Impetus for Belgian police raids on Catholic Church offices

Vatican outrage which greeted raids by Belgian police last week on church offices and a cathedral in the Archdiocese of Malines-Brussels was misplaced.

Doreen Carvajal of the New York Times reports that they were the result of "a formal accusation that the church was hiding information on sexual abuse lodged by the former president of an internal church commission handling such cases."

The Flemish newspaper Nieuwsblad reported [via Google translate] that Godelieve Halsberghe, who from 1998 to 2008 "directed the [church] commission for handling complaints of sexual abuse in a pastoral relationships," went to authorities after receiving a phone call warning that she and commission files she had were in danger. She turned over her files and talked to authorities about the possibility that the church was hiding other files.

Taking action on serious, formal complaints like those lodged by Ms. Halsberghe, a retired magistrate, is the responsibility of the police in a free society.

The incandescent Vatican response, which descended to references to Communist police state tactics, was inappropriate.

[H/T: Religion Clause]

Australia's atrophied religious right vs faithless Baptist PM

Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard is a "non-practicing Baptist [atheist]" who lives without benefit of matrimony with her male companion.

Australians, it seems, are even less attentive to the blandishments of their religious right than voters in this country have become to the overstated suasions of the likes of Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land. As Joel Gibson wrote recently for the Sydney Morning Herald:

We're a weird mob when it comes to God and politics. Two-thirds of us tick a religious box in the census but research for the Herald by Nielsen last year found three-in-four don't care whether our leaders believe in God. There are as many of us who abhor it in politics as there are who crave it, and both are small minorities.

Macquarie University academic, Marion Maddox, whose book For God and Country details the religious dynamics in Australian politics, says "Australians are suspicious of anyone who sounds too religious." She has also said she expects the religious beliefs of politicians to fade from public discourse.

Aussie Labor Party member Gilliard isn't like to be the final test of that, but this far she has been a boon to her party. She and her allies ousted failing Labor PM Kevin Rudd and the Herald Sun reports:

Ms. Gillard has turned around Labor's fortunes, even in Western Australia where support had slumped to 28 per cent thanks to the mining tax. A poll in The West Australian yesterday showed support had jumped to 36 per cent in the wake of her promotion.

She's expected to call for an election soon to establish her own governing mandate.

Don't expect an American-style debate over the church she doesn't attend. Indeed, that uproar Down Under isn't happening already.

Addendum

Gillard attracted attention Wednesday by announcing her opposition to gay marriage.

Pope seeks (somewhat like Southern Baptists) 'renewed evangelization'

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is not alone in its quest for a Great Commission Resurgence, or something somewhat similar:

Pope Benedict XVI announced he is establishing a pontifical council for new evangelization to find ways "to re-propose the perennial truth of the Gospel" in regions where secularism is smothering church practice.

. . .

"I have decided to create a new organism, in the form of a pontifical council, with the principal task of promoting a renewed evangelization in the countries where the first proclamation of faith has already resounded and where there are churches of ancient foundation present, but which are living through a progressive secularization of society and a kind of 'eclipse of the sense of God,'" he said.

No church planting required, reversing secularization is only in part of matter of reversing or at least slowing the decline in church membership and attendance in countries like Austria, Belgium and Germany. Yet as Philip Jenkins recently pointed out in The Christian Century, it is a battle with many fronts, including replenishing the depleting ranks of the priesthood:

Particularly in Western Europe, Catholic countries have been becoming steadily more secular for at least a generation, quite independent of any claims of priestly deviance. In no sense is European religion dying — just witness the continuing popularity of pilgrimage and other popular devotions — but loyalty to the institutional church has weakened disastrously. Rates of mass attendance have declined steeply, as have the numbers of those admitting even notional adherence to the church. Today, fewer than half of French people claim a Catholic identity. The number of priestly vocations has been in free fall since the 1960s, leaving many seminaries perhaps a quarter as full as they were in the time of Pope John XXIII.

Failure of atavistic movements like the SBC's GCR and the pope's pontifical council for new evangelization is probably foreordained by the degree to which the secularization they attack is embedded in the cultures to which they speak. Again, as Jenkins observes regarding secularization and the Roman Catholic Church:

One gauge of transformed Catholic attitudes has been the sharp drop in fertility rates and family size. Since the 1970s women increasingly pursued careers and higher education, and the use of contraception spread rapidly, despite stern church disapproval. Fertility rates plummeted, such that Spain and Italy today have among the lowest fertility rates in the world, far below the level needed for population replacement. Catholic Germany stands about the same level. German sociologist Ulrich Beck notes wryly that in Western Europe today, the closer a woman lives to the pope, the fewer children she has. Ireland's fertility rate today is less than half what it was in 1970.

There is no reason a couple with few or no children should not be fervently pious. But the trend away from large families reflects broader social changes. A society in which women have more economic autonomy is less likely to accept traditional church teachings on moral and sexual issues. The resulting conflicts have steadily pushed back the scope of church involvement in public life. Abortion became legal in Italy in 1978 and in Spain in 1985. The Irish church suffered a historic defeat in 1997 when a referendum narrowly allowed the possibility of divorce. Today, across Catholic Europe, same-sex marriage is the main moral battlefield—with Spain in the vanguard of radical secularism and sexual liberation. The Catholic Church struggles to present its views to a society suspicious of institutional and traditional authority of any kind and quite accustomed to ideas of gender equality, sexual freedom and sexual difference.

