This update summarizes some of the key points from the Court of Appeals’ opinion to help you understand the logic that courts use when deciding issues related to the clergy privilege

What Was the Purpose of Bragg’s Conversation with His Pastor?

Like most states, the Court of Appeals ruled that a conversation with a minister is privileged from disclosure under Michigan law only if it serves a religious function such as providing guidance, counseling, forgiveness, or discipline. Put another way, a conversation is not privileged if it is made with wholly secular purposes, such as seeking practical and legal, not spiritual, advice. The court also ruled that to be privileged, a communication must be made to a minister in his professional capacity. This means that a conversation with a minister is not privileged if made to the minister in his role as merely a relative, friend, or employer.

The Court of Appeals found that Bragg’s conversation with Pastor Vaprezsan served a religious function because it enabled Vaprezsan to provide guidance, counseling, forgiveness, and discipline to Bragg in Veprezsan’s role as a minister. In reaching this conclusion, the court considered several facts. First, Vaprezsan testified at a preliminary hearing that he “consoled” Bragg and counseled him as “a loving, brokenhearted minister.” Vaprezsan also explicitly stated that he “interrogate[d]” Bragg “in [his] role as a pastor.” Once Vaprezsan convinced Bragg to speak about the sexual assault, he prayed with Bragg. The Court even noted that Vaprezsan’s authority as pastor enabled him to summon Bragg and his mother to the church in order talk about the victim’s allegations against Bragg. The trio met inside the pastor’s office and they did not discuss any secular topics, but spoke only of the victim’s accusation that Bragg had committed a sin and criminal act.

Was Bragg’s Conversation with His Pastor Confidential?

In order to be privileged, a communication with a pastor must have been confidential. When asked at a preliminary hearing whether his conversation with Bragg would be considered confidential, Pastor Vaprezsan responded, “I’m sure it would.” When asked if he had shared the conversation with anyone other than the victim’s family and the police, Vaprezsan responded, “No.  I didn’t, uh—no. That’s—that’s a private matter that I did not share, that I can recall, with anyone else. I don’t even share things like that with my wife.”

Regardless of the above facts indicating that the conversation was confidential, the prosecution argued that Bragg waived any right to keep the conversation confidential by allowing his mother to participate. However, the Court of Appeals disagreed. The court explained that the mere presence of a third person, by itself, does not destroy the confidential nature of a conversation with a pastor, especially when the third person is a close relative of the accused. The determining factor, according to the court, was Bragg’s intention to keep the conversation private. To determine Bragg’s intention, the court looked at several facts. For example, Pastor Vaprezsan, not Bragg, requested that Bragg’s mother attend the meeting. Bragg was a minor at the time of the meeting and his mother’s attendance could have been necessary to sustain him during the difficult conversation. In addition, the meeting was held behind closed doors late at night. Also, Bragg did not share the content of the conversation with anyone else. In fact, the court found no evidence that Bragg, or even Vaprezsan, believed the mother’s presence destroyed the confidentiality of their conversation. Altogether, the court found that these facts supported an understanding of confidentiality.

The court noted that Vaprezsan told the police and the victim’s family about the conversation. But the court also noted that only Bragg could waive the privilege under Michigan law, and Vaprezsan’s actions did not implicate a waiver by Bragg.

The Result 

The Court of Appeals found that Bragg’s conversation with Pastor Veprezsan was confidential and privileged. Therefore, the court ruled that Vaprezsan could not testify at Bragg’s upcoming trial. However, prosecutors in the case are reportedly planning to appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court. Stay tuned for more updates.

The Clergy Privilege Laws of All 50 States

It is important that leaders of GARBC churches throughout the U.S. understand when their conversations are privileged. However, all 50 states have their own unique laws governing the clergy privilege. Even though the Bragg case is based on Michigan law, the Court of Appeals in that case was kind enough to list citations to the clergy privilege laws of all 50 states. For your convenience, that list is reproduced here.

(Alabama) Ala R Evid Rule 505; (Alaska) Alaska R Evid 506; (Arizona) ARS § 13-4062; (Arkansas) ARE 505; (California) Cal Evid Code §§ 917, 1033, 1034; (Colorado) Colo Rev Stat § 13-90-107; (Connecticut) Conn Gen State Ann § 52-146b; (Delaware) DRE 505; (Florida) Fla Stat ch. 90.505; (Georgia) Ga Code Ann § 24-9-22; (Hawaii) HRE 506; (Idaho) Idaho Code § 9-203; IRE 505; (Illinois) 735 Ill Comp Stat 5/8-803; (Indiana) Burns Ind Code Ann § 34-46-3-1; (Iowa) Iowa Code § 62.10(1); (Kansas) Kan Stat Ann § 60-429; (Kentucky) KRE Rule 505; (Louisiana) La Code Evid art  511; (Maine) Me R Evid 505; (Maryland) Md Code Ann, Cts & Jud Proc § 9-111; (Massachusetts) Mass Gen Laws ch 233, § 20A; (Michigan) Mich Comp Laws Ann § 600.2156 and § 767.5a(2); (Minnesota) Minn Stat § 595.02; (Mississippi) Miss R Evid Rule 505; (Missouri) Mo Rev Stat § 491.060; (Montana) Mont Code Ann § 26-1-804; (Nebraska) Neb Rev Stat § 27-506; (Nevada) Nev Rev Stat Ann 49.255; (New Hampshire) NH Rule of Evid 505; (New Jersey) NJ Stat § 2A:84A-23; (New Mexico) NM RE 11-506; (New York) NY CPLR 4505; (North Carolina) NC Gen Stat § 8-53.2; (North Dakota) NDR Ev Rule 505; (Ohio) Ohio Rev Code Ann § 2317.02; (Oklahoma) 12 Okla St § 2505; (Oregon) Or Rev Stat § 40.260; (Pennsylvania) 42 Pa Cons Stat § 5943; (Rhode Island) RI Gen Laws § 9-17-23; (South Carolina) SC Code Ann § 19-11-90; (South Dakota) SD Codified Laws §§ 19-13-16, 19-13-17; (Tennessee) Tenn Code Ann § 24-1-206; (Texas) Tex Evid R 505; (Utah) Utah Code Ann § 78B-1-137, Utah R Evid Rule 503; (Vermont) VRE 505; (Virginia) Va Code Ann § 8.01-400; (Washington) Wash Rev Code § 5.60.060; (West Virginia) W Va Code § 48-1-301; (Wisconsin) Wis Stat § 905.06; (Wyoming) Wyo Stat Ann § 1-12-101

Following lunch, the congregation will attend a farewell service for missionaries Mark and Leslie Boyd, who are being sent out as the church’s first missionaries. “They will be church planters in Germany, being mentored initially by Jeff and Linda Brown while they learn the language,” says Pastor Holub. The Browns are longtime missionaries to Germany with Baptist Mid-Missions, the mission agency the Boyds are working with. “Mark has a head start, because he is a third-generation missionary kid from the Netherlands. He came to Faith Baptist Bible College, met Leslie, both became members, got married, and we have watched them begin raising four wonderful children.”

