Fifty years after historic meeting, race still divides Churches of Christ

June 25, 2018

‘We still have two brotherhoods,’ says longtime minister who helped organize 1968 conference.

By Bobby Ross Jr. and Hamil R. Harris| The Christian Chronicle

In the summer of tumultuous 1968, more than 40 prominent black and white ministers gathered to discuss ways to improve race relations in Churches of Christ.

The two-day national meeting — held 50 years ago at a hotel near the Atlanta airport — came less than three months after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and at the height of the unpopular Vietnam War.

One of the organizers, a black preacher named Eugene Lawton, got right to the point in describing his view of racial discrimination.

“It’s paved streets on one side of town and unpaved streets on the other side,” Lawton told the group, according to a July 5, 1968, article in The Christian Chronicle. “It’s wall-to-wall carpet on one side of town and wall-to-wall rats on the other. It’s having to sleep in the car beside the road because there’s no place in the inn.

“It’s being a member of the Church of Christ and being unable to attend a Christian college without going to Southwestern Christian College or 1,500 miles to Pepperdine,” the longtime minister of the Newark Church of Christ in New Jersey added. “It’s attending worship service and being sent to the basement. It’s a preacher being dismissed on Monday because he prayed, ‘Lord, bless the King family.’”

In interviews with the Chronicle, the 80-year-old Lawton and three other surviving attendees recalled the circumstances leading to the historic meeting, the personal bonds that were formed that June and the racial divide that still lingers a half-century later.

“The white brotherhood wasn’t even aware that racism was declared to be illegal in America,” Lawton said of 1968. “So we had tokenism at the time, but most of the Christian colleges didn’t open their doors to black students because of love and Christianity. It was based on the federal government saying you wouldn’t receive another dime (of student aid) from us unless you integrate your schools.”

Read the full story.

This story appears in the July 2018 edition of The Christian Chronicle.

Related: “50 Years: Racial Reconciliation and the Church” is a series highlighting significant events of 1967 and 1968. Read all the stories.

In red-state Oklahoma, marijuana ballot question splits people of faith

June 6, 2018

Clergy on both sides of State Question 788, which would permit the distribution of medical marijuana, call it a moral issue.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

OKLAHOMA CITY — As Presbyterian minister Bobby Griffith sees it, legalizing medical marijuana in Oklahoma could help arthritis sufferers with chronic pain and veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The 41-year-old husband and father has a personal reason, too, for supporting State Question 788 — a pro-marijuana initiative that the Bible Belt state’s voters will decide June 26.

“For myself, I would be interested in a prescription for it to see if it works better than my anxiety and depression medications,” said Griffith, co-pastor of a Presbyterian church near downtown Oklahoma City and a member of the national group Clergy for a New Drug Policy.

As Griffith characterizes it, the Oklahoma ballot measure’s potential to improve health outcomes and reduce dependence on addictive opioid painkillers makes it a “moral issue.”

Religious opponents counter that backing the issue would be immoral. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., an ordained Southern Baptist pastor, blasts the ballot measure as a “recreational marijuana vote disguised as medical marijuana.”

“The moral issue to me is really a family issue,” Lankford, who directed a Baptist youth camp before his 2010 election to Congress, told Religion News Service.

“The best thing for our state is not to get more parents and grandparents to smoke marijuana,” added the senator, who filmed a commercial urging voters to reject State Question 788. “To have our communities more drug-addicted and distracted, that doesn’t help our families. It doesn’t make us more prosperous. It doesn’t make our schools more successful.”

About 30 states have passed medical marijuana laws, starting with California in 1996, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Oklahoma would be the first to do so without listing qualifying conditions. That, assert critics, would allow doctors to issue two-year marijuana licenses to patients for any reason. The Oklahoma State Medical Association cites a lack of “evidence-based studies” to support medical marijuana.

“It’s trying to trick the people of Oklahoma into buying into it,” said the Rev. Paul Abner, an Assembly of God pastor who leads an anti-marijuana coalition called Oklahoma Faith Leaders.

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service whose media partners include The Associated Press, USA Today and the Washington Post.

 

1,000 wells around the world

June 3, 2018

A Tennessee-based ministry that drills for clean drinking water in Haiti and other nations hits a major milestone.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

AKDESÉ, Haiti — In this remote mountain village, water gushes from a well drilled by Healing Hands International.

As one woman pumps the handle, another gleefully splashes the clear, flowing liquid on her face.

Little boys and girls giggle as they cup their hands under the spout, taking giant gulps before filling plastic buckets to carry home.

In an area where donkeys ferry supplies and entire families squeeze onto small motorbikes, the $7,500 well’s dedication brings celebration and dancing — and the opportunity for healthier lives.

“The people wanted it so badly,” said Art Woods, president of the Nashville, Tenn.-based humanitarian aid organization, which is associated with Churches of Christ.

It’s a scene repeated hundreds of times in this impoverished Caribbean island nation: Since the Jan. 10, 2010, earthquake that claimed 230,000 lives and left 1.5 million people homeless, Healing Hands has focused on providing access to clean water.

Read the full story.

This story appears in the June 2018 edition of The Christian Chronicle.