Austrians would ordain married men and women as Catholic priests

A telephone survey of 500 Austrian parish priests found 79 per cent support allowing married men to be ordained, and 51 per cent think women should be allowed to become priests.

Commissioned by ORF (Österreichischer Rundfunk: "Austrian Broadcasting"), 51 per cent said the Vatican does a poor job of handling sexual abuse cases.

A survey earlier this month of 406 Austrian Catholic priests by researchers from Kepler University in the Upper Austrian city of Linz found that more than half supported putting an end to celebacy.

Austrians in general support harsher reform, according to the Viennese public opinion agency Karmasin. They reported that "57 per cent of the 500-odd Austrians they interviewed were of the opinion Pope Benedict XVI should resign amid the wave of alleged sex abuse incidents across Europe were there a rule that enabled him to do so."

Their call for reform isn't toothless. Like Americans, Austrians have been leaving the Roman Catholic Church in droves:

Earlier this week, the head of the Vienna archdiocese's church tax office estimated that up to 80,000 of Austria's roughly 5.5 million Catholics could leave the church this year — a new record. Last year alone, 53,216 people formally had their names removed from church registries, a 31 percent increase compared to 40,654 in 2008.

Adding married men and women to the ranks of candidate priests could find doctrinal acceptance after the practical necessity has departed.

How to make free-speech martyrs of atheists

Deface their billboards, again(?). This time on the Billy Graham Parkway in North Carolina.

William Warren of Charlotte Atheists & Agnostics was civil in his response. According to the Charlotte Observer:

He said his group considered the vandalism an isolated act and not indicative of Charlotte’s religious community.

It would be ironic if Christians were found to be responsible for the vandalism. For the pledge in its original form, without the "under God" wording which was added in a Cold War heat in 1954, was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister (and socialist).

Re Belgium, the pope has lit some fires

Other fires were lit by incandescent papal response to Thursday's daylong Belgian police raids.

Mark Silk saw evidence that "the wheels are coming off the popemobile," while groups representing those abused by Catholic clergy were themselves outraged.

Neither was quite as blunt as Fr. Rik Deville, 65, interviewed by the Italian newspaper La Stampa interviewed Devillèon June 27. He was, for example, unimpressed by the Adriaenssens Commission, which resigned en masse to protest the Belgian police action:

The problem was its connection with the Archdiocese, and the absence of either a lay component internally or a connection with the civil authorities. I always hoped that a truly independent commission would be formed, an organism whose objective was to help justice take its course. That must be the way. It’s not up to the church to decide who violated the law and who should be punished.

As for whether "the plague of sexual abuse by clergy a common evil?"

It happens everywhere, believe me. Belgium believed itself to be an exception because no case ever came to light. Yet as early as 1994, I had collected 82 accusations. The victims wanted to be heard by the church, they wanted to break the curse. It’s been useless, at least up to now.

Perhaps the most shocking allegation came from the Belgian right, via Dr. Alexandra Colen, MP. She is a member of the Belgian House of Representatives and wrote in The Brussels Journal of a catechism textbook, Roeach. She alleges:

The editors of Roeach were Prof. Jef Bulckens of the Catholic University of Leuven and Prof. Frans Lefevre of the Seminary of Bruges. The textbook contained a drawing which showed a naked baby girl saying: “Stroking my pussy makes me feel groovy,” “I like to take my knickers off with friends,” “I want to be in the room when mum and dad have sex.” The drawing also shows a naked little boy and girl that are “playing doctor” and the little boy says: “Look, my willy is big.”

When the wheels come off, the vehicle may eventually be found deep in the weeds. The question was and remains, how deep?

Subsidy, not faith, is the issue in Hastings

The Christian Legal Society can still require voting members to sign a statement of faith in which they disavow "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle." Thus effectively banning avowed homosexuals from becoming voting members.

The Supreme Court has ruled 5-4, however, that the University of California's Hastings College of Law has every right to continue to deny them recognition and the attendant public subsidies of an on-campus student group.

For the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote:

The First Amendment shields CLS against state prohibition of the organization's expressive activity, however exclusionary that activity may be. But CLS enjoys no constitutional right to state subvention of its selectivity.

Also:

CLS's conduct, not its Christian perspective, is, from Hastings' viewpoint, what stands between the group [and recognition].

Oops? Again? In the case of FBC Jax Watchdog

Oops is in a way how FBC Jax Watchdog was robbed of his anonymity.

Formerly anonymous blogger Thomas A. Rich's identity was made public after an unnecessary investigation whose details are still being unearthed in court.

Although some evidence pertaining to the involvement of Florida State Attorney Angela Corey was somehow inadvertently destroyed.

Really, and that destruction is cited as part of an argument against deposing Corey as part of the proceedings.

"Oops!" indeed.

Another injustice.

