Texas Baptist editor sings Huckabee, off-key

Marv Knox gave himself to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's Republican presidential aspirations in a well-phrased column which is flawed only by failures of documentation, overlooked facts and broken logic.

Knox is editor of the Texas Baptist Standard, whose Web presence is probably the most commanding among the state Southern Baptist newspapers and chief strategist of a four-publication [1, 2, 3, 4] online partnership.

Knox framed Huckabee's issue as the "tension between Christian compassion and the duties of citizenship." Yet Knox began by speaking directly to former Southern Baptist pastor Huckabee's motivations in granting clemency to Maurice Clemmons, who as a result, Knox writes, "was free to walk into a Lakewood, Wash., coffee shop and murder four police officers."

It's a vacant example, robbed of force by Huckabee himself. On Dec. 1, before Knox's piece was published on Dec. 5, Huckabee wrote about the Clemmons matter for Human Events, saying:

Religion had nothing to do with the commutation. It’s been erroneously expressed that my own personal faith or the claims of faith of the inmate factored into my decision. That is simply not true and nothing in the record even suggests it.

The overarching record of Huckabee's 1,033 (or 1,058 if you prefer the Arkansas Secretary of State's number) clemencies is itself a muddled mess of inconsistencies and so does nothing for Knox's argument. They are variously:

• Without useful explanation because none is apparent and Huckabee refuses to explain. In one case Huckabee is reported to have laughed aloud at a request for explanation.
• Fraught with contradictory, factually inaccurate accounts, like those Huckabee gave in the case of Arkansas rapist and murderer Wayne Dumond.
• Capricious: Huckabee pushed through a pardon for Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards' 1975 reckless driving conviction 31 years after the fact on the apparent basis of Richards' guitar playing skill.
• Fundamentally irrational albeit recommended by a fellow pastor. That was the case with Huckabee's offer of clemency to Glen Green, "a madman who beat an 18-year-old woman with Chinese martial-arts sticks, raped her as she barely clung to life, ran over her with his car, then dumped her in the bayou ... ." And Huckabee abandoned that one amid a firestorm of public pressure.
• Apparently driven by the recommendations of family and/or personal acquaintances as in the case of "Samuel W. Taylor, convicted on a drug charge. A prosecutor said the man had told him Taylor's sister had gone to school with Huckabee."
• Well-deserved, as Jeralyn wrote, "particularly for drug offenders serving excessive sentences. A Governor's use of clemency and pardon power is a good thing."

It is in light of that record a triumph of false comparison for Knox to suggest that Huckabee's record somehow parallels former President Jimmy Carter's often-noted Christian naivete.

Although Huckabee has busily tried to excuse himself and shift blame to others for variously motivated Arkansas gubernatorial decisions which resulted in rape and murder. While Carter appears to have been without similar blemishes on his record governor of Georgia, has been effective if controversial in diplomacy, won a Nobel Peace Prize for work after leaving the presidency and has at times been frank in accepting blame. Most recently, Carter issued an apology (Al Het) for any harm done the Israelis by his words or deeds. Thus Knox's is an apples to asteroids comparison. Strained.

Knox takes flight from that illogic, demolishing, resurrecting and abandoning a straw man argument that some people of faith should not permitted to hold "specific offices." He refutes unnamed, undocumented "extremists" and asserts without proof the views of "most citizens." Knox finally concludes that the role of faith in public policy decision-making will be a key issue in the next presidential election, and Baptists have much to offer.

They do, as Carter continues to demonstrate.

Texas Baptists Committed dramaturgy and change

If you know about Southern Baptists in Texas you know that Texas Baptists Committed (TBC) was organzied to preclude the conservative takeover which racked every other state with a significant Southern Baptist presence, and that strategy is widely regarded to have worked.

From Spiritual Samurai we learned that TBC was going to " Restructure, Relocate, and Refocus." That plan included keeping David R. Currie on a director emeritus, with some unspecified authority and salary.

