The holidays use ministers up

Author: J. Samuel Burner

Merry you're fired and a very happy and prosperous new I quit.

How often do pastors leave not only the church where they're employed but also the ministry, either because they want to or because they must and can't get another job in their field?

According to SonScape Retreats, which specializes in helping vocational ministers, life pressures "drive 1,600 shepherds out of the ministry every month."

They go on to say:

That's 19,000 pastors each year - not including the missionaries and specialized ministers who add the pressures of crossing cultures and raising funds to the mix.

The intense combination of a frenetic Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Years church activity schedule and church members facing holiday crisis can drain the most skilled and resourceful of ministers.

Reflect on it, and your credulity may not be strained by the report that, every Monday morning, 40% of all ministers consider changing professions.

Should Billy Graham be active in a church close to his home

Aging evangelistic warhorse Billy Graham recently moved his church membership from Dallas, Texas, to Spartanburg, S.C. Although he lives in Montreat, N.C., some 60 miles from his new church, which he apparently "attends" almost exclusively via television viewing.

Why isn't Graham active in a church that is local to him?

Former Biblical Recorder editor Tony Cartledge thinks Graham should be.

Do you?

Women's Missionary Union cutbacks are official

Ethics Daily reports that the WMU cutbacks are official. Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) organizations which could have prevented them, did not.

Is anyone smiling?

No inaugural prayer at all? Not likely

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has filed a 34-page legal complaint seeking to bar prayer from the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration.

There is some debate over the possibility that the suit filed by Michael A. Newdow, 17 other individuals and 10 groups has a chance of success.

We think Scott Walter, executive director of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty was on target when he told the Washington Post:

Newdow's lawsuit over the inauguration is a lot like the streaker at the Super Bowl: a pale, self-absorbed distraction. And anybody who looks at it carefully can see there's not much there.

Abstinence-based sex education fails, with harm

Abstinence pledgers gain no sexual behavior advantage and are for some reason harmed, as George W. Frink explains:

Purity ring - (c)Rlmabie

Premarital teenage virginity pledges don't delay premarital sex and do result in more unsafe sex, concluded a large, well-designed study by Janet E. Rosenbaum at the Johns Hopkins School Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Earlier, nonpartisan studies of abstinence-only sex education similarly concluded that it doesn't work.

This study compared similar pledgers and non-pledgers and did find one, telling difference, as CNN reported:

Unmarried pledgers, however, were less likely than non-pledgers to use birth control (64 percent of pledge takers and 70 percent of non-pledge takers said they used it most of the time) or condoms (42 percent of pledge takers and 54 percent of non-pledge takers said they used them most of the time).

Please read the rest.

Broken Southern Baptist Communion

Giving voice to the current spiritual division of attendance at a Southern Baptist Lord's Supper, Ed Kilgore writes:

On the night in question, the pastor offered a brief homily reminding the congregation that the Lord's Supper was limited to "believers" and "the godly." Knowing what I know about contemporary Southern Baptist views these days, I had to wonder if I was outside the circle of fidelity and godliness.

It's not as though the pastor's warning was surprising in any sense. It was, in fact, a pale, watered-down version of the "fencing of the altar" exhortation that was central to the Calvinist eucharistic tradition from which Baptists originally developed. It was a faithful reflection of St. Paul's strictures against "unworthy reception" in his first epistle to the Corinthians. And it was in no way as restrictive in its tone or scope as the Roman Catholic/Orthodox limitation of communion to members in good standing--and without unshriven mortal sin--of their own faith traditions, or even the Anglican/Lutheran requirement of baptism prior to communion.

But that Baptist pastor's words did cause me to ask myself whether he or many of the people around me would consider me a "believer."

For nearly two millennia, of course, Christian "belief" was measured by adherence to creeds, confessions, and such big theological issues as the Trinity or the Atonement. Receiving the eucharist "worthily" also usually revolved around more than the moral condition of the communicant, and required in most traditions a common belief about the nature of the celebration itself--transubstantiation or consubstantiation, real or symbolic presence, sacrifice or memorial.

Nowadays, in the United States at least, such ancient indicia of "belief" have largely receded into the background. And among Protestants, the old disputes have been supplanted by one big dispute: the proposition of biblical inerrancy, and with it, a host of highly political and cultural arguments over issues of gender and sexuality, from the preeminence of men in family and community life, to gay and lesbian "lifestyles," to abortion.

Please read the rest.

Christophobia is what, exactly?