Fellowship Baptist ordained Mark and commissioned him and Leslie three years ago. “We have watched God provide their needed support in their three years of deputation ministry,” says Pastor Holub. The Boyds are now nearing 100 percent support and have purchased plane tickets to head to Germany on June 4.

Leaders of some of the nation’s largest religious denominations

Other news:

• President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage is energizing Christian conservative support for Mitt Romney in a way that the likely GOP nominee has so far not been able to do on his own, according to religious leaders and activists, reports The Washington Post. Pastors in Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, and other swing states were said to be preaching Sunday sermons inveighing against same-sex unions, while activist groups have begun laying plans for social media campaigns, leaflet drives, and other get-out-the-vote efforts centered on the same-sex marriage issue. Romney could benefit from a strong turnout among evangelicals and other social conservatives, many of whom remain skeptical of his commitment to their causes. “So many people were rather lukewarm toward governor Romney and were really looking for some more tangible reasons to support him,” said Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values, who led the ballot drive that banned gay marriage in Ohio in 2004. “Then lo and behold, it just fell out of the sky when Obama came out and endorsed same-sex marriage. . . . We are going to make this our key issue: the attack on marriage.” The National Organization for Marriage, a leading anti-gay-marriage group, lashed out at Obama after his announcement and promised to campaign against him “ceaselessly” in swing states.
• Delivering a commencement address at the country’s largest Christian school, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney on Saturday defended traditional marriage and said there is common ground between his Mormon faith and that of the largely evangelical crowd, reports firstread.msnbc.com. Speaking to more than 30,000 packed into Liberty University’s football stadium, Romney drew his loudest applause from his proclamation, “Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman.” Liberty’s decision to invite Romney, a Mormon, to deliver the commencement at the Christian school founded by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell drew criticism from some on campus who feel Romney’s beliefs contradict the school’s teachings. The university offers a theology course that describes Mormonism as a cult. Romney only alluded to his faith, telling the crowd, “People of different faiths, like yours and mine, sometimes wonder where we can meet in common purpose, when there are so many differences in creed and theology. Surely the answer is that we can meet in service, in shared moral convictions about our nation stemming from a common worldview.” The candidate’s religion was never directly addressed, but the school’s chancellor and son of its founder, Jerry Falwell Jr., seemed to scratch the surface of some of this community’s concerns in his introduction of Romney. “My father often preached that Christians should vote for the candidate whose positions on the political issues are most closely aligned with their own,” said Falwell. “Not the candidate who shares his or her faith or theology. We are, after all, electing a commander-in-chief, not a pastor or religious leader.”
• Seoul USA, a Korean-American NGO that launches Bibles and gospel flyers into North Korea 70 to 80 times a year, now has proof that the balloons are reaching their target, reports charismanews.com. Using GPS tracking devices overlaid onto Google Maps, Seoul USA is confirming the precise location of several of its launches this year and posting the photographic images on its website. “We’ve known for years that our balloon launches were reaching the targeted areas because of the angry response of the North Korean government,” said Seoul USA President the Rev. Eric Foley. “But the GPS devices provide us with precise verification that will enable us to further increase the accuracy of future launches.” North Korea is universally regarded as the most hostile environment for Christians, Foley notes, so balloon launches provide one of the only ways to do mass distribution of Scripture and gospel messages inside the Hermit Kingdom.
• A Christian pollster asserts that the only way to change politics and the country is for believers to live out their Christianity and share it with others, reports onenewsnow.com. Scott Rasmussen of Rasmussen Reports is one of the nation’s leading pollsters and a conservative commentator. As keynote speaker at the Pacific Justice Institute’s recent Celebration of Justice banquet, he urged Christians to represent Christ in the nation’s social and political state, saying now is not the time to compromise on moral issues. “Elections are important. Political stuff is important,” he recognized. “But it is your personal example as being a witness and a representative of Jesus Christ that matters the most.” And as Christians live out their faith, Rasmussen urges them not to place their hope in political victories. “How are you going to influence the culture if you’re not talking to people outside the church,” he asked. “How are you going to proclaim the gospel if you’re not going out to those borderlands?” The speaker concluded that Christians are ultimately the ones who can really bring hope and change to the nation.
• Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani has written an open letter to “all those who are concerned” with his plight, thanking them and asking for prayer, reports charismanews.com. The letter is the first time in nearly a year that Nadarkhani has been able to speak out publicly about his illegal imprisonment in Iran. He encourages the members of his congregation and supporters all over the world that he is in “perfect health” and urges them to continue having faith in God. He specifically thanks everyone who has “asked for my release, or campaigns and human rights activities which are going on against the charges which are applied to me,” and he urges everyone to “pray for me.”
• Joining pastors throughout the country in denouncing President Barack Obama’s support for same-sex marriage, Pastor Jonathan Falwell told thousands from the pulpit that they must protect the Biblical definition of marriage, even if the culture and the president try to redefine it, reports The Christian Post. “We’ve got to protect marriage; we’ve got to protect our families; we’ve got to protect the Church,” Falwell, pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., preached Sunday. “I don’t care what the world says; I don’t care what the culture says; I don’t even care what the president says. With all due respect . . . the Bible says that God made them male and female and the two shall become one flesh.” Meanwhile, two big cases addressing marriage rights for gays and lesbians are on track to reach the U.S. Supreme Court as soon as this year, reports conservativebyte.com, keeping the focus on an issue President Barack Obama reignited with his endorsement this past week. The cases, originating on opposite coasts, go to the heart of a question that has churned for two decades: whether states and the federal government may refuse to recognize same-sex marriage. How the high court would rule is said to be “impossible to know.” In the court’s most recent gay-rights case, the justices in 2003 struck down state anti-sodomy laws as an improper intrusion on private activity.
