Carter on Baptist unity

Carter says Baptist strife hurting evangelism

Excerpt:

Addressing more than 1,000 Baptists at the closing session of the April 24-25 New Baptist Covenant Southeast regional gathering in Winston-Salem, N.C., Carter said people around the world do not associate Baptists in the United States with terms like "harmony," "peace" and "cooperation" but rather as a contentious and divided group.

"It is this image of division as we struggle for authority over each other," Carter said, that hinders evangelism. "The arguments and the animosity in the Christian faith are like a cancer metastasizing in the body of Christ," Carter said. "This diverts us from Christ's ministry and presents a negative image of Christianity."

Carter said he convened a group of Baptists several years ago, including several leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, who agreed to talk without criticizing each other and came up with a statement of agreement including the inspiration of Scripture, local church autonomy and respect for all people.

Carter said those words and the unity effort became meaningless in 2000, when the Southern Baptist Convention narrowed its doctrinal parameters to exclude women from serving as pastors.

Carter said issues like women's roles in the church and home, the theory of evolution, abortion and how to respond to homosexuality are important, but they are not as important as the common belief that salvation is attained by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

Carter said expansion from a few thousand Christians during the New Testament era to 30 million Christians in the Roman Empire would not have been possible if Christians then were as divided as they are today.

Observation: Over 1800+ years Christians agreed on creationism, the sanctity of human life, and God's definition of marriage. Perhaps Baptists should follow that formula!

[False for profit] Al Gore

Al Gore Called ‘Prophet’ at Liberal Baptist Meeting

Excerpt:

The Tennessean in Nashville describes Gore’s speech this way: "With a green-colored Bible in one hand and his familiar red laser pointer in the other, former vice president and Nobel prize winner Al Gore led 2,500 Baptist preachers and lay leaders through his global warming slide show in Atlanta Thursday…

Robert Parham, executive director of the Nashville-based Baptist Center for Ethics, called Gore a "Baptist prophet." In introducing Gore, Parham said, "prophets are unacceptable because their truth is inconvenient."

Comment: True prophets called Israel to repentance. Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.

Outing the choir

Outing campaign roils D.C. black Baptist church

Excerpt:

“I will be leaving the choir at the top of the year because 80 percent of the tenors are homosexuals and act more like a female in choir rehearsal than I do,” the church choir member said in one of her e-mails to Bishop Alfred Owens Jr., the church pastor.

The e-mail, sent in December, identifies about 45 fellow church members as gay. She sent a second e-mail to Owens on Jan. 2 identifying another 62 church members as gay.

“The following people I am asking you to monitor very closely and my prayer is that you will sit them down from their ministries,” she told Owens in the December e-mail. “Because they are ushering in the presence of sin, lies, a spirit of homosexuality and sexual spirits.”


Comment: Note to choir: Take Time to be Holy

Ketcham's famous 'quote'

Ketcham didn’t say it

Famous 'quote':

Your Heavenly Father is too good to be unkind and too wise to make mistakes

Summary:

Robert Ketcham didn’t really say it. Well, okay, he said it, but he wasn’t the first.

Not only was Ketcham known for frequently saying, “Your Heavenly Father is too good to be unkind and too wise to make mistakes,” but also the quote was reproduced by the thousands and could frequently be found framed in the foyer of our Regular Baptist churches. Recently a reader asked whatever happened to those placards, which were dropped from our catalog a while back. So I devoted a couple of lunch hours to tracking down a bit more of the story.

...


Comment: He said it, but not the first! Still a great quote!

Missouri Baptists moving to California!

California slated as new home for Missouri Baptist Convention

Apparently taking Horace Greely's admonition of "Go West young man!" literally (as Baptists are know to be!) and in the spirit of separation, the Missouri Baptists are moving to California!

Comment: Reality: California, Missouri is in central Missouri!

Anti-Christian Bias?

Baptist I.D. Shows Anti-Christian Bias

Quote:

An October 6th story by the Associated Press provided a small, odd but disturbing and undeniable illustration of the bitter anti-religious bias that’s become too typical of the mainstream media. The story’s lead paragraph proclaimed: “ALEXANDRIA, La – A 63-year-old Baptist deacon shot five people in a law office here on Thursday, killing two, before being killed by police officers early Friday...”


Later in the article we discover the name of the shooter (John Ashley) and that “anger over a divorce settlement may have prompted the shooting.” We also learn that the killer was a “retired city maintenance worker” who had given no signs of violent behavior before his rampage.


Why, then, did the AP decide that the most important factor in identifying him was his status as a “Baptist deacon”? This is not a professional position – it is a volunteer activity. Wouldn’t it seem odd if they began their story about the tragic shooting by describing Mr. Ashley as “a 63-year-old golfer” or “a 63-year-old Democratic volunteer” or a “63-year-old synagogue board member”?


If Associated Press began their account of a chilling crime by identifying the perpetrator as “63-year-old Asian American” or a “63-year-old African American” there would be howls of protest – recognizing that the press service demonstrated bigotry by choosing to stress his racial identity over his professional background, family status, health record, or anything else. (I actually have no idea of Mr. Ashley’s racial background, nor does it seem particularly relevant to the crime).


Doesn’t the choice to spotlight a killer’s participation in a Baptist church demonstrate the same sort of bigotry?


The fact that this peculiar, indefensible decision seems so unremarkable simply shows how much we now take anti-religious and, in particular, anti-Christian prejudice for granted.

Comment: Here's the AP story in the Boston Globe

Excerpt:

ALEXANDRIA, La. - Anger over a divorce settlement may have driven a 63-year-old Baptist deacon to shoot five people in a law office, killing two, then exchange gunfire with police during a standoff, authorities said yesterday.

