Yes, Al Mohler’s pastor was elected head of SBC’s NAMB

Kevin Ezell, pastor of Louisville, Kentucky’s, Highview Baptist Church, has according to the Louisville Courier-Journal “been elected president of the North American Mission Board, a vast network of more than 5,000 Southern Baptist missionaries and other church workers.”

Pastor to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler, Ezell was elected by some undisclosed margin of the NAMB trustees, “despite public opposition from Baptist state executives from Louisiana and Arkansas. They lauded Ezell as a pastor and a person, but cited Highview’s approach to missions funding.”

Specifically:

The church directs most of its mission funding to specific causes and gives relatively small amounts through the Cooperative Program — the denomination’s unified budget that funds the board, international missions, education and other causes — and through an annual Easter offering to the board.

Opponents said Ezell would have a difficult time persuading other churches to support the Cooperative Program and the Easter offering, which provided two-thirds of the board’s revenue in 2009, according to its annual report.

NAMB has been troubled and a focus of controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention. For example, the possibility of merger with the similarly troubled International Mission Board was recently noised about, and dropped.

Ezell is of course restrained, logical and analytical in his approach to problems and criticisms. In responding to those who raised questions about his nomination, he said:

Because of the visibility of the position, there are people across the United States who want to look for things that perhaps I do not do as well or they think we should do different, and perhaps be critical of myself or of Highview, just to try to get their name in the paper. Typically those are bloggers who live with their mother and wear a housecoat during the day. Just ignore them, but I apologize if you are hurt by anything that they might say about me or indirectly about you.

What do you think? Can the SBC expect Ezell to create the free flow of valid data required to restore general confidence in NAMB policies, procedures and claims?

Catholic abuse in England/Wales more fully revealed as Pope Benedict’s visit nears

Just in time for Pope Benedict’s visit the Guardian tells us:

More than half of the Catholic clergy jailed for paedophile activity in England and Wales remain in the priesthood – with several receiving financial support from church authorities, raising serious questions about depth of church commitment to child protection and overshadowing the start of the papal visit.

There are also claims the church has breached guidelines it agreed to in 2001 by not punishing offenders appropriately and that it has even relaxed some of the rules on how to treat them.

The allegations, shown on Channel 4 News, will fuel hostility towards a trip that is proving controversial on many levels and in many quarters.

Channel 4 News “trawled through the public records and double checked with court documents to put together a map of Catholic clerical abuse” — what they explain is necessarily a partial, but nonetheless illustrative interactive map. It is hair-raising.

Thirty-eight priests committed 331 offenses. But:

…even this is likely to fall short of the real numbers. In some cases claims have never come to court because the priest has died, is believed to have been too old to come to court or has simply absconded.

. . .

Unless the Church authorities open their files to full independent scrutiny we will never know the full extent of the scandal.

What happens when an ideological echo chamber is created?

The peril of theologically filtered search engines, especially if mated with news services which have a steep ideological slant, is audience manipulation to create “false facts,” like the health reform death panels.

Conservative echo chamber Fox gets the Republicans

As Kevin Drum of Mother Jones observed:

In other words, Democrats and Independents have changed their viewing habits only slightly while Republicans have flocked to Fox and dropped both CNN and MSNBC in droves. Back in 2000, it turns out, the viewing habits of all three groups were pretty similar. Since then, as Fox has steadily amped up its conservative branding, conservatives have decided that’s all they want to hear.

[H/T: Andrew Sullivan]

Welcome to your [overwhelmed?] tailored-to-some-faith ‘search’ engine

Christian search engine SeekFind is down [as of this writing] due to persecution ["hacking attempts after our recent interview on NPR"]. They say. Or perhaps they asked for a larger audience and it was given in numbers their servers could not bear.

They were, after all, Slashdotted. Mention amid Slashdot’s “News for nerds’ has drowned many an unprepared server in curious geeks, and will drown more in the future.

Jewogle was mentioned in the same NPR story and seems to be clicking alone quite well, thank you.

Likewise the Muslim search engine I’mHalal.

There appears to be a market for theologically filtered search. According to NPR:

I’mHalal says that within the first year since its launch, it is already getting 10 million users a month. With that kind of traffic, these search engines are likely here to stay.

Yes, they can all expect competition.

Counterfactual Richard Land Un-Mosqued

The head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission doesn’t let the facts confuse his opposition to the Park51 Islamic center.

Richard Land made his lack of due concern for the facts clear in a recent interview with Ethics Daily. Brian Kaylor wrote:

Land began an interview with EthicsDaily.com by quickly asserting that the site stands too close to Ground Zero and therefore is inappropriate for housing a mosque. Land argued the site is “at best two blocks away, depends on how you calculate it.” He proposed that moving it “four or five blocks” would make the site acceptable.

