Baptist leadership in freedom of thought

Southern Baptist Convention intolerance not withstanding, Baptists were early leaders in the movement which gave us enlightened, Western religious liberty. Mainstream Baptist reminds us of revolutionary era Baptist evangelist John Leland, who wrote:

Let every man speak freely without fear, maintain the principles that he believes, worship according to his own faith, either one God, three gods, no god, or twenty gods, and let government protect him in so doing.

Of course it is important that the matter being discussed isn’t a principal concern of the Southern Baptist Convention but rather of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship [CBF]. Still quite Baptist, the CBF composed in considerable part of folks fleeing the shrinking SBC. The SBC isn’t just failing to recruit new members, as its Great Commission Resurgence suggests in part. It is still losing longtime members and churches which find the increasingly conservative “takeover” harder and harder to bear.

Spontaneous and other abortions

With 20 percent to a 40 percent of all pregnancies ending in miscarriage (depending upon how it is measured), there are more miscarriages than abortions in the U.S. now, as Mark Silk observed recently.

Perhaps 900,000 miscarriages and just over 800,000 abortions. Which creates something of a puzzle, as Silk goes on to explain:

Those who believe that there is a live person from the moment of conception presumably struggle from time to time with the theodicy question: Why does a just God permit such destruction of innocent life?

There is debate, often attended by the grief of loss.

Read Silk’s brief blog in its entirety here.

When is leniency due?

Sex offenders are apparently unsurprised when Southern Baptist clergy seek clemency for them, as Raleigh, N.C., pastor Ricky Mill did last Monday for a man convicted of possessing child pornography.

The pastor’s good faith not at issue, but the overall predictability of the behavior is a concern.

In 2003 a researcher [.pdf] was told by a predator:

I considered church people easy to fool … they have a trust that comes from being Christians…They tend to be better folks all around. And they seem to want to believe in the good that exists in all people … I think they want to believe in people. And because of that, you can easily convince, with or without convincing words.

The court was unconvinced, and on firm ground the plea for clemency made by Mills and others. Whatever the personal history of that individual offender, a study of child pornography offenders at the Butner, N.C., federal prison by M.L. Bourke and A.E. Hernandez Journal of Family Violence found:

More than 85 percent admitted to abusing at least one child, they found, compared with 26 percent who were known to have committed any “hands on” offenses at sentencing. The researchers also counted many more total victims: 1,777, a more than 20-fold increase from the 75 identified when the men were sentenced.

That study suggests a risk to the community in releasing a known offender. The offender has a twelve-year history of “looking at images of children being molested and sexually abused,” and according to the Charlotte Observer had accumulated “more than 3,400 images and videos of naked, molested boys and girls, toddlers and teens.”

If the pattern of seeking leniency had not already been established in cases in involving crimes like and including sexual indecency with children, it might be overlooked. Instead, it should be corrected.

Bishop Williamson/SSPX conflagration may roar back to life [Addendum]

“The Vatican was warned about the Holocaust-denying views of SSPX Bishop Richard Willamson before it lifted his excommunication,” wrote Damian Thompson today. And the world is going to hear all about it. Wednesday night Sveriges Television AB will broadcast “an attack on the Holy Father” which covers what the Vatican knew about Williamson prior to the move toward rapprochement with Society of St. Pius X.

According to Carlos Antonio Palad, the promotion for the almost inevitably explosive program says:

Last winter the Catholic Church was shaken by the interview made by Uppdrag granskning with Bishop Richard Williamson. The Pope and the cardinals in charge assured the world that they had not known about the interview, but this is not true.

Swedish Bishop Arborelius: “From our side we passed the information on. That is so to say the usual way of doing it, the local church passes important news about the Church on to the papal representation.”

What did the Vatican know about the Holocaust-denying bishop?

None of this is going to leave the until recently somewhat reassured international Jewish community or not altogether mollified U.S. Bishops awash with good cheer. Nor will it smooth launch of the first round of discussions between the representatives of the Holy See and SSPX.

Exercising his gift for wry understatement, Thompson writes:

Anyway, now that Rorate Caeli has drawn attention to the documentary, you can rest assured that the Pope’s enemies and critics will get to work again. I’ll be interested to see what The Times [of London] makes of it. One request: this time, could the Vatican press office get its act together?

Answer [not from the Vatican]: Probably not.

Addendum: SSPX/Vatican talks set for mid-October

Vatican Spokesman Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi said recently that the Holy See will hold talks with the Society of St. Pius X during the last two weeks of October.

He also said that “the SSPX will be told very clearly what is not negotiable for the Holy See. This includes such fundamental conclusions of the Second Vatican Council as its positions on Judaism, other non-Christian religions, other Christian churches and on religious freedom as a basic human right.”

Those “fundamental conclusions” are of central public importance, for as you may recall, the furor which ensued in March after Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of four Lefebvrite bishops, drove Vatican-Jewish relations almost to the breaking point.