Huh? Caner out as dean, still a professor

Liberty University decided to end one contract with Ergun Caner because of his "self-contradictory" statements, and offer him another.

Liberty announced June 25 that Caner would not be dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary after June 30, according to a report in the Lynchburg News and Advance. Whereupon the school offered to let him stay on the faculty, and he accepted.

The university's statement said Caner made "factual statements that are self-contradictory." It also said the school's investigation found "discrepancies related to matters such as dates, names and places of residence."

A post on the SBC Today blog managed to somehow focus right on the phrase in the announcement which says there is no evidence Caner was not a Muslim, thus allowing the blogger to conclude that Caner was "exonerated."

In fitting response, Wade Burleson says, "Huh?"

Liberty's decision to keep Caner on its faculty is not surprising given the way school officials have reacted to accusations against him. At one point, a school official said the discrepancies were neither an ethical nor a moral issue.

Again: Huh?

Media inquiries eventually prompted the university to investigate. Those questions led to stories in newspapers across the country.

The statement from Liberty said Caner "apologized for the discrepancies and misstatements."

Will another round of newspaper (not blog) articles move the school to explain why it has different standards for "discrepancies and misstatements" by deans and professors?

Unless Liberty plans to leave us all with a resounding: Huh?

Catholic News Agency blistered for journalistic malpractice [Addendum]

USCCB [US Council of Catholic Bishops] Media Blog called out the right-leaning Catholic News Agency this week for "fabrication."

Bold Faith Type deftly summarizes:

Helen Osman, the Secretary for Communications at the bishops' conference, writes in the USCCB blog that the Catholic News Agency simply "cobbled together its own fabrication of the session." Osman, who attended the executive session closed to reporters, also went back and reviewed the transcript to verify the errors. In contrast to CNA's report, Cardinal George "never used the phrase 'so-called Catholic,' accused the Catholic Health Association of creating a 'parallel magisterium' or said the meeting of the three bishops with Sr. Keehan had 'frustrating results," Osman writes. Disagreement between the USCCB and CHA over health care legislation has been well documented. But, as Osman points out, to "confuse the situation with quotes that aren't true is just plain dishonest."

Osman also called out CNN:

For CNN to elaborate even more on what CNA said in error is even more disturbing. If CNN had tried to verify the citations, it would have learned that CNA fabricated quotes. It also would not have made its huge and erroneous assumption that the issue in question was an example of the bishops at odds with the sisters.

None of this appears to undercut analysis based upon the reporting of the National Catholic Reporter's John L. Allen Jr., who also covered that meeting. Using Allen's account, Mark Silk argued:

So now we know: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops cares more about its authority than being right. That's the clear import of a fine piece of reporting by NCR's John Allen on the split between the USCCB and the Catholic Hospital Association (CHA) over the health care bill (which, you'll recall, the former opposed and the latter supported).

Nor would it be fair to argue (we were tempted) that the sting from such analysis helped prompt the corrective, which stands quite well on its own merits.

Addendum

CNA stood by its story.

The Catholic weekly America averred that perhaps the USCCB and CNS were "telling the truth," albeit "In very different ways, and that is the bad news."

Specifically:

es, Helen Osman was in the room, CNA was not, and we have no reason to doubt that the quotes she mentioned were, in fact, fabricated. Even though CNA is a tendentious and slanted media outlet, fabricating quotes goes beyond the pale. Why anyone would trust them before this is beyond me, but now their reputation is in tatters. You do not put a person’s remarks in quotes unless you know that they said it. This is reason enough for Bishop John Wester, who has a column at CNA, to disassociate himself from the organization immediately.

CNA would argue that their sources - “several bishops” - provided the quotes, leading me to think that no one at CNA ever played the game of telephone, in which a group of people sit at a table, and the leader whispers something into the ear of the person on their right. The whisper goes around the table and it is often unrecognizable by the time it gets back to the leader. The “several bishops” may have heard what they wanted to hear, that is to say, they placed their own prejudices and arguments in Cardinal George’s mouth. CNA needs to evaluate these “several bishops” as sources going forward but, arguably, the reporters and editors at CNA thought when they published their original article that the quotes were accurate.

But, here is where it gets dicey. What if the quotes are not “fabrications” and “several bishops” did tell CNA what they thought Cardinal George had said. It is one thing for Cardinal George to have difficulty with a fringe right-wing media outlet. It is a different, and larger, problem to have “several bishops” who have decided to leak to the press in order to push the USCCB towards their more conservative position. Cardinal George’s first task as leader of the USCCB is to keep the body of bishops on the same page, to keep them together and I think a case can be made that while his raw intelligence has helped, the principal reason for his success as president of the Conference is that all the bishops trust him. The question now is: Can he trust them? Why did these “several bishops” go leaking to the press after the meeting? Given the nature of the quotes, they obviously want some severe sanctions taken against the Catholic Health Association, they want some kind of showdown and, I think it is safe to venture that, not detecting sufficient movement in their direction at the USCCB meeting, they decided to take their arguments to the press.

Which, if they were thus taken in, does little to redeem CNS. Being aware that axes are being ground, and communicating that, is after all a key aspect of a journalist's job.