Responding to Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren's Sunday screed denying he had compared homosexuality to incest and pedophilia, Frink wrote:

Giving his critics no credit for good faith, Warren began with a false denial of his earlier incendiary assertions and climbed a tree of polemic, concluding that those who took offense at his views were suffering from "Christophobia."

"Christophobia" is an attack word which has been in use for more than a decade.

As William Safire wrote in On Language:

As Christianist, with its evocation of Islamist, gains wider usage as an attack word on what used to be called the religious right, another suffix is being used in counterattack to derogate those who denounce church influence in politics.

''The Catholic scholar George Weigel calls this phenomenon 'Christophobia,''' the columnist Anne Applebaum wrote in The Washington Post.

She noted that he borrowed the word from the American legal scholar, J.H.H. Weiler.

The word was used by Weigel ''after being struck by the European Union's fierce resistance to any mention of the continent's Christian origins in the draft versions of the new, and still unratified, European constitution.''

There's more -->

Focus on the Family dumps Beck interview because he's a Mormon

For passing Proposition 8, tolerance of Mormons is fine, says the behavior of Focus on the Family chairman & founder Dr. James Dobson.

He signed the AboveTheHate.com letter which opens with:

We write firstly to express our deep gratitude to you and the entire LDS community for the large and impressive contributions of your church and its members in protecting marriage in California and Arizona.

When Underground Apologetics objected to Mormon author Glenn Beck's interview promoting his book "The Christmas Sweater," though, Focus caved. They pulled it off the Focus on the Family's CitizenLink site.

The Focus explanation to Joel Campbell of The Mormon Times:

You are correct to note that Mr. Beck is a member of the Mormon church, and that we did not make mention of this fact in our interview with him. We do recognize the deep theological difference between evangelical theology and Mormon theology, and it would have been prudent for us at least to have pointed out these differences. Because of the confusion, we have removed the interview from CitizenLink.

Bruce Tomaso wrote for the Dallas Morning News Religion Blog:

Focus on the Family represents itself as promoting Christian values. Many -- but clearly not all -- Christians believe that one of those values is tolerance.

Throw rocks, or lend a hand?

A call to voluntary service isn't what Focus on the Family Action anticipated [.pdf] in the trench warfare days prior to President Elect Obama's landslide Nov. 5 victory.

Rather than seeking to curtail freedoms, the Obama Presidential Inaugural Committee has invited Focus on the Family, among others, to involved itself in a volunteer effort which is to be part of pulling the nation out of the deepest hole it has been in since the Great Depresson.

The Committee wrote:

Every time our nation faces crisis, our national experience has shown Americans rise to the challenge. While government has an important role to play in helping rekindle our economy and addressing the problems of a distressed nation, President-elect Obama believes each of us, as Americans, have a responsibility to do what we can for our communities and fellow citizens. We are one nation.

The United States is once again at a crossroads and that is why the President-elect hopes to use the occasion of his Inauguration to rally our nation to commit to service in our communities. We are asking for your organization’s participation in meeting this challenge.

In 1994, Congress transformed the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday into a national day of community service to further commemorate a man who lived his life in service to others. As a tribute to that legacy and the very real needs of our nation, the President-elect and Vice President-elect will launch a national organizing effort on the eve of their Inauguration to engage Americans in service. This national day of service will fall on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, January 19, 2009 and, unlike past calls to service, President-elect Obama will ask Americans to do more than just offer a single day of service to their cities, towns and neighborhoods. He will ask all of us to make an ongoing commitment to our communities. Never has it been more important to come together in shared purpose to tackle the common challenges we face.

Interested?

You may wish to begin by downloading a guide to organizing a service event.

Everything in order, use the Event Creation Webform to register you National Day of Service event.

Still unresolved: Should Obama have invited Rick Warren?

Via the New York Times:

Robert Wright of Bloggingheads.tv and James Pinkerton of Fox News debate whether Barack Obama should have invited the Rev. Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration.

For unto you is born this day ...

Jesus and Mary: Black Madonna of Czestochowska

Poland's holiest relic and one of the country's national symbols.

A time of religious revival

There is a massive, conservative, multi-national religious revival underway.

It appeals to the young, whom the Southern Baptist Convention would like to reach, and it's Muslim.

The New York Times has thus far published ten pieces in a series on it.