• The upcoming recall election in Wisconsin in June is actually a huge pro-life vs. pro-abortion battle, reports lifenews.com. Democratic voters chose pro-abortion Tom Barrett, the mayor of Milwaukee, as their candidate to go up against pro-life incumbent Gov. Scott Walker (R). In the recall primary, Walker earned 280,000 more votes than Mitt Romney, the winner of the April 3Wisconsin presidential primary. “Governor Walker’s deep belief in the sanctity of all human life is evident in the courageous actions he has taken to build a culture of life in Wisconsin. His concern for the most vulnerable members of the human family is reflected in the common sense and compassionate laws he has signed into law. Those initiatives will greatly benefit unborn children, women who are considering abortion and taxpayers of our state,” said Wisconsin Right to Life PAC Director Susan Armacost. By contrast, while serving as a member of Congress, Tom Barrett opposed common sense legislation on abortion like the Hyde Amendment, which broadly bars federal funding for abortion. Since Gov. Walker took office in January 2011, the pro-life movement in Wisconsin has made monumental gains. Walker signed into law a state budget that included a provision to prohibit the UW Hospital Authority from being involved in performing abortions and from using taxpayer dollars to pay medical students to learn how to perform abortions. Walker steered Wisconsin Well Woman funds to local counties instead of Planned Parenthood. Gov. Walker also signed bills that allow Wisconsin to opt out of abortion funding under Obamacare, to protect pregnant women from coerced abortions and to prohibit RU486 chemical web cam abortions. Walker’s pro-life achievements have earned him the praise of Wisconsin’s top pro-life groups and, contrary to the claims from abortion advocates, the support of many women.
• The careers of most politicians would crumble under the heavy scrutiny that the self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in America now faces. But despite a mountain of legal troubles, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio remains popular with voters and has more than $3.4 million in the bank for his November re-election campaign, reports csmoniter.com. The Justice Department sued the five-term sheriff on Thursday on allegations that his officers racially profile Latinos—a move that has his critics saying that voters will finally be turned off and his supporters saying the development will only make him more beloved among voters who want a tough sheriff who doesn’t back down from anyone. “He’s the new Wyatt Earp,” said Tom Morrissey, chairman of the Arizona Republican Party in a reference to the Arizona lawman made famous by the gun fight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone. “The guy’s legendary.” “What he stands for resonates across the country,” said Morrissey, also a retired chief U.S. Marshal. “Hundreds sometimes thousands of people cheer this man, give him standing ovations everywhere he speaks. That speaks volumes.” He said Arpaio’s hardline stance on illegal immigration and his tough talk have driven his popularity. “He tells it like it is. He’s not polished, and a lot of times you never know what’s going to come out of his mouth,” Morrissey said. “The truth has a certain ring and Joe Arpaio speaks in that realm.” Even as the Justice Department brought the lawsuit down against Arpaio, saying that he abused his power and violated the Constitution, the sheriff himself held a news conference and showed no signs of backing down. “I will fight this to the bitter end,” a visibly angry Arpaio said, adding that the case will give him a chance to finally see what evidence authorities have to back up claims. “I’m very happy that we are being sued because now we can make them put up.” He said nothing is going to affect his chances of winning in November. Thursday’s lawsuit comes as part of efforts to enforce a federal law that bans police from systematically violating constitutional rights. Justice Department officials first leveled the allegations against Arpaio in December, saying a culture of disregard for basic constitutional rights prevailed at his office. Arpaio denies wrongdoing and dismisses the case as a politically motivated attack by the Obama administration.
• In what is described as “a revealing new book,” The Amateur, author Edward Klein interviews President Barack Obama’s physician, Dr. David Scheiner, MD, who blasts the president’s health care plan and says that President Obama has an “academic detachment” that he could never break through, reports cowboybyte.com. The doctor fears that if the health care plan is “the failure” he believes it will be, because of runaway costs and other problems, then any health reform will be set back for years to come. These are said to be only a few of many revelations in Klein’s book, “which makes the case that President Obama is not the political machine that people fear, but an amateur with a messianic complex who is completely out of his depth.”
• Yosef Garfinkel, a professor from the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, announced the discovery of ancient objects that reveal how religion was organized in Judah before the reign of King Solomon, reports worthynews.com. In excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa—a fortified city in Judah—Garfinkel and his colleagues uncovered pottery, art, and religious objects in three large rooms that served as shrines; these shrines predate the construction of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem and provide the first physical evidence of religion as practiced during the time of King David. “This is the first time that archaeologists uncovered a fortified city in Judah from the time of King David,” said Garfinkel. “Even in Jerusalem, we do not have a clear fortified city from his period. Thus, various suggestions that completely deny the biblical tradition regarding King David and argue that he was a mythological figure, or just a leader of a small tribe, are now shown to be wrong. Over the years, thousands of animal bones were found, including sheep, goats and cattle, but no pigs, . . .  not even one human or animal figurine was found; this suggests that the population of Khirbet Qeiyafa observed two biblical bans: on pork and on graven images.” Biblical tradition depicted the Israelites as monotheists who forbade human and animal images; the absence of these images in the three shrines shows the inhabitants practiced a religion radically different from the surrounding Canaanites and Philistines. In addition to the three shrines, two portable box-shaped shrines, or shrine models, were found: one made of clay and the other of stone. The clay shrine included two pillars and folded textile as described in Solomon’s Temple: the two pillars of Yachin and Boaz and the Parochet textile. The stone shrine is made of soft limestone and painted red. Its facade is decorated by seven groups of roof-beams with three planks in each called a “triglyph,” which are also found in the Parthenon, but its appearance at Khirbet Qeiyafa is the earliest known example carved in stone. The stone model can help clarify obscure, technical terms in the description of Solomon’s palace in 1 Kings 7:1–6. The Biblical text uses “slaot,” which were mistakenly understood as pillars, but can now be understood as triglyphs—and “sequfim” once thought to be nine windows, but can now be understood as “triple recessed doorway.” Similar triglyphs and recessed doors can be found in the description of Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings 6:5 and 31–33 and the description of a temple in Ezekiel 41:6. These texts contain obscure technical terms that have long ago lost their original meaning, but with the discovery of the stone model at Khirbet Qeiyafa, the texts can now be clarified.