In reality, the proposed center would sit more than two blocks from the closest corner of the 16-acre World Trade Center complex that includes many buildings that survived the attack nearly nine years ago. The center actually would be about six blocks from the closest of the two main towers hit by airplanes. Such distance from the towers fits with Land’s desired distance, but he remains opposed to the site.

When Land complained during the interview that the site was within eyesight of Ground Zero, it was pointed out to him that there were actually tall buildings that prevented the site from being seen from Ground Zero. Yet, he still maintained that the site was too close.

Later on the radio program “Interfaith Voices,” Land took a different position that was more expansively confused:

There shouldn’t be one [a mosque] within, uh, eyeshot or earshot. And if it weren’t for the interference of buildings, this would be within the, what’s being proposed would be within eyesight.

Earshot?

Whatever he meant in that case, counterfactual positions aren’t new to Richard Land. He has also been persistently counterfactual on health reform. Indeed, he deserved an honorable mention for Sarah Palin’s PolitiFact Lie of the Year Award, which she received for elevating the fictitious “death panels” to a topic of frenzied national debate. Nor should it be forgotten that his false health reform/Holocaust comparisons were elevated to the level of international scandal.

Why expect a new and different Richard Land to step forward for Park51?

Prescott on CBFNC proposals: ‘No room for prophets’

At Mainstream Baptist, Bruce Prescott looks closely at the controversial proposed revisions in “foundational statements” by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of N.C. and finds a spiritual ossification which is, ironically, very much like the fundamentalist inflexibility of the Southern Baptist Convention. It is ironic because the CBF was founded in reaction to the SBC’s rigid fundamentalism.

The meat of his argument:

Fundamentalists redefined “priesthood of the believer” to mean “submission to pastoral authority.” Communitarians are redefining “priesthood of the believer” to mean “submission to the authority of your church.”

Both are weary of the conflict of interpretations that are inevitable when finite and fallible human beings are passionate about reading scripture and living faithfully in accord with a revelation whose meaning is inexhaustible.

Both believe they are authorized to replace the Holy Spirit in the mind and heart of the believer. Fundamentalists replace the Holy Spirit with the authority of the pastor. Communitarians replace the Holy Spirit with the authority of the community. Either the pastor or your community serves to legitimate or delegitimate interpretations of scripture.

Neither fundamentalists nor communitarians make allowances for human imperfections. In the real world, both pastors and church communities often oppose valid interpretations of scripture and legitimate movements of God’s Spirit.

Read his well-made, richly nuanced deconstruction of the proposed changes here.

Broadway Baptist Church exits the BGCT

Broadway Baptist Church of Fort Worth, Texas, has ended its 125-year relationship with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, saying it doesn’t want to be distracted by questions concerning the congregation’s position on homosexuality.

Pastor Brent Beasley said the church will direct the majority of its mission dollars through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and will also send money directly to Texas Baptist institutions. He said:

Our finances are strong — our giving is ahead of expenses and well ahead of last year; the spirit of the congregation is positive and healthy; our worship attendance is on the rise; new families and individuals are finding their place at Broadway. We continue to serve those in need in a multitude of ways. We are focused on our mission in the present and beginning to look to the future, which is exciting.

Last fall, the church postponed confrontation by choosing not to send messengers to the last BGCT annual convention.

Broadway was nonetheless found not to be in friendly cooperation by the Southern Baptist Convention last year because it was deemed to “approve and endorse homosexual behavior” as a result of a confrontation provoked when it published photographs of same-sex couples in the church directory.

Broadway’s expulsion by the SBC was an assertion of the kind of Cathist inflexibility that independent demographic analysis predicts will frustrate achievement of expansive evangelism goals like those pursued by the SBC’s Great Commission Resurgence Task Force.

Broadway’s departure is part of a slow parade of strong Baptist churches out of the BGCT and the SBC. The BGCT stepped back from Royal Lane Baptist Church over the same general issue in March, and before that in 1994 from University Baptist Church.

‘Dude, you have no Quran!’

The Scariest Verses in The Qu’ran

All the way to the bottom, read Tia Lynn’s “The Scariest Verses in The Qu’ran!!!“

[H/T: Mainstream Baptist]

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of N.C. at a turning point

Debate over proposed changes in the “foundation statements” of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina is and Aaron Weaver reasonably argues should be intense.

Tony Cartledge at Baptists Today Blogs reviews the issues in detail and Bruce Prescott promises to do so at Mainstream Baptist, later.

Glenn Jonas at dr.jonas’blog has also spoken to what appear to be the primary issues of controversy.