Life-saving, last-minute gifts for hard-to-please journogeeks

Over at Baptists Today, Tony Cartledge recommends lasting, potentially life-saving gifts for those in greatest need:

Thinking of donkeys and other livestock that may (or may not) have been in or near the stable when Jesus was born, I'm reminded that millions of people across the globe have no donkey in their stable or chicken in their pot. Often, however, a brace of hens or ducks, a couple of goats, a heifer or a draft animal could go a long way toward lifting people from the edge of starvation.

If you need to grab a last-minute gift -- or if you're just inspired to do so -- you can honor a friend or loved one by giving a pig, a goat, or even a water buffalo in their honor by visiting Heifer International's website. There, you can browse a gift catalog, send a donation that could save hungry lives, and print out an instant gift card or send an e-message to the person you want to honor.

If you're still trying to think of something for either of us, please do that. In fact, give a breeding pair of animals if you can.

Rick Warren revisits himself

Evangelical Pastor Rick Warren, chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to pray at his inauguration, has been misunderstood as a kind of radically insulting extremist in his views of homosexual Americans.

Warren explained exactly how he has been misunderstood in a three-part video blog to his congregation at Saddleback Community Church on Tuesday:

I have in no way ever taught that homosexuality is the same thing as a forced relationship between an adult and a child, or between siblings. I was trying to point out I'm not opposed to gays having their partnership. I'm opposed to gays using the term marriage for their relationship.

His views were still received by many as insulting, as gay rights activists like Pam Spaulding and Wayne Hudson observed. But it is clear that he really didn't intend to put homosexuality on the same moral and ethical level as pedophilia and incest.

Apparently to underline his commitment to a civil dialog, the Saddleback Web site has been rewritten to provide a gentler explanation of homosexuality as a mortal sin. Saddleback Community Church standards are unchanged, of course. Homosexuals must still overcome and cast off their homosexuality, as though it were the equivalent of alcoholism or drug addiction, in order to join his church.

I'm neither homosexual nor remarkable for my devotion to gay rights, and while I see there is a difference between his expressed views and the language in which they were being cast, I don't expect the waters to be abruptly calmed. What Warren and his church have to say to homosexuals is still "repent," not "I accept and respect you just as you are. Let's make peace."

Warren's conciliatory explanation is in my view progress toward such a dialog, but to many a homosexual ear Warren's voice still rings with something like the dulcent tones of the late Bull Connor's expositions on racial equality.

Melissa Etheridge and Rick Warren

Pastor Brian McLaren agrees that melissa etheridge and rick warren are getting it right.

Visions of Baptoys dancing in your head

Do you have visions of sugarplums and exploding Southern Babtoy Corp. game-toys dancing in your head?

It isn't too late to get a warning-never-included, problems never recorded, S. Babtoy Corp. never accepts responsiblity, this-isn't-a-game toy that uses you, or uses your children, or uses your grandchildren, to amuse itself.

You may already have one, or several about whom you could and should have been warned. By deliberately conservative estimate, there are thousands.

Don't tell the SBC when one blows up in your face, explodes in the mind of a child's playmate or implants shrapnel deep in the life of one of your offspring.

The SBC doesn't want to hear about it. They studiously refuse to keep records.

They never warn anyone about childhood-destroying models.

It's easier not to take any responsibility, even though the result is avoidable harm.

These toys are Christa Brown's blistering satire on the Southern Baptist Convention's longstanding failure to take well-understood action to restrain Baptist clerical pedophilia.

Please read the entire piece, and the comments.

Southern Baptist Decline Continues

David Walters:

Times are tough, even in the salvation market. After decades of growth, the nation's largest group of Protestants, the Southern Baptist Convention, is reporting losses (in church membership and recorded baptisms) for the third year in a row. Baptisms are at a 20-year low, a figure liable to put an eternity-conscious church into a severe depression.

Cutbacks at Southern Baptist seminaries and agencies are even hitting the denomination's bold, new marketing strategy designed to spread the gospel (and increase the flock) to every soul in North America by 2020. The campaign, called "God's Plan for Sharing" (Yes, GPS), includes a new image media campaign, "We Are Southern Baptists."

What does it all mean for the Southern Baptist future?

Nothing has really changed for years, as the Tennessean reported in Southern Baptist growth plan teeters.

News of Southern Baptist decline is old now, and denial has become more difficult as successive programs to end it have been rolled out, and have failed.

While the money lasts, it is probably easier to let internal divisions go unhealed, and roll out another in a time-honored series of big solutions.