North Carolina voters approved

Other news:

• The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee suggested Tuesday that the Obama administration may have misled the public in keeping the lid on the latest Al Qaeda-affiliate bomb plot, and called for a review into the way the government handles top-secret information. “I think we have to find a better way in the future to see or at least do [a review on] how we can tell the public, what we should tell the public,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., told Fox News. King described the challenge as walking a “fine line,” but said that if officials are trying to keep a secret, they should “do it in a way not to mislead the public.” Law enforcement sources also told Fox News that the credibility of the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI has been undercut by this—because in the run-up to the anniversary of Usama bin Laden’s death they issued a bulletin saying there was no plot, when the administration, in fact, knew an explosive device was being tracked and intercepted.
• Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., lost a primary battle Tuesday to tea party challenger and Indiana state treasurer Richard Mourdock for the seat he has held since 1977, reports Fox News. Lugar’s defeat makes him the first and likely only senator to lose renomination this year. After returns from the primary came in, Lugar conceded to Mourdock before a crowd of supporters. He says he wants to see a Republican in the White House and will support Mourdock in his race against Democrat Joe Donnelly for the Senate seat. Mourdock’s supporters cast Lugar as too moderate and out of touch after 35 years in the Senate. The American Conservative Union gave Lugar a 77 percent “lifetime” rating. Lugar’s supporters claimed it hardly constituted a moderate voting record. But tea party conservatives argued Mourdock would provide more “purity” and wouldn’t bow to compromise with Democrats. Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and John McCain, R-Ariz., avoided situations similar to Lugar’s by moving further to the right ideologically. Lugar, however, initially refused to do the same. He didn’t run a slew of negative advertisements against his opponent until late in the primary campaign. Even then, some critics said they stood in contrast to his reputation as a statesman. Lugar’s campaign spent $6.7 million compared to Mourdock’s $2 million. But Mourdock’s political action committees spent $2.9 million attacking Lugar over the incumbent backers’ $1.7 million. One advertisement from Mourdock’s campaign called Lugar “President Obama’s favorite Republican.” It showed clips of President Obama saying, “I’ve worked with Republican Senator Dick Lugar to pass a law” and “What I did was reach out to Senator Dick Lugar.” Lugar, 80, built a Senate career largely focused on foreign policy. The two-time chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee became a leading voice on nuclear weapons. His signature achievement was the 1991 Nunn-Lugar Act, which he wrote with former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga. Lugar didn’t help his campaign when it came to light that he no longer owned a residence in Indiana. He instead stayed in an Indianapolis hotel when he returned to the state—using taxpayer funds. Mourdock’s campaign said the revelation symbolized how Lugar had become too entrenched in Washington.
• It seems the Wesleyan Church denomination won’t be dealing with investments that have raised serious concerns among some pastors, reports onenewsnow.com. The evangelical, Protestant denomination is to meet in early June in Lexington, Ky. Pastor Dale Walker of the Union Hill Wesleyan Church in Whitleyville, Tenn., is behind a resolution that has apparently disappeared from the agenda. “The General Board of the Wesleyan Church, I understand, voted down the resolution that the Tennessee Wesleyans voted on July of last year to clean up the Wesleyan pension plan from the incongruent holdings to where we pastors can profit from the things that are literally destroying America,” Walker details. Some of those areas include pornography, casino gambling, abortion-related issues, and tobacco. “The Wesleyan Church not only believes in salvation, but they also believe in sanctification, which is even more of a holiness issue,” the pastor notes. “You would think that the leaders of a holiness denomination would take it very seriously that their pastors have the ability to profit off of things that we call sin.” Though he admits it is a David vs. Goliath situation, Walker asserts that the battle will go on. He hopes pastors will contact denomination leaders to press for debate and a vote on the issue.
• Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has put an end to tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood by signing a bill that she says closes loopholes for funding abortions, reports latimes.com. The bill, known as the “Whole Woman’s Health Funding Priority Act,” tightens existing state regulations and prevents any government entity—city, county, or state—from giving money to an organization that offers family planning that may indirectly fund abortions. It “closes loopholes in order to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not used to fund abortions, whether directly or indirectly,” Brewer said in a statement Friday after she signed the bill. Arizona’s Republican-led Legislature passed other reproductive healthcare bills during a 116-day session that ended Thursday. Brewer signed a bill last month banning most abortions after 20 weeks. “Planned Parenthood’s abortion-centered business model does not need or deserve taxpayer dollars,” said Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) in a statement for the Susan B. Anthony List, an advocacy group opposed to abortions.
• The Chinese government is engaging in a three-phase campaign to eradicate Protestant house churches, according to China Aid Association information from an unnamed source and reported by Baptist Press. The source indicates the government’s strategy was clearly outlined in a document released during a training class last September for “Patriots in the Christian Community” conducted by the State Administration for Religious Affairs. The ChinaAid information was circulated in a Compass Direct News report in late April. The existence of an elevated government crackdown on house churches also has been verified by Baptist Press. The Chinese government’s strategy document calls for local authorities, in phase one, to conduct a thorough investigation of house churches nationwide from January through June of this year and create dossiers on each of them. In phase two for the following two to three years, authorities would strongly encourage unregistered churches to affiliate with the government-approved Three-Self Patriotic Movement. In phase three, to be completed within 10 years, churches refusing to comply would be shut down, according to the ChinaAid information. Officials also would ban the words “house church” and all reports on house churches from websites and other media and replace the term with “house gatherings,” a term that would refer to groups meeting in sites affiliated with the TSPM. In a random survey conducted by ChinaAid’s source in several provinces, more than 95 percent of house church leaders said they had already felt the impact of these investigations, while 85 percent said local religious affairs departments already had created a dossier for their group. “Since the beginning of 2012, we have noticed an increase in the frequency of persecution,” ChinaAid said in a press statement, dated April 20. “In addition to the continuing persecution of Shouwang Church in Beijing, the number of similar cases has risen 20 percent over last year and has spread into other areas, including Christian education, publication and bookstores.”