Related: In Haiti, a calling — and a baby (reporting from Tintanyen, Haiti)

 

Amid political violence in Nicaragua, dozens of church groups cancel mission trips

June 1, 2018

More than 90 people have died since clashes began six weeks ago between government forces and civilian protesters, according to observers.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

Normally, a team from the Highway Church of Christ in Judsonia, Ark., would be sweating for God in the mountains of Jinotega, Nicaragua.

For 15 straight summers, the congregation has sent teens and adults to help with Misión Para Cristo — Spanish for “Mission for Christ.” The humanitarian aid organization shares Christ’s love with thousands in Central America’s poorest nation.

But amid ongoing deadly clashes between Nicaraguan government forces and civilian protesters, the Arkansas congregation reluctantly canceled this week’s planned trip to Nicaragua.

“It’s just heartbreaking not to be able to see our Nicaraguan brothers and sisters,” said Danny Deramus, a Highway church elder.

Dozens of U.S. church groups have made the same difficult choice to stay home.

Read the full story.

This story appears in the online edition of The Christian Chronicle.

Related: For thousands of Nicaragua’s poor, mission ‘a gift from God’ (reporting from Jinotega, Nicaragua)

Related: For a Nicaraguan church, a revival (reporting from Masaya, Nicaragua)

 

Let’s be honest: Many voicing opinions about Colorado baker don’t know the facts

June 1, 2018

By Bobby Ross Jr. | GetReligion

Everybody, it seems, has an opinion about Jack Phillips.

But not everybody — trust me on this — has taken the time to review the facts of Phillips’ case.

Does the Colorado baker — in whose favor the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 this week — really “refuse service” to gays and lesbians as a matter of general business practice?

Not according to him.

His position — one that resonated with the court’s majority — is more complicated than that.

Yet headlines such as this one in USA Today serve only to fuel the misperception:

Poll: 51% of white evangelicals support business’ refusal of service to LGBT customers

Here is the question that the survey covered by the national newspaper asked:

Do you support or oppose allowing a small business owner in your state to refuse to provide products or services to LGBT individuals if doing so violates their religious beliefs?

I have the same concern with that question that I did one asked in a previous survey that I highlighted last year: I’m just not sure it’s the right one. There are better questions to get closer to the real issue.

Read the full column.

• • •

All of my GetReligion columns (June 2018):

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In Haiti, a calling — and a baby

May 31, 2018

When an infant’s mother died, missionaries from Kentucky suddenly found themselves with a new member of the family.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

TITANYEN, Haiti — Ten days after Jason and Jennifer Carroll began Christian missionary work in this Caribbean island nation in 2014, they got an unexpected gift: a newborn boy.

The mother of an infant named Edyson — “Edy” for short — had died during childbirth.

In this poor, developing nation, a can of baby formula can cost more than a day’s wage. The family asked the Carrolls to take Edy. They’re now trying to adopt the boy, who will turn 4 in September, along with his 16-year-old sister, Rogeline, who helps care for her brother.

Since November 2016, Jason Carroll has served as water project coordinator for Healing Hands International, which is associated with Churches of Christ.

Carroll and his wife, Jennifer, manage Healing Hands’ gated complex in this rural community north of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. Just a few miles from the leased Titanyen facility, scores of victims of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake are buried in a mass grave.

The Carrolls, both in their 40s, previously owned a family tire business in Murray, Ky. Their son Chantry, 23, works for a nonprofit in Nashville, Tenn. Son Cole, 15, and daughter Callie, 14, are a part of the work in Haiti.

While shuttling American mission team members to various sites, the couple — who will celebrate their 25th anniversary this month — discussed their Haiti experience with The Christian Chronicle.

Read the full interview.

This interview appears in the June 2018 edition of The Christian Chronicle.

Related: 1,000 wells around the world (reporting from Akdesé, Haiti)

Baptist seminary president removed over controversial remarks about abused women

May 23, 2018

By Bobby Ross Jr., Sarah Pulliam Bailey and Michelle Boorstein| The Washington Post

FORT WORTH — Prominent Southern Baptist leader Paige Patterson has been removed from his job as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary amid an evangelical #MeToo moment: a massive backlash from women upset over comments he made in the past that are newly perceived as sexist and demeaning.

Seminary leaders were vague as to the reason for the dramatic move, issuing a statement in the wee hours Wednesday morning that didn’t mention Patterson’s controversial comments. Instead, the statement said that the seminary is moving “in the direction of new leadership” due to challenges related to “enrollment, financial, leadership and institutional identity.”

The brief statement said Patterson will be president emeritus, “for the benefit of the future mission of the Seminary.” He will receive compensation and may live on campus as “theologian-in-residence” at a brand new Baptist Heritage Center, the statement said.

After 13 hours of closed-door sessions, the seminary’s trustees appointed D. Jeffrey Bingham, the seminary’s dean of the school of theology, as interim president. Bingham has worked for numerous evangelical institutions, including Criswell College, Dallas Theological Seminary and Wheaton College.

Bobby Ross Jr. reported from Fort Worth. Sarah Pulliam Bailey reported from New York City. Michelle Boorstein reported from Washington.

Read the full story.

This story appears on Page A10 of The Washington Post.