When is 'Creation Science' most clearly not science?

When someone is attempting to award a degree in it, a Texas federal district court would appear to have ruled. Howard M. Friedman at Religion Clause writes:

In Institute for Creation Research Graduate School v. Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, (WD TX, June 18, 2010), a Texas federal district court upheld the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board's refusal to grant the Institute of Creation Research Graduate School a certificate of authority to offer a Master of Science degree with a major in Science Education. The Texas Education Code (Sec. 61.301) authorizes the Board to regulate the use of "academic terminology" in order "to prevent deception of the public resulting from the conferring and use of fraudulent or substandard college and university degrees." The Board denied ICRGS's application because its curriculum which was designed to promote "scientific creationism" and "Biblical creationism" does not adequately cover the breadth of knowledge of the discipline taught. The Board's decision was based on the conclusion by the Commissioner of Higher Education that the school's program "inadequately covers key areas of science and their methodologies and rejects one of the foundational theories of modern science," and thus "cannot be properly designated as either 'science' or 'science education.'"

Indeed, Melissa Ludwig of the San Antonio Express-News writes:

U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks of Austin found no merit in the institute's claims and criticized its legal documents as "overly verbose, disjointed, incoherent, maundering and full of irrelevant information."

Hard times, Southern Baptists? Or does a Creationism MS one way or the other matter to Al Mohler and his allies?

Creation Care or doomsday?

Wake up with a bracing mug of Creation Care via Rejuvenate magazine's interview with Southern Baptist John Meritt, and then chow down on esteemed Australian microbiologist Frank Fenner's prediction of our collective extinction from "overpopulation, environmental destruction and climate change."

Fenner, 95, has won awards for his work in helping eradicate the variola virus that causes smallpox, and makes his argument reluctantly, because he doesn't want to discourage those working for corrective change:

Fenner, who is emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, said homo sapiens will not be able to survive the population explosion and “unbridled consumption,” and will become extinct, perhaps within a century, along with many other species. United Nations official figures from last year estimate the human population is 6.8 billion, and is predicted to pass seven billion next year.

Fenner told The Australian he tries not to express his pessimism because people are trying to do something, but keep putting it off. He said he believes the situation is irreversible, and it is too late because the effects we have had on Earth since industrialization (a period now known to scientists unofficially as the Anthropocene) rivals any effects of ice ages or comet impacts.

Fenner said that climate change is only at its beginning, but is likely to be the cause of our extinction. “We’ll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island,” he said. More people means fewer resources, and Fenner predicts “there will be a lot more wars over food.”

Fenner's scientific colleague Stephen Boyden is somewhat more optimistic:

Frank may well be right, but some of us still harbour the hope that there will come about an awareness of the situation and, as a result the revolutionary changes necessary to achieve ecological sustainability.

Fenner does not of course worry himself about an assault by intelligent machines. In his well-considered view, we're about to be our own Terminators.

Ted Haggard's predictive tweets and retrospective denials

Ted Haggard has come to twitter and gently predicted the end of the religious right.

There is a link to his Web site, which includes a surprising Healing Overview.

Don't expect a therapeutic guide.

It's a sanitized version of his sexual history at New Light Baptist Church in which he acknowledges one contact with gay escort Mike Jones and effectively denies there was anything else.

Scientology founder's view of women

L. Ron Hubbard's take on women has been edited out of the reprint of Scientology: A New Slant on Life. No doubt Nevada GOP Senate nominee Sharron Angle knew nothing about it when she pushed a Scientology-endorsed prison rehabilitation program.

From the Village Voice, we see that Hubbard wrote:

A society in which women are taught anything but the management of a family, the care of men, and the creation of the future generation is a society which is on its way out.

That's certainly a step back past the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, for example. Although there is ongoing debate, underlined by apparent shifts in position, about full implications of even that.

Signed, sealed, unsent, undelivered

"We have nothing to hide."

That's what then Southern Baptist Convention president Johnny Hunt said in June 2009 about the not yet formed Great Commission Resurgence Task Force. He made the statement to editors from four state Baptist newspapers, according to Baptist Press.

Hunt said the group would be as open and transparent as possible.

"I would be real open to say that we look forward to every meeting that there will be a state editor there to be able to document the meeting," he said.

Not only did the task force close its meetings to editors and everyone else, it decided to seal the records of its meetings for 15 years.

So, what do they have to hide?

An article by Biblical Recorder editor Norman Jameson offers a few hints. He mentions the timing of the task force announcement to seal the records.

"It came as word was leaking out just how nebulous the task force’s 'unanimous' agreement on their recommendations was. It came as we further learned of the need for task force members to be educated about the autonomous nature of Baptist state conventions before they realized their recommendations could be only that – recommendations and not mandates."

So perhaps the task force hopes to preserve the appearance of unity. Or maybe SBC leaders would be embarrassed that members of the task force were unfamiliar with Baptist polity.

Southern Baptists will have to wait until 2025 to find out. After approving the task force report June 15, messengers to the SBC's annual meeting easily defeated the next day a motion to unseal the records immediately.