• Celebrations have been taking place in London these days to mark 400 years since the founding of the first Baptist church in Britain, reports christiantoday.com. The Baptist Union of Great Britain chose London as the venue for this year’s General Assembly in tribute of the first British Baptist church, founded by Thomas Helwys in the Spitalfields area in 1612. The assembly opened with a look back over four centuries of Baptist achievements in Britain and the world, from the pioneering mission work of William Carey, to the legacy of preacher Charles Spurgeon and civil rights leader Martin Luther King. A message from the Queen read to the audience congratulated Baptists on this “auspicious occasion.” The assembly is meeting under the banner of “Beyond 400.” General Secretary of the BUGB Jonathan Edwards said, “We’re here because we want to capture God’s vision of where we go next.” Christiantoday.com also reported that attendees were told that the church must put Jesus back at the centre of its message. Agu Irukwu, the senior pastor of Jesus House, in London, said some churches were too focused on trying to make Jesus and the cross palatable and acceptable to 21st century society. “Thank God for advances in theology, thank God for thinkers in the church, thank God for churches that have to be seeker-friendly and all these other nice terms. But it seems that the more seeker-friendly we get, the less of Jesus we get so when people come to church they are not sure whether they are in church or at a gathering where someone is giving a motivational speech and the power is not in motivational speaking. The power is in Jesus,” he said.
• In testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that she did not know if religious freedom is being violated by the new HHS mandate that requires employers to provide free surgical sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs through their health plans, regardless of their religious or moral convictions. Sebelius also admitted she was unfamiliar with key Supreme Court religious freedom cases. But Sebelius will get a lesson on the U.S. Constitution on June 8. On that day, at noon local time, tens of thousands of Americans in over 100 cities coast to coast will take to the streets in public protests against the HHS Mandate during the second nationwide Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally, reports christiannewswire.com. The rally will be held at federal buildings, Congressional offices and historic sites in such cities as Chicago, New York, Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia. The full list of rally sites was being made available at StandUpRally.com/locations. The date for the Stand Up Rally was chosen to highlight the HHS Mandate’s unconstitutional infringement of religious freedom, coming just weeks before the highly anticipated ruling on Obamacare from the U.S. Supreme Court, expected at the end of June. “If Obamacare is ruled unconstitutional, we must ensure that religious freedom will be protected in subsequent health care legislation,” explained Stand Up Rally national co-director Monica Miller. “But if Obamacare is not struck down, we’ll be sending the federal authorities a clear message that the faith-based institutions and private businesses affected by the HHS Mandate simply will not comply with it.” “The federal government has no business defining the scope of religious ministry,” said Miller, referring to a “religious exemption” in the HHS Mandate drawn so narrowly that it excludes such religious institutions as Catholic schools and hospitals. The June 8 Rally will take place on the 223rd anniversary of the day James Madison introduced the Bill of Rights to the 1st Congress, including what would become the First Amendment.
• Pastor Wiley Drake, who was arrested Friday outside the White House, says he’d do it again. Drake, a presidential candidate and pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif., was released Friday in Washington, D.C., after paying a fine. “If I’m back in D.C., I’ll go back to the White House and pray again,” Drake said in a telephone interview Saturday, reports ocregister.com. He was in Washington, D.C., for the National Day of Prayer on Thursday, as well as the monthly Congressional Prayer Conference. He and the Rev. Pat Mahoney decided to pray at noon Friday outside the White House for Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, who had been taken to a hospital after leaving the U.S. Embassy, news reports state. Drake said he, Mahoney, and three Christian women were kneeling next to the fence to pray when security officials told them to move along because they couldn’t pray there. After repeated requests, Drake, Mahoney, Gwyn Epeppard, 56, Tina Whittington, 37, and Sarah Maher, 23, were arrested. “We felt like compared to what Chen Guangcheng has suffered in jail… what we did was very minimal compared to what he has sacrificed,” Drake said. He hopes that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will grant asylum to Guangcheng. “We do not believe we violated any law,” Drake said.
• With the signature of Gov. Nathan Deal on House Bill 39 on May 1, 2012, Georgia enacted significant improvements to its homeschool law, reports the Home School Legal Defense Association. Effective with the 2012–2013 school year, parents will no longer have to submit monthly attendance records to their local public school superintendent. Instead, the records will be submitted only once a year to the Georgia Department of Education. Additionally, the initial and annual declaration of intent to conduct a home study program will be filed with the department of education instead of the local superintendent. Submission of monthly attendance records was said to have been a thorn in the flesh of homeschoolers in Georgia. Problems with parents missing the end-of-month deadline by a few days or misplaced records by school officials often led to inappropriate action by the school district. School districts routinely reported families to social services for educational neglect or threatened truancy charges against family members. They also initiated action to bring about the revocation of the driver’s license of students by reporting excessive absences to the department of driver services. Annual reporting at the end of the school year should bring an end to these excessive and unwarranted enforcement actions. Filing the declaration of intent with the department of education removes the local school district from the administrative process of beginning and continuing a home study program. HSLDA’s experience has been that the less involvement homeschoolers have with the local school district, the fewer legal problems they have.
• Three Iowa judges who lost their jobs in the wake of a controversial decision to legalize same-sex marriage in Iowa were rewarded this week with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award, reports The Des Moines Register. The awards were presented at the Kennedy presidential library in Boston to former Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justices Marsha Ternus and former Justices David Baker and Michael Streit, all of whom were ousted in a 2010 retention vote. The audience included three sitting Iowa Supreme Court justices and enough friends and relatives of the honorees that Carolyn Kennedy, president of the library foundation’s board of directors, thanked “half the state of Iowa” for attending. Meanwhile, the Iowa Family Leader issued a statement praising ”the approximately 525,000 Iowans who had the courage to remove these three activist Iowa Supreme Court justices” in 2010. Bob Vander Plaats, president and chief executive of the organization, said in the statement that the “elitist” Kennedy Library Foundation award “applauds the abuse of power for agenda acceleration” and is “a direct insult to over one-half million informed and constitutionally astute Iowans” who voted to remove the honorees.
• Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is calling on the IRS to investigate whether someone on the inside could have leaked the private tax files of a prominent anti-gay marriage group, reports Fox News. Hatch, in a letter Tuesday to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, said, “Evidence suggests that the IRS may have been the source of the unauthorized disclosure of donor information.” The Republican Utah senator was referring to the recent publication of documents listing 2008 contributors to the National Organization for Marriage. Among those contributors was Mitt Romney. Both the gay advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign and the Huffington Post posted the documents—the National Organization for Marriage has claimed it appears someone in the IRS fed the documents to the Human Rights Campaign. That possibility “is a matter that I take with the utmost seriousness,” Hatch wrote, calling the allegation “disturbing.” “Our political history shows the absolute necessity of maintaining the nonpartisan integrity of the IRS,” Hatch wrote, calling for an investigation.

