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.