Mike Glenn, pastor of Brentwood Baptist Church in Nasheville, told the Tennessean about GPS:

Sometimes when things aren't working, rather than being honest, we just work the old thing harder. … Once, there was a time when these big, national campaigns would work. But those days are over. They mean well and they'll peddle this thing as hard as they can peddle it, but it's for the 1950s and 1960s, and that world is gone.

6. Southern Baptists decide against pedophilia database

Number 6 of Time Magazine's Top 10 Underreported News Stories:

Facing calls to curb child sex abuse within its churches, in June the Southern Baptist Convention — the largest U.S. religious body after the Catholic Church — urged local hiring committees to conduct federal background checks but rejected a proposal to create a central database of staff and clergy who have been either convicted of or indicted on charges of molesting minors.

At Stop Baptist Predators, abuse survivor Christa Brown wrote in response:

Southern Baptists claim 16.2 million members, and they have 101,000 clergy in this country. Without an effective oversight system, these numbers mean that a lot of kids and families are being left at risk. Without even any record-keeping on credibly accused clergy, there’s nothing to prevent Baptist clergy-predators from moving church to church.

In a Dec. 18 letter, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and other Clergy called upon Southern Baptist Convention president Johnny Hunt to lead the denomination in implementing straightforward protections against clerical Baptist sexual predators. They asked him to lead the SBC to provide:

1. A safe and welcoming place for victims to report clergy sex abuse.
2. An objective, professionally-trained panel for responsibly assessing victims' abuse reports.
3. An efficient means of assuring that the assessment information reaches people in the pews -- i.e., a database.

Failure to implement an effective system is illogical and, because it permits predation that would otherwise have been stopped, cruel.

Justifications for that policy of cruelty border on the bizarre. While SBC president, Frank Page argued that a registry of sexually abusive Baptist clergy was ill-advised because:

... if we were to have a national registry, what we know happens with true abusers, they just switch to another denomination that doesn't access a denominational database.

Thus a denominational database is somehow inappropriate because it would work as designed by reducing the number of abusers among Southern Baptist clergy.

In the same interview Page addressed what Wade Burleson believes is the underlying reason for Southern Baptist Convention resistance to creating and maintaining a central database of abusive clergy -- cost:

Some of our state conventions are doing a much better job of providing either free or low-cost background checks for not only paid staff but all volunteer staff. Our church requires a nationwide sexual and criminal check on all volunteers if you work with anyone 18 years or younger. That costs $10,000 to $15,000 per year, but it's well spent. So we want to encourage and empower and equip local churches to protect precious children. And if there's something our nationwide denomination can do, we'll do it.

No, precious children, they will not.

No, from the Southern Baptist Convention, you can expect double-talk about the autonomy of local churches -- just another variant of the kind of double-talk which has afflicted abuse victims for generations. You cannot expect the forceful, effective attention the SBC gives to issues about which it is serious.

Suffering little children are a lower priority for the SBC than keeping women pastors out of the pulpit, keeping homosexuals out of the pews and barring somehow insufficiently fundamentalist churches from affiliation.

Learning to love Rick Warren

Saturday at the annual conference of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Pastor Rick Warren tried to deflect criticism by emphasizing the need for Americans in general to find common ground.

Implying that the media were somehow the cause of the controversy that has erupted around him since he was asked to read the invocation at President-Elect Barack Obama's inauguration, Warren said:

Let me just get this over very quickly. I love Muslims. And for the media's purpose, I happen to love gays and straights.

Wrong, as Juan Cole indicated in his blog about the same gathering:

Warren will read the invocation at President-Elect Barack Obama's inauguration, a choice that angered the gay community. Warren supported Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage (and forcibly divorced or 'de-married' 18,000 gay couples already married in California). Warren also has compared legalizing gay marriage to legalizing incest, pedophilia and polygamy.

Of course Prop. 8's fate is in the hands of the California Supreme Court and Warren, it seems, is very much a man in process.

Warren, for all of his bigotry, still supports something like civil unions for gay couples, and even won over Cole, who wrote:

I came away liking and looking up to Warren. In fact, I wonder whether with some work he could not be gotten to back off some of the hurtful things he has said about gays and rethink his support for Proposition 8.

Cole's detailed account, here, suggests there may be a lot more peace to be made among us. All of us.

Prudent change or Prop. 8 chaos?

Frink addresses the key legal conflict:

California Attorney General Jerry Brown's Prop. 8 argument appears to me to be well-grounded and prudent.