Moments before, I had been sitting with Wilbur Parrish of First Baptist Church, Stockton. The messages from Bernie Augsburger, state representative of the Illinois-Missouri Association of Regular Baptist Churches, on being faithful have encouraged me, but I’m young. What about the impact for someone like Wilbur, who has been faithful through 46 years of ministry?

“Faithfulness is endurance and consistency,” Wilbur says. “You can be faithful today, but tomorrow, that’s not going to work.” I can record his words for you, but not the passion or the sorrow as he speaks of seeing others fail to be faithful at the end of their ministries.

Wilbur’s thoughts ran parallel to those of Bruce McLain, who has spent over 30 years of ministry in the CARBC. Now at Pine Grove Baptist, Santa Maria, Bruce also knows of the heartache from failed examples, plus how easy it can be to say you’ll be faithful when you’re young. He relates how the messages have encouraged him to be faithful; then he adds five words that catch my attention. They aren’t new words to me, but he speaks them with deliberate intensity: “I want to finish well.”

Chips Ross is pastor of Forest Ranch Baptist Church, Forest Ranch, Calif., and editor of the CARBC Messenger, the newsletter of the California Association of Regular Baptist Churches.

On the Saturday following the conference, Vacaville and Ducor, Calif., were the sites of a planning session and a “Heart for Hispanics” seminar. Marquez, Taylor, and Talavera teamed up with Fernando Sanchez, pastor of Primera Iglesia Bautista, Ducor; Victor Ordonez, pastor of Iglesia Bautista la Fe, Strathmore; and Ron Schrock, CARBC state representative, to facilitate these events.

Attendees were greatly blessed by messages on “Gaining a Heart and Vision for Our Hispanic Neighbors,” “Effective Evangelism,” “Lost and Profits,” and “Developing Gifts and Skills for God’s Service,” plus a brainstorming session and a breakout session for men and women.

The seminar was a special event full of ideas for enthusiastically ministering with excellence. Another seminar is desired for next year, plus the possibility of a Hispanic family retreat

Tennessee lawmakers are now backing

Other news:

