Historic Baptist Convenings

Reflections of this (impressed) Secular Humorist.

I have not often had the experience of being present as history was being made. This week I am.

This is the 2nd “historic” meeting of the four main black Baptist conventions (sort of like sub-denominations) where our criminal justice ministry project and the manual I have been writing with them are being announced.

Earlier today we had the Casey-sponsored luncheon announcing the soon-to-be-published manual for congregations to use in working with people caught up in the criminal justice system -- from arrest through reentry, the perps, their family members and victims of crime.

My preacher friends from the Progressive National Baptist Convention with whom I have been working said my presentation was something of a hit as evidenced by people asking if I could serve on their committees. (One of the preachers has claimed me as a member of her church, though I think I have decided on the label “secular humorist.”)

The four black Baptist groups have been splintered for years – mostly over issues of power, control and, since 1961, civil rights tactics. Unifying only now (though not abandoning their four separate identities), they will be better able to address common issues and common dreams.

The black Baptists’ joint meeting is back-to-back with another historic event. Tonight, white Baptists will join this group and together they will proclaim A New Baptist Covenant. This has been the dream of the Covenant’s architect, Jimmy Carter, who broke with the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000, after years of trying and failing to get them to take a less unyielding and strident view of matters both theological and political following its sharp turn to the right starting in the late seventies.

Baptists who have suffered the breaches, divides, expulsions, splinters, schisms, humiliations and sorrows as they lost in the conservative seizure of power of the Southern Baptist Convention and Baptists who were never part of the Southern convention will be coming together to pledge a first-ever unity, inclusiveness and commitment to finding common ground. The Convention many of them left, the 17 million-strong Southern Baptist was invited, too, but it declined – even as some of those 17 million will come as individuals.

Al Gore and the pale blue dot.

1/31, noon.

It’s Baptist Al Gore time and he has come with his high-tech PowerPoint show about global warming, the film version of which, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Academy Award. The audience for this luncheon (which cost $35 – the rest of the Covenant events have been free) is almost all white. 2,500 of them.

It’s a bit crowded (and the food is ghastly).

It’s dawning on me how many national office holders are Baptists – Gore, Bill Clinton, Carter, Bush . . . Gore is engaging, self-deprecating and quite funny. People are whispering that they wish he had behaved like this instead of being such a stiff in the 2000 election.

In one of his slides, the animation bounces down a map of Greenland. Gore is bouncing it, bouncing it again, and then a few more times as he quips that he really liked the bouncy thing on Apple’s Key Note software and was dismayed to learn that its most recent release didn’t have it. But, he tells us, there are advantages to being on the Apple board – they reinstalled the bounce for him.

The room is loving the show – all 90 minutes of it – with the exception of two well-scrubbed teenagers at my table who are decidedly not clapping along and two girls sitting on their hands at the table behind us; the annoying nasty, catty chattering of the neighbor girls’ is incessant and I want to throttle them.

As the lights came up and none of these dissenters join the crowd giving Gore an ovation nearly as long as his presentation, I ask why them they weren’t excited about what they’d just seen. Then I notice that the two at my table have press credentials and I take back my question and say, oh, I get it, the press isn’t supposed to clap. But the girl says, no, it’s because it’s Gore. We hate him. These people wouldn’t stand and applaud Bush, she says, so why should we applaud Gore. (So much for Carter’s hope for bridging gulfs and creating harmony.)

I ask, well what about the presentation itself? What did you think of that? The girl says, we don’t care about that stuff. It’s not our issue. She and the young boy with her scurry away. Yes, these kids are reporters, reporters for the Southern Baptist Convention’s newspaper. But their heads are in a lock-box – one Gore never contemplated.

Sing Tantarara, rogues all, rogues all, Sing Tantarara, rogues all!”

1/31, afternoon.
“What a conspiracy this, between Church and State! Sing Tantarara, rogues all, rogues all, Sing Tantarara, rogues all!” ---Thomas Jefferson.

I am happily ensconced in a heady seminar on religious liberty. The Baptists pretty much created and own the concept, despite the Southern Baptists’ sharp move to all but denounce or rewrite its meaning it in recent years. It’s wonderful to see so many people fiercely embracing the First Amendment and taking a stand against government entangling itself in matters of faith and giving money to church groups.

This is making me re-think my work with the White House Office of God. Jefferson would smite me if he knew – and call me a rogue!