There was some astonishment and a subsequent story by the Texas Baptist Standard (TBS). Whereupon Samurai blogged his puzzlment over TBS's withholding the story until he scooped them.

Widespread mourning may not have been the rule among blogging Texans. Ken Coffee wrote:

TBC has become what they profess to have hated in others. You have become manipulative control freaks. I would hope, for the sake of the Kingdom and the BGCT, that you would want to change that perception.

Dramatic tension was mantained by Samauri's blog asking just what Currie's "director emeritus" status would mean. Key questions were what authority and pay did the new status entail.

Whereupon Currie really resigned "Sept. 28, effective immediately," as head of the "political organization two decades ago to resist a “fundamentalist takeover” of the Baptist General Convention of Texas."

Lee at Deep In the Heart reviews the difficulties faced by narrowly focused organizations like TBC during times of transition. The issue about which he tactfully walks is whether, original purpose gone, they will survive. Or whether they should.

Will Texas authorize a BS MS for Creationists?

State Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler) proposes to exempt private, non-profit educational institutions from the authority of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB). All so the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) can grant Master of Science degrees.

Think of it as an economic development incentive intended to make Texas a world leader in the manufacture of academically worthless diplomas created by fly-by-night enterprises.

Because it would create a new class of institutions which don't have to meet THECB standards in order to issue a degree. Such degrees would be, one might argue, of dubious value, and might tend to reflect poorly on legitimate Texas college degrees.

Rushing up the score (Christian Right applaudes)

Ethics Daily's Robert Parham calls Christian Right endorsement of Rush Limbaugh's moral vision "a betrayal of the moral vision found in the biblical witness, " and not "an American value."

Limbaugh told the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference:

See, this is something liberals will never understand about the United States of America and it's right under their noses, right in front of their faces, we are a competitive people. . . . The liberals have made efforts to shut that aspect of our nature down. Wherever you live, I am certain that you, when you were a child or your kids today in youth sports are told not to keep score, because the losers, it's just not fair. They'd be humiliated, especially if one girl's basketball team can defeat another one 100 to nothing. And let's fire the coach who put that game together. It's so unfair. So let's not keep score. Well, here's the dirty little secret. The kids are keeping score. [Applause] . . . We're competitive people. Adults are doing the same thing.

He was referring to a 100-0 win by Dallas-based Covenant School over Dallas Academy: A member of “Council of Exceptional Children, International Dyslexia Association, Learning Disability Association of Texas, and Orton Dyslexia Society."

Specifically, Barry Horn of The Dallas Morning News wrote:

Dallas Academy is known for its work with students who have learning problems, such as short attention spans and concentration. Dallas Academy headmaster Jim Richardson said those problems sometimes manifest themselves on the court.

Where we come from, running up the score is always bad sportsmanship. To offer it in this case as admirable reeks of Social Darwinism.

Will a new Southern Baptist sexual tolerance start in Texas?

Broadway Baptist Church's views on homosexuality have brought it to be brink of expulsion from the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Homosexuals have not been excluded, you see. Same-sex couples in the church directory. Yet homosexuality is not endorsed, Broadway argues.

Short shrift has not been made. Clarification has been asked by the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee to which the matter was referred by the SBC annual meeting last June. Action on the historic Fort Worth, Texas church's case, delayed.

Hope is seen in this. Lyn Robbins, a Broadway member and the church's general counsel, said after the vote:

We believe that we are in friendly cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention. Our purpose here today was to express that and also to share who Broadway is and what we are about.

The president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, who journeyed to Nasheville to stand with Broadway Baptist, wrote:

At the end of the day work still needs to be done before there will be resolution, but this was a good day in Baptist life. I believe we took some of the stones from the walls we have used to divide us to build bridges across which we can work together for the cause of the Great Commission and the Kingdom of God.

Will this be the beginning of the end of a key division, or further diminishment of the SBC through Cathist inflexibility?