Submitted to a Candid World observes that the California Supreme Court has ruled several times that wholesale modifications of the constitutional structure cannot be accomplished by referendum.

Read the rest.

Rick Warren is progress

This is no time to scoff at liberal/progressive uproar over President-elect Barak Obama's selection of Rick Warren for the Inaugural Invocation.

It is instead important to acknowledge the degree to which Pastor Warren is a bridge between contradictory views.

He embraces civil unions, approval of which helped cost Richard Cizik his job as Washington lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals.

That isn't exactly a meeting of right and left, but it is a great deal farther than James Dobson, Richard Land and others on the religious right are willing to go.

Will Baptists help the Women's Missionary Union?

The fundamentalists vs. moderates theology war tearing apart the Southern Baptist Convention has come to the SBC Women's Missionary Union as painful retrenchment.

Wade Burleson wrote on Dec. 12:

Day before yesterday, the employees of the Woman's Missionary Union were called to a meeting to announce difficult but preemptive measures that were being taken due to the economic downturn. The WMU is short two million dollars in revenue. The executive director of the WMU, Wanda Lee, is working very hard to keep all of the WMU's employees in place, not wanting to lay anyone off. To accomplish this, the employees of the WMU are having to take what amounts to a four week furlough, spread out over an eight month period, without pay.

The problem is as much by design as it is a result of demographic change and the effects of our current economic difficulties.

The theologically moderate WMU refused to come to heel when SBC fundamentalist leadership whistled, so funding has been progressively cut off and sustaining work taken elsewhere in a process which from the outside looks like deliberate destruction of a historically sustaining institution.

The WMU's Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions and the WMU's Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions bring in hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board, respectively.

In return the WMU until recently received reimbursements from both organizations. But after some maneuvering which included an attempt by the NAMB to strip the WMU of the Lottie Moon trademark, both contributions have been sharply reduced and one is being phased out.

Burleson details the history of WMU sustenance of key Southern Baptist institutions, a part of which was a Great Depression bailout of what was then the Home Mission Board.

He in effect calls for Southern Baptists to come home from the theology wars to their consciences in this matter when he writes:

I imagine the WMU will not publicly wave a flag, asking for Southern Baptists to step into the gap for them. However, in my opinion, this is a true test for those of us identified as Southern Baptists. Will we now turn our backs on WMU when they are at a low point, financially?

In the history of what has been called the SBC conservative resurgence, that apparently would be an unprecedented denominational turnabout.

It is unlikely.

The Cynical Use of 'Freedom of Religion'

Kate Childs Graham of the National Catholic Reporter and YoungAdultCatholics-Blog.com doesn't give anyone a free pass in her essay on the misuse of freedom of religion. She writes:

In response to the injustices of the Second World War, on December 10, 1948, the United Nations’ General Assembly adopted what it called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

On this, the 60th anniversary of the Declaration, it is time to take a look at the ways that one of the human rights it listed, the idea of religious freedom, is being used, ironically, to further discriminatory agendas.

We recommend you read the entire essay.

Presbyterian Church(USA), Peru, CNN & pollution

For 10 years, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission workers in Peru have worked with the people of La Oroya, which Doe Run Co. heavy-metal operations have made one of the ten most polluted cities in the world.

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission worker Jacob Goad (right) describes the environmental and health effects of the Doe Run smelter operation (in the background) to CNN, which is producing a documentary on the church’s work in La Oroya. Photo courtesy of CNN

Emily Enders Odom of the Presbyterian News Service writes:

In this city of 35,000 people, more than 95% of the children have elevated levels of lead in their bodies which can cause mental retardation, kidney problems and stunted growth.

“This tragedy,” said Sara Lisherness, Director of the Compassion, Peace and Justice Ministry area of the General Assembly Council (GAC) of the PC(USA), “is the result of American company Doe Run, operator of one of the largest smelters in the southern hemisphere, dumping over two million pounds of toxic emissions, such as lead, over the city each day.”

CNN is to air a report on the city Thursday, Dec. 11 as part of its Planet in Peril series.

Misspending God's money

Stop Baptist Predators makes superb use of Mary Kinney Branson's book Spending God's Money to illustrate how key Southern Baptist Convention organizations are abusing the trust of faithful contributors.

Branson is a former marketing director for the SBC's North American Mission Board and her book is "an insider's account of the extravagance and financial mismanagement there."