Baptist business meeting gone bad!

Baptist pastor arrested during meeting

Excerpt:

An organizational meeting between divided members of St. Mary Primitive Baptist Church became heated today and ended up with the arrest of the church's pastor.

The Rev. Victor Broadenax, pastor of the church at 454 W. Call St. since 2003, was arrested on a charge of battery.

The incident occurred during a meeting of about 100 church members, Sgt. Annaliese Wierenga of the Leon County Sheriff's Office said.

Sheriff's deputies had been called to the church as members tried to meet to discuss Broadenax's continued role with the church. His supporters were in attendance as well as Primitive Baptist Church leaders who say he is no longer the church's leader.

Wierenga said members were told that the church's business needed to be decided with legal counsel, not law enforcement. But because of the size of the crowd and the tension, a deputy remained on the property to secure the peace, she said.

At one point during the meeting, a Primitive Baptist Church leader was addressing the crowd at the microphone when Broadenax reportedly walked up and grabbed the elder around the neck in an attempt to remove the microphone.


Comment: A gentle reminder that all things must be done "be done decently and in order" (1 Corinthians 14:40) and that the Pastor is to be "not violent ... gentle, not quarrelsome" (1 Timothy 3:3). Interesting church name: "St. Mary Primitive Baptist Church"!

Outrageous

Sex offender back in pulpit: Despite prison term, preacher welcomed by Baptist congregation

Excerpt:

A southwest suburban Southern Baptist congregation allowed a convicted child sex offender to preach for the last few years -- despite his past, and a warning from his previous church that he might still be dangerous, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

In 1996, Jeff Hannah was sentenced to nine years in prison for having sexual relations with four underage girls -- ages 15 to 17 -- while a married youth minister at Crossroads Church in Libertyville.

Hannah was paroled in 2001 and joined the First Baptist Church of Romeoville, where his new wife was a member. Soon after, the pastor moved on, and church members -- aware of Hannah's crimes -- asked him to step into the pulpit until a replacement was hired, according to church members, Hannah and others.

Hannah served in that role for three years and ever since has been a fill-in preacher, teacher and music minister at the church.
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The Rev. Steve Farish, pastor of Crossroads Church, which has relocated to Grayslake, said he considered Hannah so dangerous that he warned the Romeoville church and a regional Southern Baptist official.




I preface my remarks by saying:

1. I am a Baptist
   
2. While I am not a Southern Baptist, I know there are many good Southern Baptist churhes.
   

Comment: When the church lowers its standards to the world's level (or in this case, below the world's level!), it's no wonder that it has so little impact on society. (Matthew 5:13, "You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men".)

A little leaven

"What's it all about...actually?"

Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter New Baptist Covenant Clambake Unravels

Excerpt:

The New Baptist Covenant, a conglomeration of some 31 Baptist denominations in the U.S.A. and Canada, was conceived of and instituted earlier this year by former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, both of whom claim to be Baptists, with Carter having been active in the Southern Baptist Convention until the 90s and still a Sunday School teacher in his home church. A convocation of the NBC is planned for next January in Atlanta. Among the speakers are Carter, Clinton, Bill Moyers, Al Gore, and Marian Wright Edelman, as well as a number from the religious community. Although it seems cast as a mini-democrat convention, republican senators Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley are also slated to speak, their only bona fides, one presumes, being that they're Baptists, though one also wonders about the "token" thing.


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The overwhelming consensus among Baptists is that homosexual behavior is totally unacceptable, sinful. They believe this because the Holy Bible is unmistakable in its absolute denunciation of homosexual practices, actually lumped in with those of such other perversions as bestiality. Homosexuality is excoriated in scripture just the same as fornication and adultery, sins of the worst kind with regard to family and its place in society, not to mention in the sight of God.


Carter, of course, knows this as a life-long Baptist and Bible scholar but has attempted -- for whatever purpose -- to form an organization of people who in the main absolutely disagree with him on this matter, an extremely important one that goes straight to the heart of the primary unit in society -- the family. One wonders, then, what his actual purpose is in forming the NBC. He is also bound to know that the so-called "mainline" denominations have been wilting on the vine for decades trying to accommodate homosexuals in an official way, welcoming them already in worship and even membership but being terribly conflicted over ordination and same-sex unions, since scripture undeniably militates against both.


Official Site (Note: Called "an authentic and genuine prophetic Baptist voice in these complex times")

Wiki: New Baptist Covenant

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Contrast the above with authentic historic Baptist creedal doctrine!

London Baptist Confession of Faith (1644)

The Baptist Confession of Faith (1689)

The New Hampshire Baptist Confession, 1833

Comment: The New Baptist Covenant: "What's it all about...actually?". Apostasy!

Pistol Packing Pastor

Pistol Packing Pastor Nabs Theft Suspect

Excerpt:

A former Bakersfield police officer turned pastor helped nab a man who allegedly stole a car from his church's parking lot.

James Kilgore, pastor at Taft Free Will Baptist Church, said he always keeps a gun and handcuffs in his fanny pack. They came in handy on Tuesday, when one of his elderly parishioners left Bible study to find his car had vanished.

Kilgore and Walter Brenton, 72, drove around looking for Brenton's 1986 Ford Crown Victoria, and spotted the alleged thief driving it a few blocks away.

The pastor followed the driver until he crashed, tackled him as he crawled out of the car and then handcuffed him until police arrived on the scene.

Comment: My view: 2nd Amendment + Romans 13:4!