The task force move is hardly surprising given its members aversion to straight answers and use of confusing and frustrating language during the process. At one point there was a lot of fog about the North American Mission Board and much conjecture about its possible merger with the International Mission Board.

Defeat of the motion to unseal the records further enhances the notion that passage of the GCR will not change the SBC.

During debate on the motion on June 16, task force members said they promised confidentiality to those with whom they talked.

"This motion would require the task force to break its word," said Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a member of the task force.

Baptist blogger Wade Burleson said that's a promise the task force should not have made.

"When the Convention authorized the Great Commission Task Force to do their work, the Convention never said it should be done in secret. The Great Commission Task Force did not have the authority to seal the records, only the Convention did."

Jameson takes issue with another rationale for sealing the records. Task force chairman Ronnie Floyd told Baptist Press that the task force was following the precedent of the "Peace Committee," a group that tried to work out reconciliation between conservatives and moderates at the height of controversy in the SBC.

"The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force operates in an environment entirely unlike that of the Peace Committee era," Jameson said.

Jameson said the task force's decision runs counter to the group's own report, which has a component about making values transparent. He points out that one of the values it lists is trust: “We tell each other the truth in love and do what we say we will do.”

The report also talks about working toward "the creation of a new and healthy culture within the Southern Baptist Convention."

"If we are to grow together and work together in faithfulness to the command of Christ, we must establish a culture of trust, transparency, and truth among all Southern Baptists," the report says.

Sealing the records of the task force's own deliberations was a march in the opposite direction. A good start would have had the task force showing openness like that required of state and federal governments.

McKissic's racism motion referred to committee

Texas pastor Dwight McKissic's much-anticipated motion to disfellowship churches which condone racism was referred to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Executive Committee.

Such referrals standard process, the Arkansas Baptist news reported:

Committee on Order of Business Chairman Jonathan Whitehead of Missouri, expressed agreement for the intent of the motion, but suggested the need to refer it to the SBC Executive Committee.

“We do not disagree with the spirit behind your motion at all,” Whitehead said. “Whenever we go amending our legal documents we should probably follow the process of letting the proper entities deal with the appropriate legal processes.”

What IMB message did the SBC messengers stay away from in droves on Wednesday?

Jerry Rankin, president of the International Mission Board, told the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) on June 15:

...there are 11,000-plus distinct, ethnic people groups in the world, and more than 6,400 of those are still unreached with less than 2 percent of them who have heard the gospel. ... [and] after sending out more than 900 new missionaries in 2008 and reaching a record level of 5,624 missionary personnel overseas, the IMB is having to cut back to no more than 5,000 missionaries by the end of 2010 due to budget restrictions.

Read the complete account by Lonnie Wilkey of the Tennessee Baptist and Reflector [here].

More of the SBC same on clerical sexual predators

Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) heavies who gracelessly dragged their feet on acknowledging Frank Page's selection as president of the SBC Executive Committee seem unlikely to have been concerned about his castigation of the victims of Southern Baptist clergy sex abuse.

It is after all the SBC which 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.

Christa reviewed today Page's record in that regard. If there is cause in it for hope that Southern Baptist children will be better protected under Page's administration, we cannot find it. Take a look. Thoughts?

Ghosts of SBC liberals past scare up GCR approval

Twice during Southern Baptist Commission (SBC) adoption of the "Great Commission Resurgence" Task Force report, messengers demonstrated that it was more an SBC throwback than a bold change of direction.

First, toward the end of debate on the report when discussion had dragged on for hours and the outcome seemed in doubt, former SBC president James Merritt rose to rally support. Merritt argued that the vote offered messengers an old, often-replayed choice.

"If you think we are headed in the right direction, if you think doing the same thing, getting the same results is enough, then vote against this report," Merritt said. "But if you think we can do better, and if you think we can do what we did in 1979 when we said no to liberalism, then I encourage you to vote for this report."

That settled the report's fate, Enid, OK., pastor Wade Burleson blogged just a few minutes before the final vote: "Anytime you threaten Southern Baptists that if you vote against a particular motion you are a liberal, then the SBC most likely will pass the motion."

The overarching tone of the debate was reminiscent of SBC floor fights between conservatives and moderates in the 1980s during the "conservative resurgence." Time and again, SBC president Johnny Hunt had to consult with parliamentarians for guidance on how to handle particular issues.

Most of the more than 10,000 registered messengers were in the hall for the GCR vote, which passed a little after 5 p.m. by an estimated three or four to one. And that brings us to the second demonstration that adoption of the GCR task force report was more a throwback than a bold, new thrust. Only a few thousand messengers returned later for a report from the International Mission Board. Even though the GCR report they had just struggled to adopt is entitled "Penetrating the Lostness," and talks of the need to "reach the nations."

So many messengers were more interested in voting for the report than in how the SBC is actually reaching those in other nations.

How many would have returned if Merritt had plugged the IMB report as "fighting liberals on their soil so we don't have to fight them here"?

GCR passage won't change SBC

Even if the "Great Commission Resurgence" Task Force proposals are adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meeting this week, there will be no "resurgence."