Christa Brown writes:

Branson provides details that implicate high Southern Baptist officials and those details are not flattering. For example, (NAMB President) Bob Reccord “had a $1 million fund he could use at his discretion, no questions asked and no receipts required.” (Branson at p. 61)

Can you imagine any other organization that would allow an official to spend such sums with so little oversight? According to Branson, that $1 million fund was replenished each year, and in Reccord’s last two years, the fund was reduced to $350,000. In other words, the money didn’t just sit there. He spent it. “No receipts required.”

When Reccord resigned, 41 Southern Baptist leaders signed a letter, praising Reccord and essentially whitewashing his “undisputed misuse of funds.” (Branson at p. 18) One of those signers was Johnny Hunt, who is now the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Another was evangelist Jay Strack.

According to Branson, after Bob Reccord left the North American Mission Board, “auditors discovered that payments were being made to evangelist Jay Strack ($300,000) and Bob’s mega-pastor Johnny Hunt at Woodstock Baptist Church ($92,000). Final payments were sent after Bob resigned but before he left the building…. There were no written contracts. So nearly half a million dollars was paid to Strack and Hunt through verbal agreements with Bob.” (Branson at p. 113)

Brown's entire piece also deals with the Baptist General Convention of Texas "Valleygate" scandal and a great deal more.

It deserves to be read in full here.

Anonymous blogging an institution

Apparently determined to show the world of religious blogging that mainstream newspapers are irrelevant, the Florida Times-Union published a Sunday story which dwells heavily on a single, anonymously penned blog whose name and URL it haughtily refuses to publish.

We agree with Frink about the right of the author of FBC Jax Watchdog to anonymity.

Church governance and its abuses are our concern.

First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Fla., is a church whose executive pastor for education, Jim Smyrl, has declared the Catholic Church to be a cult and has abjured anyone who voted for a pro-abortion candidate to repent.

The blog mentions those two issues and raises a variety of other significant issues which, if false, are easily rebutted. Indeed, charges should be rebutted and corrected if and when errors are made. Accountability should, in our view, run both ways.

The blog's charges are often documented with audio recordings, copies of deeds and the like, very much the way a good online news article should be documented. Although the tone is far too strident to be confused with mainstream, professional, American journalism.

The third largest of the 43,000 churches in the Southern Baptist Convention is its principal concern - ample reason for an aggressive, frequently updated blog.

This blog and its peers will be of growing importance as more traditional publications continue their decline in resources and number.

Noncommercial blogs like FBC Jax Watchdog are sometimes our nation's best, current substitutes for (rapidly disappearing) aggressive, local, weekly newspapers, the best of which in their time held community institutions accountable to the communities they served.

How tangled an IMB Web?

Frink calls attention to a retired insurance broker's assessment of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board's embezzlement coverup:

So .. I was really shocked when I heard about the Gray Harvey case. Not only have I been active in churches for 45 years or so, in the SBC for 27+ years, but I spent 50 years in the Property & Casualty Insurance business, which is the line of business that covers stuff like employees stealing. So I know a bit about that.

For one thing, I doubt that the SBC insured employee theft. If they had, they would have been reimbursed for Mr. Harvey's theft, and I figure the insurance company would either have collected from the malefactor, or prosecuted. I DON'T figure they'd have let it die a natural, peaceful death.

He makes his view of the IMB trustees who allowed the case to go unprosecuted and took the reported oath of silence quite clear when he says:

If I was somebody like Sam Walton, and this sort of shenanigans had gone on in MY company, I'd fire the lot of them.

We concur, although former IMB trustee Wade Burleson's attempt to hold them to account earned him a drumbeat of anonymous criticism which implied that Burleson was egolistically damaging missionary efforts, until Burleson responded:

If you are the person who used to work for the board and worked with Gray Harvey, you may also be the person that two people told me was involved in the embezzlement.

Please email at wwburleson@hotmail.com and I will tell you if you are the one identified by two people, in writing, as an accomplice.

In His Grace

Wade

Fri Dec 05, 10:04:00 PM 2008

Accomplices?

How tangled is the disastrously miswoven web?

How much does your faith cost?

'Tis the season when moral good is celebrated and sometimes tearfully lived, as Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer Senior Editorial Writer Gene Smith illustrates in How much does your faith cost?

He gives us the quiet fabric of his own life, not the dollar-and-cents spreadsheet you may expect, concluding in the what we see as the truest spirit of the Christmas season:

But if your personal code, whatever it may be, isn’t about how you relate to the rest of your kind and the least among them, and to the world we all share, then it’s about nothing I can reconcile with any scripture I’ve read.

