Speakers at an ethics conference in Nashville, Tennessee, urged Baptist church leaders to confront and clarify thorny social issues for people polarized by political debate. About 155 people from 13 states attended the regional conference sponsored by the Baptist Center for Ethics, titled \u201cLeadership Through the Culture Wars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evangelical author Tom Sine called for a radical \u201cthird-wave Christian citizenship\u201d to correct flaws of both the right and left.<\/p>\n
Sine said neither the right nor left take Scripture seriously, Sine said. The greatest threat to Christianity is not \u201csecular humanism,\u201d he added, but an \u201cenlightened secularism\u201d that defines \u201ca better future largely in economic terms.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201creal secularism\u201d threatening American Christians consists of \u201cmaterialism, individualism and consumerism,\u201d Sine said. \u201cWe\u2019re using a two- legged milk stool,\u201d Sine said, by emphasizing a faith that focuses on \u201cgetting our hearts right with God\u201d and \u201cgetting our moral lives cleaned up. God wants to define our cultural values, too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Marv Knox, associate editor of the Baptist Standard, tracked \u201cFrom Carter to Clinton,\u201d 20 years of Baptist involvement in politics. In the 1970s, Knox said, progressives were more likely to be involved in politics than conservatives, who considered their faith \u201ca private realm.\u201d Now, that is reversed, and the more conservative a minister is, the more likely he is to be politically active.<\/p>\n
Two reasons for that trend are that middle-class Americans have reacted conservatively to perceived emotional and physical threats and are appalled by what they regard as moral and spiritual decay, Knox said. \u201cMany conservative Christians think America is going to hell in a big yellow school bus driven by a Democratic lesbian gang member who grew up to become a school teacher who makes pornographic movies and rock music on the side,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Oliver Thomas, co-author of \u201cFinding Common Ground: A First Amendment Guide to Religion and Public Education,\u201d described his approach of getting people on both sides to sit down and talk about the emotional issue of religion in public schools. Thomas outlined four \u201cstrategies for finding common ground.\u201d They are:<\/p>\n
\u2014 Agree on the ground rules. Thomas suggested all parties agree on statements such as religious liberty is an inalienable right, that all parties take responsibility for protecting all people\u2019s rights, that schools ought to be neutral and fair, that parents and not school bureaucrats have the right to make decisions about education and that when individuals disagree they will treat each other with respect.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Include all the stakeholders. Vocal minorities need to be included because \u201cthey\u2019re going to get in the conversation anyway,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cI want them at the table, talking face to face.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to pick somebody from each group that\u2019s represented in your community,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to establish a climate where people feel like they\u2019re being listened to.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Work for comprehensive policies. \u201cIf you focus in on one issue, particularly one you\u2019re already divided over, you won\u2019t get off the ground,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you pick one hot-button issue, there will be a winner and a loser and your community will be worse off than when it began.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Be proactive. \u201cDon\u2019t sit back and think, \u2018Hey, we\u2019ve never had a problem in my community.\u2019 If you haven\u2019t had a problem, you will,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cBut if you want to have a real problem, wait until someone files a lawsuit or someone leaks a front- page story to the newspaper.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dellanna O\u2019Brien, executive director of Woman\u2019s Missionary Union, said Christians should be guided by \u201ca love ethic that causes to see what God sees, go where God goes and do what God does. The challenge of the church today is to get the salt out of the salt shaker and into the world where it belongs.\u201d O\u2019Brien described new WMU programs aimed at involving women in hands-on missions. One such program is \u201cProject Help,\u201d an annual program aimed at increasing awareness on a selected social issue.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s emphasis is on AIDS. Churches and associations across the nation are sponsoring AIDS conferences using materials developed by WMU, she said. Also, funds are being collected to operate an AIDS hospice in Brazil. \u201cPrimarily the purpose is to create awareness in social issues, to give women and men some handles on how to minister in those areas and then possibly continue in those ministries after the emphasis year,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. She also described a pilot WMU program setting up a \u201cChristian women\u2019s job corps\u201d in selected cities, designed to help women with \u201ca hand up instead of a handout.\u201d She said the project will be evaluated next year. After that, the WMU plans to produce materials and officially launch the program.<\/p>\n
Nashville Tennessean columnist Dwight Lewis said \u201cunrealized expectations on the part of blacks as well as whites\u201d has widened the gap between the races. The 20th century has seen gains for African-Americans including a 1954 Supreme Court ruling banning \u201cseparate but equal\u201d public schools, Martin Luther King\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech in 1963 and the 1964 Civil Rights Act and subsequent Voting Rights Act, Lewis said.<\/p>\n
Despite those gains, America remains \u201ctwo nations separated by the color of our skin,\u201d Lewis said. He urged pastors and church leaders to take personal responsibility for leading people to reach out across racial lines. \u201cI think we\u2019ve got to get to know each other,\u201d said Lewis, an African-American. \u201cIf you think there\u2019s too much gap between the races, why not go home as church leaders and devise some programs that bring people together?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
Bill Purcell, majority leader in the Tennessee House of Representatives, urged Baptists to help their legislators by speaking up for children. \u201cI think we have the possibility for great good, but also the possibility for great failure in the political process as it relates to children in particular,\u201d said Purcell, a Democrat from Nashville. Because loud partisan voices can gain the attention of legislators, misinformation is always a danger, said Purcell, a Methodist layman.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need your voice desperately in this debate,\u201d he said. \u201cIn a vacuum, a few voices are quite loud. A very few voices can be believed to be a groundswell.\u201d If churches are not heard, \u201cthen the vacuum is filled by those voices you do not believe are right,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Speakers at an ethics conference in Nashville, Tennessee, urged Baptist church leaders to confront and clarify thorny social issues for people polarized by political debate. About 155 people from 13 states attended the regional conference sponsored by the Baptist Center for Ethics, titled \u201cLeadership Through the Culture Wars.\u201d Evangelical author Tom Sine called for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[269,1622,1222,1623,1621,776,766,131,1278],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6363"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}