placed the college on probation.

Aguillard said the law school—which would be the school’s first doctoral program—will teach “a biblical worldview” and seek accreditation with the American Bar Association.

“Founding a law school is a monumental undertaking but one that we are working on diligently,” Aguillard said in a press release. “Opening a conservative, Christian law school will fill a niche in the state of Louisiana and also the nation.”

Pressler, a Baptist layman from Houston, served in the Texas legislature and practiced law before being named a state judge in 1970. He later was appointed to the 14th Court of Appeals, from which he retired in 1993.

In 1989, President George H. W. Bush reportedly offered Pressler the post of director of the Office of Government Ethics, which angered Baptist moderates. In his 1999 autobiography, A Hill on Which to Die, Pressler said he declined the position rather than face confirmation and the “personal vendetta in which liberals engage to destroy innocent people.”

Pressler also served as a trustee of the SBC International Mission Board and as first vice president of the convention.