Read it all [Here].

What is your story of Christmas faith silently and with sacrifice adhered to in an ordinary thing?

Mission board should finally do the right thing

The Southern Baptist International Mission Board missed an opportunity to secure its credibility and protect the public when it failed to prosecute an embezzler, who is now accused of insurance fraud in Alabama, and concealed the incident.

We'll see if the board's leaders make the same mistake twice.

In 2005, the mission board decided that a judgment ordering Benton Gray Harvey to repay more than $362,000 was sufficient.

According to former IMB member Wade Burleson, the trustees took an oath of secrecy and so managed to keep the issue hidden from the public until news reports revealed investigations into the dealings of Harvey and another man at an insurance company in Alabama.

The mission board's decision was clearly flawed. But the recent revelation gives it a second chance to make things right.

Here's what its leaders should do immediately.

• Release all the information (not otherwise sequestered by law) from its own investigation into Harvey's handling of mission board money. This should have occurred three years ago.
• Call on the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee to hire an independent firm paid by the mission board to conduct a thorough audit of all board finances, including those handled by Harvey.
• When the audit is completed, allow the auditors to conduct press conferences and release all their findings. This will show that mission board leaders want all the truth to come out.
• Release the full mission board budget, including salaries and expenses, and call on other Southern Baptist agencies to do the same. For too long, the salaries of Southern Baptist executives have been hidden from those who contribute the offerings that pay them. It has created the perception, perhaps a correct one, that the executives would be embarrassed if their high salaries were revealed.
• Reconsider and reevaluate its mission strategy in areas where missionaries are legally not allowed. This complex issue deserves close examination.
• Repay the insurance company in Alabama for its losses due to Harvey's activities - activities which timely criminal prosecution by the IMB would arguably have made impossible. The owner of the insurance agency that hired Harvey is trying to repay those he swindled. The mission board should do no less.

These steps will bring the mission board closer to regaining the trust of those who pay its bills through the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.

Update the Pledge?

At the height of the Second Red Scare, the Rev. George M. Docherty persuaded President Eisenhower and Congress in 1954 to insert into the Pledge of Allegiance the phrase "under God." He argued that the "Godless" pledge could just as easily apply to the communist Soviet Union.

Things have changed, argues David Walters:

In his 1954 sermon, Docherty argued that Judeo-Christian America was engaged in "mortal combat against modern, secularized, godless humanity." Today, pluralistic America is engaged in mortal combat against anti-modern, fundamentalist, religionized humanity.

Read the entire piece.

Secrecy leads to deception

A massive Alabama insurance fraud might have been prevented had one of the accused faced criminal prosecution by the Southern Baptist International Mission Board.

Instead of pursuing criminal charges, the Mission Board settled for a judgment ordering Benton Gray Harvey to repay.

The Alabama Press-Register reports:

The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention won a judgment in Richmond, Va., in March 2005 against Harvey for $362,499.62. A spokeswoman for the Richmond-based board said that the case stemmed from Harvey's service overseas for the board as an accountant. She said she didn't know when or where Harvey served, or what he did that led the board to sue.

The mission board's reasons for failing to prosecute Harvey in 2004 are far from reasonable. They involve concealment and evasion of responsibility by the board itself.

An Associated Baptist Press article details the Baptist connection to the fraud investigation reported by the Press-Register in Mobile, Ala.

Former Mission Board trustee Wade Burleson fought the decision to not prosecute Gray Harvey, as he explains in his blog. Burleson came to the board after the decision and says that as a result he did not take the oath of secrecy to which other board members bound themselves in the case.

That such a Mission Board oath exists at all is a matter of concern.

More immediately disturbing is the board's rationale for refusing to prosecute Harvey, who had an overseas appointment, apparently in Istanbul.

According to Burleson, the mission board leadership gave three reasons for the failure to pursue criminal charges:

1. Prosecution might compromise missionaries if it took place in the country where Harvey was when the embezzlement occurred.
2. The Mission Board didn't want bad publicity while in the midst of promoting its Christmas offering.
3. Harvey had agreed to repay the money.

Let's address the reasons in inverse order.

First, Burleson argued that the mission board shouldn't trust someone who had embezzled money, and he was right. Court order notwithstanding, Harvey stopped repaying the money a couple of months after he left the board's employ.

