I have to hop on a plane right now, so I don't have time to provide my reflections on the celebration of the New Baptist Covenant. But here's a round-up of the some of the media reports on the event.
1. "30 Baptists Groups Build Bridge Toward Unity" (New York Times)
[A]lmost 15,000 people from about 30 Baptist associations gathered here for the last three days and said they were putting aside theological and political differences to commit themselves to Jesus’ call to help the poor. They say they see strength in their numbers. And they are pressing the leaders of the New Baptist Covenant, which include former President Jimmy Carter, to move quickly to build a movement out of the moment.
“The challenge will be to move beyond the good feeling,” said Ronald Ray, 55, a deacon with the Second Free Mission Baptist Church in New Orleans, part of the National Baptist Convention U.S.A., a large African-American denomination. “We have to take back this inspiration and drive to our communities, and implement programs locally, nationally, internationally.”
The groups at the Atlanta gathering said they represented around 20 million Baptists. The participants worshiped together, clapping to gospel music and trying to sing along to Spanish songs. They got acquainted on long bus rides back to hotels, at meals and in sessions on immigration, human trafficking and the role of the Holy Spirit. [Rev. Bill Shoulta, the pastor of Melbourne Heights Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky.,] said he already planned to meet with several African-American churches back home. . . .
Baptists for centuries have vigorously advocated for the separation of church and state, and some, especially whites, still feel uncomfortable about political advocacy, said the Rev. David W. Key, director of Baptist studies at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.
But many participants at the meeting said that they had to push for political solutions and that their commitment to fighting poverty so far overrode theological differences over homosexuality or the ordination of women.
“We can all agree that Jesus worked against poverty and oppression,” said Stephanie McLesky, 29, of Athens, Ga. “It takes us away from all the ——”
She struggled to describe the differences among Baptists and said, “From all the fluff.”
Another Baptist former president, Bill Clinton, spoke Friday night, four days before his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, battles for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in the Super Tuesday primary. . . .
[On Wednesday night, the] crowd swelled to about 10,000 and was almost equally divided between blacks and whites. The program featured a mix of black and white speaking styles and music.
"That was like heaven on Earth to me," said Dwight McKissic, pastor of predominantly black Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington. "I enjoyed the high church music of the Mercer [University] choir as much as I did the black Baptist choir." . . . .
"I don't see why this kind of meeting can't happen among all the Baptist churches in Dallas or Austin," [one pastor] said.
At a Friday news conference, Mr. Carter said he and other organizers of the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant will be meeting in the next few weeks to consider how best to follow up.
No new organization is foreseen. But Jimmy Allen, coordinator of the event, said another mass meeting is likely "in two or three years," and meanwhile, ways will be explored to help foster collaborations by the groups that came together this time.
3. Reports from the last night of the New Baptist Covenant (New Baptist Covenant website)
Click on the link for reports and the video of Charles G. Smith's amazing preaching, President Bill Clinton's speech, and other parts of the celebration.
4. Jimmy Carter's Baptist journey (Los Angeles Times)
[In his Sunday school, Baptists] spoke about Christ's insistence that people love their enemies.
"It is one of the most difficult things for human beings to do," Carter said. "But Jesus said this because he meant it."
That directive has driven Carter to try his hand at healing the rifts between the great antagonists of the last half-century: Arab and Jew, Cuban and American, Hutu and Tutsi. For his efforts, he has been honored with the Nobel Peace Prize and derided as a quixotic fool.
But there is one divisive row that is perhaps the most personal for Carter, and his failure to heal it has haunted him for years. It is the rift between liberals and conservatives within his own religion -- a battle that has left him estranged from the Southern Baptist Convention, the Protestant entity that once nurtured and defined him.
"It really grieved me to see my own depository of religious faith . . . being ripped apart," Carter said. "It was very deeply troubling. And I have felt, maybe unjustifiably, a personal obligation to try to do something about it."
With more than 16 million members in 50 states, the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant group in the United States. But for many white Southerners of Carter's generation, it was more than a denomination.
Southern Baptist churches inspired young Christians like Carter to harvest unsaved souls on far-flung missions. The convention's bureaucracy offered ambitious Baptists like Carter a venue outside of government where they could slake their desire to lead.
It was superstructure for a culture -- a world of covered-dish casseroles and church homecomings and "Are You Washed in the Blood?" sung from old hymnals. It was almost a tribe.
"The curse and the genius of the Southern Baptist Convention for Carter's generation is that it inculcated a sense of Baptist identity that is so deep in people that it was hard to give up," said Bill Leonard, dean of the divinity school at Wake Forest University and a liberal Baptist. "It shaped your spirituality -- but also your own sense of who you were."
UPDATE: Here's some other coverage:
Carter said people have stopped him in the halls, urging him to keep up the momentum toward forging a new Baptist mission. He said organizers have collected 3,500 e-mail addresses and hundreds of letters with suggestions.
Together, the 20 million Baptists represented at the Atlanta meeting outnumber the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention.
"I think that where we go from here will be very important," said Carter, recalling that people told him, "We don't want this to be a wasted moment; we want this to be the initiation of a movement."
Carter plans to reconvene key leaders after Easter to determine the next steps, which could include attempts to tackle the environment or immigration at both the local and national levels. . . .
The Rev. William J. Shaw, president of the primarily black National Baptist Convention, USA, said he saw the hand of God at work in the meeting.
"I'd like to believe that this is a result of the move of the spirit of God," said Shaw, a co-chair of the event. "If all of us congregations come together like this, it's got to be the Spirit."
Issues like global warming and immigration have "political dimensions, but they are also moral and spiritual issues," said Bill Underwood, president of Mercer College in Atlanta, who served on the celebration's steering committee. . . .
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, urged Baptists to set apart their political and theological differences and get busy saving people from starving.
About halfway through his address on Friday, he paused to point out some stark facts about world hunger.
"I've been speaking for about 14 minutes," he said. "And in those 14 minutes, 225 are estimated to have died of hunger."
Grassley, a member of Prairie Lake Church in Cedar Falls, Iowa, told his audience it was time for them to "shine the light of Christ" to the darkest parts of the world.
Only God can solve pressing issues like poverty and immigration, Grassley said.
"I have come to the conclusion after two years of debate on immigration, without success, that it's going to take the love of Jesus Christ to bring people together,'' he said.
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