Addendum

Christa Brown notes how the possibility that a church has acted in ways which “affirm, approve or endorse homosexual behavior” is seen here to merit SBC Executive Committee attention. Yet clergy sexual abuse is not given similar attention, because “Every Southern Baptist church is autonomous.”

The burden falls upon the Southern Baptist Convention messengers who at their annual meeting in June referred this debate over homosexual members at this one church to the executive committee.

Yet famously rejected the creation of a pedophilia database. And although abusers were found on an official church web site, took no other action to protect church members from sexually predatory clergy.

Brown's comment is here.

Child abuse case lost by Hyde Park Baptist

Christa Brown at Stop Baptist Predators documents in detail the decade of problems which preceded a $163,562 award to the one-year-old victim's family.

Visit Austin Legal for the fire and brimstone community reaction in comments, directed at the church.

Reprieve for Larry Swearingen, whom four pathologists say is innocent

An execution-eve reprieve was granted Larry Swearingen by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Monday [01/26/2009], giving his lawyers time to present evidence that he did not commit the 1998 Texas murder.

Swearingen faced lethal injection Tuesday in Texas for the death of Melissa Trotter. Yet four forensic pathologists agree that he could not have committed the murder, because he was in jail when it occurred.

Harris County Medical Examiner Dr. Joye Carter is one of the four.

In the words of the court:

At trial, Dr. Carter testified that Trotter’s body had been left in the forest for approximately twenty-five days, which was consistent with the State’s theory that Swearingen murdered Trotter on December 8, 1998, and left he body in the forest. In her affidavit, Dr. Carter does not address the correctness of her original testimony based on decomposition and fungal growth, but states that if she had been provided certain additional data, she would have testified that the findings of her autopsy “are consistent with a date of exposure in the Sam Houston National Forest within fourteen days of discovery, and incompatible with exposure for a longer period of time.”

Those results indicate that Swearingen was in jail on outstanding traffic warrants when the 19-year-old’s body was left in the forest south of Huntsville, Texas. Specifically, he was in jail when the body was discovered on Jan. 2, 1999, and had been in jail since Dec. 11, 1998. Even using Dr. Carter's maximum of 14 days, the body was placed two days after Swearingen was jailed.

Thus the court goes on to say, "... that but for the alleged constitutional error of the State sponsoring the false testimony of Dr. Carter, no reasonable juror could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." (The full decision is here [.pdf]).

Texas state courts had refused to hear the issue:

Instead, the court dismissed Swearingen's petition for violating state laws that limit death row inmates to one petition for a writ of habeas corpus unless lawyers uncover information that was not available when the first appeal was filed.

Swearingen's attorneys now return to federal court to seek a new trial or release from prison.

Tuesday execution set for Larry Swearingen, whom four pathologists say is innocent

The execution of Larry Swearingen is scheduled for Tuesday in Texas.

Four forensic pathologists agree that he could not have committed the murder. Chuck Lindell wrote for The Austin American-Statesman:

The four include the medical examiner whose testimony helped secure Swearingen's guilty verdict. That medical examiner now says college student Melissa Trotter's curiously preserved body could not have lain in the East Texas woods for more than 14 days — and probably was there for a much shorter time.

The results mean Swearingen was in jail when the 19-year-old's body was left behind, the pathologists say.

"It's just scientifically impossible for him to have killed the girl and thrown her into the woods," said James Rytting, Swearingen's appellate lawyer. "It's guilt by imagination."

The Houston Chronicle argues in a Jan. 23 editorial, Room for Doubt:

With the inmate facing an irreversible sentence — capital punishment — it is imperative that Texas Gov. Rick Perry stay the execution to prevent the death of a possibly innocent man.

Detailed, concise and readable analysis is provided by Jeralyn here.

Grits For Breakfast examines the issues in detail here.

The Texas Monthly examines the issues at great but well-written length here.

If you agree that a stay should be granted, your can use the Amnesty International USA form to send Governor Perry an email asking him to stay the execution.

Or stand aside while Swearingen becomes the fourth Texan executed this year.