The overall effort will fail because the required change isn't on the agenda and if it were, could not be implemented by a vote of the messengers.

The report says SBC churches "need a new missional vision." No one will argue against the task force's proposed statement which is "to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every person in the world and to make disciples of all the nations."

But casting ballots does not alter an organization's underlying mission.

For more than 30 years, the SBC's mission has been doctrinal conformity enforced by the the group's culture of conflict.

The SBC has boycotted Disney, kicked out churches with gay members and taken stands against women pastors.

But the most high-profile controversy took place from the late 1970s till the early 1990s when conservatives and moderates battled for control of the convention.

The conflict still remains an undercurrent in SBC life. Even the name given to the task force's effort — the Great Commission Resurgence — harkens back to it. Critics call the SBC conflict the "fundamentalist takeover," but supporters proudly call it the "conservative resurgence."

The remnants of the fight between conservatives and moderates can even be seen in one of report's core values. Truth is defined as when Southern Baptists "stand together in the truth of God’s inerrant Word, celebrating the faith once for all delivered to the saints."

Inerrancy was the conservatives battle cry as they drove moderates from leadership positions in the SBC. Anyone who didn't accept the conservative definition of inerrancy was labeled a "liberal" and effectively ostracized.

Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, is one of the leading architects of the GCR. During a panel discussion at his school, Akin compared the SBC meeting this year to the 1979 meeting in Houston that started the controversy.

That analogy doesn't fit. The "conservative resurgence" was a political solution to what conservatives perceived as a theological problem. The "Great Commission resurgence" is a structural solution to a cultural problem.

The underlying problem with the GCR was highlighted last year in a column by Doug Baker, editor of the Oklahoma Baptist. As debate about the GCR was heating up, Baker cited (but didn't link to) a panel discussion at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and asked if Bill Leonard was right when he said conservatives would turn on each other after moderates left the SBC.

During the panel, Al Mohler, president of the seminary, asked Russell D. Moore, a senior vice president for the school, if moderates were correct when they said the conservative resurgence had not resulted in a "Great Commission intensity."

Moore answered affirmatively adding that things would have been worse without the conservative shift. He then says that at the national level of the SBC and in local churches there is "a lack of the fruit of the Spirit that is necessary for carrying out the Great Commission."

"In order to have a fire for the Great Commission, you must first have a love for one another," Moore said.

Lonnie Wilkey, editor of the Baptist & Reflector in Tennessee, writes about the "Us vs. Them" mentality that has permeated the SBC in his 30 years as a denominational journalist.

He talks about how the lines have been blurred since most "die-hard" moderates left the SBC. An example is Morris Chapman, who as president of the SBC Executive Committee was clearly one of the SBC's "us" but has become one of "them" as he has opposed the GCR.

"We need to do what it takes to reach our state, nation and world for Christ," Wilkey said. "But it will take more than simply adopting a report in Orlando to see this resurgence."

Any resurgence in the SBC is further complicated by the shrinking demographic pool from which the denomination is likely to draw new members.

Spiritual renewal won't happen in the SBC until the very nature of the organization changes. That's not likely to happen until its leaders no longer hold conflict in such high regard.

Richard Land's misanalysis of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe

Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a drummer in the right-wing parade of blame for the Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe. Blame is directed at "the environmental movement" and the Obama administration, while British Petroleum is treated gently.

Brian Kaylor, contributing editor at Ethics Daily, writes:

Richard Land, head of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, argued during the June 5 broadcast of "Richard Land Live!" that oil giant BP is only partially to blame for the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster and even defended BP's handling of the disaster.

Land blamed "the environmental movement" for why drilling was being done in the deepwater site of the BP oil rig. He argued that "environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all of the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production." He offered no condemnation of BP for deciding to drill there.

Two days after Land's defense of BP and aspersions on others, Pro Publica revealed that Land had it wrong. BP was the author the catastrophe:

A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior BP managers that the company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways.

The confidential inquiries, which have not previously been made public, focused on a rash of problems at BP's Alaska oil-drilling unit that undermined the company’s publicly proclaimed commitment to safe operations. They described instances in which management flouted safety by neglecting aging equipment, pressured or harassed employees not to report problems, and cut short or delayed inspections in order to reduce production costs. Executives were not held accountable for the failures, and some were promoted despite them.

Similar themes about BP operations elsewhere were sounded in interviews with former employees, in lawsuits and little-noticed state inquiries, and in e-mails obtained by ProPublica. Taken together, these documents portray a company that systemically ignored its own safety policies across its North American operations - from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico to California and Texas.

Don't expect Land to retract. His record of constructive revision is a blighted one, distinguished in part by an unapology for misapplication of Holocaust imagery which attracted attention as far away as Israel.

Send records of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force deliberations to WikiLeaks

Controversy over the decision to seal for 15 years the record of deliberations by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Great Commission Resurgence Task Force is easily stilled. One person with access need only provide the complete record to WikiLeaks.

Before the SBC meets in Orlando, Fla.

Thereafter, assuming WikiLeaks can be prompted to republish with suitable dispatch, everyone who is so inclined can contemplate the deliberations at his or her leisure.