• U.S. talks with Hamas are “almost inevitable” if President Obama is reelected, John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, declared in a radio interview Monday, reports WorldNetDaily. “I think that’s almost inevitable,” Bolton told Aaron Klein on his WABC Radio show in response to a question about whether the former diplomat thinks the U.S. will engage the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas during a second Obama term. Bolton, now a member of Mitt Romney’s campaign, said that since “many Europeans” already believe that Israel should negotiate with Hamas, the Obama administration “would come to the same conclusion.” He said, “It used to be the American position that we don’t negotiate with terrorists. Well, we are doing that now with the Taliban. We are doing that with the government in Iran, which is not only terrorist, but [also] is pursuing nuclear weapons.” “So Hamas is an easy case, I think under that perspective, for the Obama administration,” he added. Hamas is on the State Department’s list of official terrorist organizations. The group is responsible for scores of violent attacks targeting civilians. Meanwhile, conservativebyte.com reports that the heads of the House and Senate intelligence committees on Sunday declared that the Taliban has grown stronger since President Obama’s deployment of 33,000 more troops to Afghanistan in 2010. The pessimistic report by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) challenges Obama’s own assessment last week in his surprise visit to Kabul that the “tide had turned” and that “we broke the Taliban‘s momentum.”
• The Revolutionary Guards and its Quds Forces, which run Iran’s terror networks worldwide, have created two special units to undermine the regimes in the Persian Gulf and push America out of the region, reports WorldNetDaily. The Guards are using Imam Ali mosques around the globe, including some in the U.S., as terror command centers. Gholam Hossein Gheib Parvar, one of the regime’s most radical military commanders, is in charge of all Guard forces. According to a former intelligence officer who served in that specific region, their orders are twofold: Incite uprisings within the Shiite minorities in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and other countries in the region, and prepare for military operations against those countries’ governmental facilities. Bahrain’s monarchy faces daily protests and occasional terrorist attacks against its police forces and facilities. Protests are also taking place in Saudi Arabia within the minority Shiite population. Yemen is battling al-Qaida forces in addition to government protesters. Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are key Gulf allies of the United States. Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, and Saudi Arabia can help stabilize oil markets should a conflict develop with Iran. The Guards’ intelligence office also runs operations out of mosques and Islamic centers around the world, according to sources. It finances the facilities, guides assets, recruits Muslims for reconnaissance of potential targets in host countries and forms alliances with other Islamic minorities such as Afghans, Pakistanis, Turks for terrorist operations. In Afghanistan alone, the Guards have more than 1,000 terror cells that help fund the Taliban and al-Qaida and provide intelligence to attack NATO forces with the hope of pushing America out, according to a former intelligence officer. The former officer, who defected to a country in Europe, revealed that all Imam Ali mosques worldwide are under the operation of the Guards’ intelligence office. Noteworthy are the ones in Stockholm and Hamburg. Other mosques are in New Jersey, New York, and Ohio, the former officer said.
• Vladimir Putin took the oath of office in a brief but regal Kremlin ceremony on Monday, while on the streets thousands of helmeted riot police prevented hundreds of democracy advocate demonstrators from protesting his return to the presidency, reports conservativebyte.com. Putin, 59, has ruled Russia since 2000, first as president and then during the past four years as prime minister. The new, now six-year term will keep him in power until 2018, with the option of running for a fourth term.
• The U.S .has been secretly releasing captured Taliban fighters from a detention center in Afghanistan in a bid to strengthen its hand in peace talks with the insurgent group, Fox News and The Washington Post reported Monday. The “strategic release” program of high-level detainees is designed to give the U.S. a bargaining chip in some areas of Afghanistan where international forces struggle to exercise control, the report said. Under the risky program, the hardened fighters must promise to give up violence and are threatened with further punishment, but there is nothing to stop them resuming attacks against Afghan and American troops.
• In its most recent crusade against posting the Ten Commandments in schools, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that their display is unconstitutional if people who actually believe in the Biblical laws advocate it, reports WorldNetDaily. U.S. District Court Judge Michael Urbanski will hold a summary judgment hearing on a case in Virginia, in which the School Board of Giles County is fighting to allow a private individual to donate a display of dozens of American law’s foundational documents, including the Ten Commandments. And according to The Roanoke Times, one of the ACLU’s arguments against the display is a school board member’s admission that he voted to allow the donation based on his own Christian beliefs. The case Doe v. School Board of Giles County began in 2010, when the Freedom from Religion Foundation filed a complaint over a long-standing display of the Ten Commandments hung at Narrows High School in Narrows, Va. After the school removed the display, however, there was significant local backlash. Based on legal counsel, the school then permitted a private citizen, using no public funds, to create a display for the school featuring a number of important historical documents, including the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, Mayflower Compact, the Ten Commandments, and even Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, from which American law derives the phrase “separation of church and state.” Yet despite federal court rulings finding such inclusive displays within constitutional bounds, the ACLU filed suit based in part, according to the Times, on the community’s outcry over the original removal of the 10 Commandments and School Board Member Joseph Gollehon’s admission—when asked if he voted for the display because he was a Christian—“It had right much to do with it.” But according to Liberty Counsel, which is representing the school board in the case, the actions the board took are entirely constitutional, whether the members happen to be Christian or not. “The ACLU has done everything it could to run from the facts and the laws that control this case,” said Mathew D. Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, in a statement. “The Foundations of American Law and Government display has been upheld by multiple federal courts of appeal. It is clearly appropriate to include the Ten Commandments in a display on law, because there is no dispute that they helped shape American law and government.”
• A Canadian high school student was suspended for a week because he wore a T-shirt promoting his Christian beliefs. He was told if he wears it again, he could be suspended for the remainder of the school year, reports Worthy News. William Swinimer, a student at Forest Heights Community School in Nova Scotia, was punished for wearing a shirt that read, “Life is wasted without Jesus.” The shirt is a reference to a passage of Scripture from the New Testament. Swinimer told Fox News that he was told the shirt was a form of “hate talk.” “I’ve been told by my principal that it is hate talk and is disrespectful to other people’s religions,” Swinimer said. “She said it [the shirt] cannot be in school because people would get offended.” Swinimer confirmed that he had been disciplined a number of times for wearing shirts with religious references. “I’ve found that they have dissed Christianity quite a bit,” he said. “I do not want to be disrespectful of anybody else’s religions. I don’t want to put down anybody’s opinions. All I want to do is stand up for rights and freedoms of Canadians.” The school does not have a dress code, and Swinimer said students wear a variety of T-shirts. But he said for whatever reason, his Christian shirts seem to get him sent to the office. “They treat other religions differently than they do Christianity,” he said. “The staff and principal and school board have been very hostile toward Christianity.” But, he said, they promote other religions in the school.
• A press conference was held in Washington, D.C., May 3 at the National Press Club’s Bloomberg Room in hopes to address religious freedom and the dramatic increase in the persecution of Christians, reports crosswalk.com. According to reports, nearly 70 percent of the world’s 6.8 billion people live in countries with little or no freedom of religion, including many countries in the Middle East and Africa. About 20 print and broadcast media outlets, and others, gathered to hear from Dr. Carl Moeller, president/CEO of Open Doors USA; Nina Shea, director for religious freedom at the Hudson Institute; Rev. Dr. Katharine Rhodes Henderson, president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City; Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, director of Interfaith Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center; who were among the panel of speakers that addressed the issue of embattled Christian communities. (Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was also scheduled to participate. However, he was unable to stay due to a family emergency. Adlerstein shared a statement from Cooper at the press conference.) “We at Open Doors USA were here to champion the rights of persecuted Christians around the world,” said Moeller. “Basically, the thought behind the whole conference was to demonstrate a unity in regard to religious freedom.” He said that the persecution of Christians and the attack on religious freedom was a major problem around the world. These organizations are coming together to say that it needs to be stopped. They are calling on government officials and the administration for help. There are also tools in place, such as the Congressional Scorecard to help. Additionally, they are in support of HR 440, a bill that calls for the establishment of the Special Envoy to Promote Religious Freedom of Religious Minorities in the Near East and in South Central Asia. Proposed by Congressman Frank Wolf, the bill was read the second time on Jan. 23, and it has been placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders (Calendar No. 292). “It is important to everyone involved to come together as a group to say we are going to call on the United States government, administration, and the candidates, President Obama and Mitt Romney, to make our religious freedom a major component of the discussion of our freedoms here in the United States,” Moeller said. To go hand-in-hand with the raised awareness, Open Doors USA has been urging candidates for the past several months to sign the Presidential Pledge for Religious Freedom. A candidate’s signature indicates that he or she commits to upholding religious freedom for people of all faiths in America, nominating U.S. federal judges who are committed to upholding religious freedom as defined in the pledge and prioritizing religious freedom concerns in U.S. foreign policy.
• According to the latest U.S. Religion Census that was just released on May 1, the fastest growing religion in America is Islam, reports newsforchristians.com. The data for the census was compiled by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, and the results were released by the Association of Religion Data Archives. From 2000 to 2010, the census found that the number of Muslims living inside the United States increased from 1 million to 2.6 million—a stunning increase of 66.7 percent. That is an astounding rate of growth. Meanwhile, most Christian denominations had rates of growth that were far below the overall rate of population growth in the United States, and some Christian denominations actually lost members.

Youcef Nadarkhani

The American Center for Law and Justice, which has been working to secure the release of Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, called Iran’s decision to imprison Pastor Youcef’s attorney, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, “very troubling,” a move that puts the Christian pastor in greater danger. According to Dadkhah, Iranian officials said he has been convicted of acting against national security, spreading propaganda against the regime, and is expected to be jailed soon. “The news that this renowned human rights attorney has been sentenced to prison by Iranian officials is very troubling,” said Jordan Sekulow, executive director of ACLJ. “This development only reinforces the fact that Iran has no regard for basic human rights. It also raises further concern about the fate of Pastor Youcef. With his attorney facing nine years in prison, and no other lawyer likely to take the case, Pastor Youcef has no legal advocate, which places him at greater risk.” This news comes as international pressure intensifies, calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Pastor Youcef, who faces a death sentence for embracing Christianity.