Second, the mission board's desire to avoid bad publicity during its offering implies that good Southern Baptists would stop giving because of the embezzlement scandal. The board's cover-up and apparent contribution through neglect to the Alabama insurance fraud may, however, cause many givers to pause before opening their wallets.

Third, on close examination there is a flaw in the board's strategy of sending missionaries into the field under false pretenses.

We're well aware that some countries aren't open to missionaries, but we're not convinced that deception is an appropriate way to further a gospel which forbids deception. Moreover, in this case, secrecy abroad was used to help justify convenient concealment at home.

If the Alabama fraud had not been discovered and linked to the International Mission Board incident, good Baptists would still not know that their offerings were stolen from the mission board, and not repaid.

The incident also revives questions San Antonio messengers raised about the IMB's recent audits.

IMB President Jerry Rankin's claim that the audit procedure used last year, was adequate, no longer seems satisfactory.

Wednesday insomnia relief

• Have insomnia? Read as much as you can of the narcolepsy-inducing "blogalog" about the proper role of GLBTQ individuals and couples in church.
• Feeling insufficiently trivialized today? Read David Brody's', argument that God got lost on His way to the Capitol Visitor Center.
• Meanwhile in Kentucky, where God is in charge of Homeland Security, the atheists are upset.
• Still not sleepy? Drop by Faithful Democrats for a dose of Extreme Jesus. Is that what Obama needs?

Calvinism: The latest Southern Baptist reason to fight

John Calvin

Southern Baptists, well known for their infighting, are going at it tooth and claw over Calvinism.

Calvinism is also called Reformed Theology. Calvinists believe that some of are elected by God to be saved, and others are not.

Those who aren't Calvinists say this view reduces the drive for evangelism, which is a traditional Southern Baptist emphasis. Whereas Calvinists say evangelism is important, although it is God who saves people, not the efforts of evangelists.

Calvinism has been growing in influence within the SBC.

The president of the flagship seminary is a Calvinist and a 2007 survey reported that 30 percent of recent seminary graduates were Calvinists, while only 10 percent of then-practicing pastors held Calvinist views.

In 2006, two high-profile Southern Baptists met for what was first thought to be a debate, which matured into a dialogue about Calvinism within the Southern Baptist Convention.

One debater was Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, and a Calvinist.

The other debater was Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas, who is not a Calvinist. Baptist Press, which is controlled by the Southern Baptist Convention, reported on the meeting, as did the independent Associated Baptist Press news service.

At the time, the two seminary presidents said they hoped they could be an example of how to discuss differences and remain friends.

Two years later, the discussion is getting less and less friendly.

The Founders Ministries, a group of Calvinists who maintain that the founders of the SBC were Calvinists, lists three recent examples of conflicts that are dividing the Southern Baptist Convention.

Wade Burleson, a Calvinist and a prominent blogger, cites those Founders Ministries examples when he warns that a line has been drawn in the sand and Calvinists are being targeted.

That line in the sand harkens back to a battle for control of the SBC waged from the late 1970s through much of the 1990s. The winners were those who called themselves conservatives, but who are known as fundamentalists by their adversaries. They defeated those who call themselves moderates, but who are called liberals by the conservatives.

When it became clear that conservatives were going to win, moderates predicted that conservatives would soon begin fighting among themselves, because of the nature of fundamentalism.

The battle over Calvinism means that prediction may be coming true.

FDR Economic bill of rights revisited

The economy has been in recession since last December, food banks are struggling and the pain is spreading.

It fell to Mary Nelson, president emeritus of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation on the west side of Chicago, to rediscover Franklin Roosevelt’s 1944 Economic Bill of Rights. They include:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job.
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.
• The right of every family to a decent home.
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment.
• The right to a good education.

Relatively modest, altogether worthy, still-unachieved goals of 64 years' vintage.

Update

Unmet goals receded a bit more from our grasp as the Dow plunged 700 points on news of the ongoing and likely prolonged recession.

Taking a mental health break to watch the movie What Would Jesus Buy?

Clear-eyed in Bollywood

On the religion and politics of terrorism, Bollywood actor Aamir Khan got it exactly right on his blog:

• Terrorists are "people who have no religion or God. ... They are people who have gone totally sick in their head and have to be dealt with in that manner."
• Politicians should not "use this tragedy to further their political careers. At least now they should learn to not divide people and instead become responsible leaders."

No variant of the Bush administration's politics of fear and division, which has done this country such grave harm, is evident in his remarks.