Although those who wish to cast thoroughly well-informed votes on related decisions in Orlando may have to set aside more time for reading/listening and less for sleep, they're responsible people and can be relied upon to make the necessary sacrifice. If they're afforded that opportunity.

NRCAT video against torture/experimentation

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture video on torture/experimentation contains decidedly graphic and disturbing imagery:

Disregard for the Nuremberg Code

Torture is a moral issue, argues the National Religious Campaign against Torture. It has come back home again in a corruption of medical practice and scientific research, as the Physicians for Human Rights materials demonstrate.

Meredith Wadman of Nature writes:

According to Nancy Berlinger, a research scholar who studies clinical ethics at The Hastings Center in Garrison, New York, the report is distressing in part because it reveals a complete disregard for the Nuremberg Code. The 1947 code was created in response to evidence of Nazi-era experimentation and forms the basis for subsequent US regulations governing research. "To see evidence of experimentation on detainees in US custody feels like a body blow to people who care about research ethics," says Berlinger.

SBC's Richard Land et al. unhappy about gay immigration partners

Unsurprisingly certain evangelicals reject gay partners in immigration bill.

Southern Baptist Convention Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission czar Richard Land joined Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver and at best a handful of other Religious Right leaders in signing a statement of opposition to the proposal by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

Although the National Evangelical Association, "which [Yahoo News reports] includes members from 40 evangelical denominations," seeks to rally support for immigration reform.

You may struggle to make heads or tails of the Baptist Press story on Richard's out-Land-ish stunt here. Or visit Right Wing Watch's review of the little band of others attempt to kidnap the larger group's spotlight here.

Alliance of Baptists call for repeal of DADT

The Alliance of Baptists, "a growing denominational movement of progressive Christians" organized in 1987 as the Southern Baptist Convention continued to veer to the right, has endorsed the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT)

The letter to the Comprehensive Review Working Group, written by Minister for Leadership Formation Chris Copeland, says in part:

The Alliance of Baptists supports the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT). We believe it will benefit our current and future chaplains who desire to minister without prejudice to all military personnel. A repeal of DADT will encourage honesty among service members who choose to serve voluntarily but who do not want to lie about their sexual orientation.

Though never an easy process, the repeal will encourage civility, public discourse and the practice of being with human differences for the greater good. This kind of courage has always marked the American military culture, in peacetime and in war. To repeal DADT doctrinally mirrors the very actions identified for achieving the National Defense Strategy objectives, specifically to strengthen and expand our alliances and partnerships and to integrate and unify our efforts through a new “jointness.”

According to their online history page, "The Alliance of Baptists has continued [.pdf]" the practice exemplified by "progressive Baptist advocates of racial integration in the 1940s." The associated issues are explored in detail via a paper by Aaron Douglas Weaver, which may be downloaded there [.pdf].

More briefly, members of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh, N.C., played a pivotal role in the inception of the Alliance, as the Pullen Web site explains:

In 1987, when the changes in the character of the Southern Baptist Convention were underway, several Pullen members joined with others to create an alternative organization known today as the Alliance of Baptists. The Alliance is a small association of progressive Baptist churches and individuals committed to historic Baptist principles of freedom of individual conscience, the freedom of every congregation, and religious freedom for all. As a member of the National Council of Churches and in partnerships with other progressive Baptists in Cuba, Zimbabwe, Canada, and the U.S., the Alliance offers Pullen an opportunity to share ministry and missions with like-minded people of faith who value ecumenical and interfaith relationships and share a commitment to being part of God's work of bringing justice and peace to our world.

What ever happened to the Hutaree Christian militia?

Four of the nine arrested in March have been released on bail and on Wednesday, additional gun charges were filed against four.

Reuters James B. Kelleher and Cynthia Osterman reported:

The indictment originally unsealed in late March accused the nine, members of a midwestern militia group called the Hutaree, of planning to kill a police officer in Michigan and then ambush the funeral procession using explosives.

The new indictment adds 10 weapons charges including possession of machineguns and unregistered rifles and use of firearms during a violent crime.

According to the new indictment federal agents seized from defendants' homes in March machineguns, unregistered short-barreled rifles and over 148,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as "a variety of explosives and related items capable of being readily assembled to build several types of destructive devices."

Commonweal explains the hardline error of U.S. Roman Catholic bishops

The independent,lay Catholic journal Commonweal in an editorial, A Pattern of Missteps, writes:

Instead of addressing the legitimate concerns of those who oppose the church’s teaching on abortion—such as concerns for the health of women—American bishops too often seem to fear that any acknowledgment of the complexity of this issue would weaken their own position. And instead of speaking from the real strength of their position, and assessing their political situation rationally, too many bishops are in a hurry to warn of impending betrayals and persecutions, suggesting that their prochoice political opponents have more power and fewer scruples than they actually do.

