ONE

While attending the regional gathering of A New Baptist Covenant last Saturday in Birmingham, I took part in a session on "The Challenge of Eliminating Global Poverty." In this conference, I learned more about The ONE Campaign. If you don't already know about ONE, you should. Bono was one of the cofounders of this grassroots campaign and advocacy organization. ONE boasts more than 2 million supporters from around the globe, people who have chosen to join the fight against global poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa. Visit www.one.org and sign the declaration:

"WE BELIEVE that in the best American tradition of helping others help themselves, now is the time to join with other countries in a historic pact for compassion and justice to help the poorest people of the world overcome AIDS and extreme poverty.

WE RECOGNIZE that a pact including such measures as fair trade, debt relief, fighting corruption and directing additional resources for basic needs - education, health, clean water, food, and care for orphans - would transform the futures and hopes of an entire generation in the poorest countries, at a cost equal to just one percent more of the US budget.

WE COMMIT ourselves - one person, one voice, one vote at a time - to make a better, safer world for all."

sacred space

Today I had the privilege of taking part in the Southeast Regional New Baptist Covenant Gathering at the historic Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. The year before I was born, four girls lost their lives one Sunday morning in this church as they prepared to lead worship for Youth Day. The church had long been the center of Birmingham's African-American community and served as a meeting place for civil rights activists like Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and Fred Shuttlesworth, thus making it a target of the KKK's wrath.

When I approached the church this morning, I was momentarily startled when I noticed a phalanx of police officers outside the building. I couldn't help but think about Bull Connor, fire hoses, and police dogs. Then I overheard someone make a comment about the Secret Service, and I realized that the beefed up security was there in anticipation of Former President Jimmy Carter's arrival to deliver our keynote address.

As I worshipped in that sacred space today with both black and white Baptists, I thought about how far the city of Birmingham has come since that tragic day in September 1963. When Kate Campbell sang the song she had written about the incident, "Bear It Away," I recalled a TV interview I saw last fall with the parents of one of the girls who perished in the bombing. I thought about their grief and the magnitude of the loss for the entire congregation. I thought about the courage it must have taken for parents to bring their children back to that building the following summer when the church was able to open its doors for worship once again. For that congregation, worship was an act of faithfulness to God and an act of defiance against the forces of evil. 

Thanks be to God, we have come a great distance in this nation in the past 45 years in regard to racism. So help us God, we still have a great distance to go.

"How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live together in unity!" Psalm 133:1

Red Letter Christians

This morning I had the privilege of hearing one of my heroes speak at Belmont University. Tony Campolo, professor emeritus of Sociology at Eastern University in Pennsylvania, is the founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education (EAPE) and the author of 34 books, including Is Jesus a Republican or a Democrat? (answer: neither) and the recently released Red Letter Christians: A Citizen's Guide to Faith & Politics. I first heard Campolo speak in 1994 when my family was on vacation out West and we decided to drop in on a session of the Woman's Missionary Union's annual meeting in Salt Lake City to hear his keynote address. Since then I have heard him speak four other occasions - three times at Belmont and at the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant in Atlanta earlier this year. Each time Campolo has inspired me and challenged me to consider whether I am following the words of the prophet Micah: acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with my God. Today was no different.

Campolo began his speech - one of the many events sponsored by Belmont leading up to the October 7th presidential debate - by quoting George Bernard Shaw: "God created us in His own image and we decided to return the favor." Campolo then asserted that we are practicing idolatry when we take the God Who Is and turn Him into a god who embraces our own ideology. God transcends culture, Campolo maintained, and we must resist the temptation to attempt to incarnate God with our own traits and values.

Campolo describes himself as orthodox and evangelical and currently serves as associate pastor of Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church in West Philadelphia, an African-American congregation that is affiliated with both the National Baptist Convention and the American Baptist Convention. Campolo is rallying believers to identify themselves as Red Letter Christians - people who focus on the "red letters" of Jesus' words in the New Testament, rise above partisan politics, and view issues through a moral and biblical lens. He admitted that this is a challenge, since, as Mark Twain observed, "It's not the things I don't understand in the Bible that bother me - it's the things I do understand." Campolo's belief that you can't win people to Christ if you don't love them and you can't separate love from justice prompted him to found EAPE 30 years ago with the mission of "inspiring and enabling followers of Jesus to live out God's love for the poor and oppressed, in inner-city America and around the world."

I believe that Campolo is one of God's modern day prophets, and hearing him speak today was a refreshing change from the harsh, divisive political rhetoric that has emanated from both sides of the political spectrum during the past two weeks. May God increase Campolo's tribe of Red Letter Christians - and count me in!

born a Baptist

I was born a Baptist. When my parents took me home from the Jackson-Madison County General Hospital on August 26, 1964, four days after my birth, our destination was Ellis Hall - a men's dormitory on the campus of Union University. Founded in 1823, this four-year liberal arts-based university in Jackson, Tennessee, is the oldest institution affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Both of my parents are Union grads, and when I was born they were serving as dorm parents at Ellis Hall. 

During his years at Union, Dad taught in the classroom and worked in the administration, serving as dean of students and later vice president. After running an unsuccessful campaign for Tennessee's 7th Congressional District in 1974, Dad accepted the position of the Executive Director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, where he served for the next decade. Dad always said that Baptist politics were worse than state politics. As I have gotten older, I have sadly come to understand the wisdom of his words. 

When I was an infant, my parents began taking me to First Baptist Church in Jackson, which had been the site of their wedding on August 20, 1961. Their church home became my own. When I was nine years old, I walked down the aisle of that church during a revival and publicly professed my faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior and became an official member of that congregation. During subsequent years, I have been a member of four other Southern Baptist congregations - three in Tennessee and one in Maryland.

Through the years, I have become increasingly reluctant to identify myself as a Baptist. The public perception of Baptists is not positive, due in large part to the divisive rhetoric of the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention. I am a member of a Southern Baptist congregation, but I do not wish to identify myself as a Southern Baptist. When I'm filling out a form that asks me to identify my religious affiliation, as I mark the "Baptist" box I always want to write a note out to the side that reads "But I'm not that kind of Baptist!" 

Thankfully, during the past year I believe I am reclaiming my Baptist heritage as I have connected with an ever-increasing circle of like-minded Baptists. The process began in earnest when I began working part-time as a Leadership Development Specialist for the Tennessee Cooperative Baptist Fellowship last September. What a joy it has been to work with Baptists who want to cooperate with other believers to advance the kingdom of God! Another significant milestone in this heritage reclamation journey was the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant, which was held January 30-February 1, 2008, in Atlanta. After spending three days with 15,000 other Baptists who represented 30 Baptist conventions and organizations, I departed Atlanta with a rekindled sense of hope for the future of Baptists. (Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention officially declined to participate in the Celebration, but there sure were a lot of Southern Baptists in the assembled crowd!) Attending the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly in Memphis in June provide me with yet another opportunity to fellowship with like-minded Baptists, and I thoroughly enjoyed being able to participate in the 25th anniversary celebration of Baptist Women in Ministry.

I am a Baptist - a Baptist who believes in soul freedom, Bible freedom, church freedom, and religious freedom. I'm hopeful that one day I will be able to say "I am a Baptist" and not only will I not wince, but no one else will either.