The passion of religious faith transmuted into meanness, explains Christa Brown:
I never imagined a world of so much meanness until I stepped onto the terrain of Baptistland with pleas for clergy accountability and for care of abuse survivors.
Worst of all . . . it’s a malignant meanness that masks itself as religion.
Bernard Sainvil told Reuters the case, which involves 33 children, should be closed this week because there were no criminal grounds to pursue it.
A lawyer for the two said he thought they would be freed by Thursday.
ABC reported that with regard to Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter, the judge has all the information he wants.
Baptists and Muslims — two groups often identified by their extremists — share the common desire to love God and neighbor, according to a documentary being aired by ABC affiliates.
The film, "Different Books, Common Word: Baptists and Muslims," was produced by EthicsDaily.com, the website of the Baptist Center for Ethics.
Robert Parham, the executive editor of the web site and executive director of the center, talks about the documentary in a column for the Washington Post-Newsweek On Faith panel.
"Baptist-Muslim engagement may be the most unanticipated and underreported religion story of 2009 with the far-reaching potential to advance the common good. Time will soon determine whether it is a fool's errand or a fullness-of-time movement."
ABC television affiliates were scheduled to start showing the film Jan. 3, according to EthicsDaily. A list of times, dates and broadcasting affiliates is available at Interfaith Broadcasting. There is a trailer.
Parham concluded:
Our documentary is about replacing the negative narratives with positive ones. We hope it will bring Baptists and Muslims together on the local level for conversations and community-building. If Muslims and Baptists are peacemakers together in the United States, then they will show the rest of the world a better way forward.
Bruce Prescott interviewed Robert Parham regarding Different Books, Common Word: Baptists and Muslims.
Baptists are greying out, says the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey. The Texas Baptist Standard's Bob Allen writes:
. . . 21 percent of the people who identify themselves as Baptists are 70 and older. That compares to 12 percent of the general population, 13 percent of Catholics, 14 percent of mainline Christians and 10 percent of Mormons who fall in that age range. Forty percent of the national population is 50 or older, while 58 percent of Baptists fall into that age bracket.
When theocrats were taking over the Southern Baptist Convention (1979-90), there was debate over what to call the "others."
"Conservatives/fundamentalists" may have preferred to call the losers in that conflict "liberals" but "moderates" carried the day. To the considerable unhappiness of many thus classified.
Not any more, says Fisher Humphreys, retlred professor of theology at Samford University:
The fact that moderate was somebody else's word for us doesn't bother me. After all, in the first century Jesus' followers didn't name themselves Christians. Outsiders did, and Christians embraced the name. In the seventeenth century, Baptists didn't name themselves Baptists. Outsiders did, and Baptists came to embrace the name. That's how I feel about the name "moderates."
Writing for the bulletin of the Center for Baptist Studies, he proclaims that being a "moderate" is good:
Principally because the Bible says it is: "Let your moderation be known unto all men" (Phil. 4:5). The word translated "moderation" is epieikēs. Paul used that word again when he wrote that Christian leaders should be "not violent but gentle" (1 Tim. 3:3, NRSV). He used the same word again in Titus 3:2 when he advised Christians "to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show courtesy to everyone."
These passages display that to be moderate is to not be an extremist, it is to not be violent, and it is to not be quarrelsome.
So what's not to like?
The good professor doesn't sully his argument by observing that under "conservative" leadership the SBC growth is tanking, expert leadership isn't sure a turnaround will occur and secular newspapers offer bleak advice.
True to his moderate calling, Humphreys explains:
Moderate Baptists are strong and effective people. They have deep convictions and the courage to live by them. One of their convictions is that extremism is not a virtue. Another is that, in our efforts to carry out God's purposes in the world, we must never resort to violence. Another is that chronic quarreling is not healthy. These convictions come straight out of Paul's teaching about moderation.
Indeed, "what's not to like?" Or emulate?
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