Thus, American bishops spent a fortune on a campaign to defeat the illusory threat posed by the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which has almost no chance of becoming law. Rather than concede that they may have exaggerated the threat posed by FOCA, some bishops talk as if they themselves averted it by means of their furious warnings. Then there were the denunciations of the University of Notre Dame for inviting President Barack Obama to give its 2009 commencement address, an act some bishops seemed to equate with apostasy. More complicated and consequential was the role played by the USCCB during the congressional debate over the recently passed health-care-reform bill. The bishops ended up opposing the bill because of their dubious reading of its provisions to restrict abortion funding and protect existing conscience clauses (for more on this, see Timothy Stoltzfus Jost’s “Episcopal Oversight”).

Jost dissects the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops continuous parade of false and misleading arguments about health reform. Arguments which tend to discredit the USCCB and confuse those who trust them:

Public polling repeatedly reveals that Americans are confused about what the health-reform legislation does. The legislation is long and complicated, and some misunderstanding of the bill is inevitable. It is unfortunate, however, that this confusion continues to be fed by mischaracterizations of the legislation by the USCCB.

USDA forecasts our current plagues may be followed by hopping insects

Alex Wild writes at his blog, Myrmecos

With plumes of crude oil destroying the Gulf of Mexico, tensions rising in the middle east, a severe hurricane season reving up in the Atlantic, and the earth opening up and just plain swallowing parts of Guatemala City whole, what else could possibly go wrong?

Yes, a plague, of grasshoppers (locusts are short-horned grasshoppers). Next?

Medieval Catholic Southern Baptists?

At Ethics Daily Robert Parham celebrates Baptist historians, among them E. Glenn Hinson, once of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Parham reminds us that in 1980 amid the gathering fundamentalist storm, Hinson "took on Bailey Smith, the Southern Baptist fundamentalist, who said in 1980 that 'God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.'"

Hinson told FaithLab in an interview:

I made five points in response to Bailey Smith: (1) Jesus was a Jew – you may have disenfranchised Jesus' prayers; (2) You disenfranchised everybody from Abraham to Jesus; (3) The Bible teaches that God hears the prayers of unbelievers; (4) This conflicts with centuries of Baptists' respect for every person's religious belief; (5) This is the stuff from which Holocausts come. I think the last point may have ignited the tinder.

Hinson eventually left Southern, and although he still considers himself a Baptist was blunt in his assessment of Southern Baptists:

The Baptist tradition depends on a minority consciousness. And having become the majority, Baptists in the South could no longer think like Baptists, they thought like medieval Catholics.

Haggard re 'homosexual issues' about his 'church'

Candace Chellew-Hodge, associate pastor at Garden of Grace United Church of Christ in Columbia, S.C., blistered the formerly homosexual Rev. Ted Haggard for hypocrisy after Haggard said that at his new church he would "'encourage' members to strive towards the ideal of biblical heterosexuality and monogamy."

She wrote:

It’s disappointing when you realize the lesson [of his period of being widely shunned] has gone unheeded—that Haggard is so desperate to again be accepted by those who disowned him that he will bury his own truth and continue to shun, abuse, and belittle others all while hiding behind his pulpit and his Bible.

My partner and I never went to the Episcopal church that had so gladly “welcomed” us. I hope that no gay or lesbian person makes the mistake of believing that Haggard has changed and is really “welcoming” them to his new church.

Roman Catholic Church's flawed team Ireland lineup

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston's appointment to head the apostolic visitation to deal with the Roman Catholic child abuse catastrophe in Dublin was for good reason not universally cheered:

BishopAccountability.org, a Waltham-based organization that tracks abuse cases, was also critical, saying, "O’Malley’s career ascent has been fueled by his ability to walk into dioceses wracked by horrible revelations of child molestation and enshroud them again in silence."

Lisa Wangsness of the Boston Globe wrote:

The assignment marks the fourth time that O’Malley, 65, has been asked to intervene in a diocese damaged by clergy sexual abuse. In 1992, he was named bishop of Fall River, a diocese roiled by the serial pedophilia of the Rev. James R. Porter; in 2002, he was named bishop of Palm Beach, where the two previous bishops had acknowledged sexually abusing minors; and in 2003 he was named archbishop of Boston, replacing Cardinal Bernard F. Law, who stepped aside over criticism of his failure to remove sexually abusive priests from ministry.

English Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, who has been appointed apostolic visitor to Ireland's Armagh archdiocese, was greeted with similar criticism by abuse victims for his mishandling of sexually predatory clerics in his own countries. Specifically, the Irish Independent wrote:

nstead of informing the police of allegations against "notorious paedophile" Fr Michael] Hill, [then Bishop of Arundel Murphy-O’Connor] moved the cleric to the chaplaincy at Gatwick Airport, where he believed the priest would no longer be a danger to children.

But in 1997, Hill was convicted of sex attacks against nine children. After serving three years, he was then given another sentence of five years for assaults on three more boys.

The then-Bishop Murphy O'Connor argued that at the time little was understood of the compulsive nature of paedophilia.

Dr. Margaret Kennedy, of the London-based Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors, observed:

Many in the UK survivor movement would wonder why a bishop with a record of mishandling his own cases could independently look at another bishop's handling of cases.

Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan, also one of the nine apostolic visitors to Ireland, has a history of resisting appeals for constructive reform in the U.S.

Their records are chacteristic of the most able reformers the Roman Catholic Church can muster to this task?