Other news:

• Delegates to the United Methodist Church General Conference in Tampa had to deal with some demonstrations Thursday after defeating 60–40 percent two moves to change church policy on homosexuality. Pastor Stephen Sparks of Mississippi told OneNewsNow there was a “very visible protest” by the Love Your Neighbor Coalition after the votes. “They marched to the center . . . and proceeded to stand there and sing and chant and pretty much occupy the space,” he described. The chanting had not stopped after delegates took a 30-minute break, so they were told to take an hour-and-a-half lunch break, during which order was restored. “And after coming back from lunch they were still occupying the space, but there was prayer that was offered by a supposed member of that Coalition,” says the Mississippi pastor. “They all wore these rainbow stoles around their necks, and he offered a prayer and the bishops offered a prayer and they finally left the floor.” The failed resolutions would have only slightly modified present church stance on homosexuality, but according to Sparks could have led to unbiblical practices in more liberal parts of the country.
• With culture wars intensifying on university campuses across the nation, legal activists are doing more than defending—they are taking a proactive approach to defending First Amendment rights, reports charismanews.com. The Alliance Defense Fund on Thursday launched a new legal effort to change unconstitutional policies at more than 160 public universities and colleges by sending a first round of 40 letters to schools in 23 states. All of the schools have policies that violate the rights of students protected by the First Amendment. “Public universities should encourage, not censor, the free exchange of ideas,” says Kevin Theriot, senior counsel at ADF. “The objective of this effort is to inform university and college officials of how their policies conflict with the Constitution, as reinforced by numerous federal court rulings, so that the schools can make changes. This gives them the opportunity to respect the constitutionally protected rights of their students without any costly litigation.” ADF has identified problematic policies including various speech codes and zones that place unconstitutional restrictions on student speech, policies that force student clubs to accept voting members and officers that don’t agree with the clubs’ beliefs, and policies that allow non-religious student groups to use student activity fees but exclude religious student groups even though the students in those groups have contributed to the fees. ADF reports that the letters have already received some response. For example, Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina has agreed to modify a policy that unconstitutionally limits student expression to a small wooded area on campus.
• Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has circulated a draft of a resolution that would hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, reports thehill.com. The 44-page measure was sent to members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Thursday in an attempt to shore up support for what would be the toughest action taken by Issa as chairman of the powerful panel. Issa has been investigating the botched gun tracking operation Fast and Furious for more than a year and has repeatedly expressed his frustration at the Department of Justice’s lack of cooperation. Issa has issued two subpoenas to obtain documents from the DOJ, and is arguing that the agency’s glacial pace in returning the requested information provides cause for holding Holder in contempt of Congress. “The Justice Department’s failure to respond appropriately to the allegations of whistleblowers and to cooperate with congressional oversight has crossed the line of appropriate conduct for a government agency,” reads a 17-page memo attached to the draft copy of the resolution on contempt circulated to members. “Congress now faces a moment of decision between exerting its full authority to compel an agency refusing to cooperate with congressional oversight or accepting a dangerous expansion of executive-branch authority and unilateral action allowing agencies to set their own terms for cooperating with congressional oversight.”
• The fate of blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng was injected into the U.S. presidential election on Thursday after Republican challenger Mitt Romney described the incident as “a day of shame for the Obama administration,” reports cowboybyte.com. Romney joined a series of Republican lawmakers who piled criticism on the Obama administration after an agreement to allow Chen to remain in the country appeared to collapse.
• Doctors are warning parents about a dangerous new trend after six teenagers drank hand sanitizer and ended up in Southern California emergency rooms with alcohol poisoning, reports bighealthreport.com. Dr. Billy Mallon works in the emergency room at Los Angeles County USC Medical Center. He said he’s seen too many young people come through the hospital’s doors because they tried to get drunk by guzzling hand sanitizer. “It doesn’t sound appealing, but you have to remember that kids don’t have access to alcohol so they’re very creative,” Mallon told station KTLA. The trend may seem harmless or even laughable, but doctors say it’s harmful and dangerous. In other news, about one baby an hour is born addicted to powerful painkillers called opiates in the United States, a new study reported by bighealthreport.com shows. The number of infants born with a drug withdrawal syndrome called neonatal abstinence syndrome tripled between 2000 and 2009, jumping to more than 13,000, according to a study published online April 30 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. At the same time, use of prescription painkillers such as oxycodone (OxyContin) by mothers-to-be increased fivefold, the researchers noted. “This is becoming a big problem and affecting newborns at an alarmingly high and increasing rate,” said study author Dr. Stephen W. Patrick, a fellow in the University of Michigan’s division of neonatal-perinatal medicine in Ann Arbor.
• A feature in the May 2012 Citizen titled “A Matter of Life and Death” is focusing on Americans beginning “to understand exactly what it [the new federal health care law] may cost them in the long run.” The article continues, “Dr. Gene Rudd, obstetrician/gynecologist who serves as senior vice president of the Christian Medical and Dental Association, warned, ‘In the past, I’ve never been willing to say that we are going down the same road as Nazi Germany, but I am now, because the parallels are far too close.’ Dr. Leo Alexander, chief medical consultant at the Nuremburg trials, concluded that many of the deplorable events of Nazi Germany—including ethnic cleansing and medical experimentation—originated from a changed attitude in the health care community,’ Rudd explained. A culture that doesn’t respect the sanctity of human life and that begins to decide which lives aren’t as ‘valuable’ as others, he said, is heading down the wrong path.”
• Nazi collaborator and American artist Gertrude Stein was among Jewish Americans praised in a White House announcement Wednesday proclaiming Jewish Heritage Month, writes Tad Cronn in godfatherpolitics.com. The inclusion, noted by Algemeiner.com, in its original released form read, “Their history of unbroken perseverance and their belief in tomorrow’s promise offers a lesson not only to Jewish Americans, but to all Americans. From Aaron Copland to Albert Einstein, Gertrude Stein to Justice Louis Brandeis.” Stein was a supporter and collaborator with the Nazis’ Vichy regime in France. According to Barbara Will, author of Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Fay and the Vichy Dilemma, Stein survived the Vichy regime because she was a strong supporter of the Nazis, publicly proclaiming her support of Adolf Hitler and proposing him for a Nobel Peace Prize in the mid-1930s. She considered Gen. Phillipe Petain, the Nazi puppet who deported thousands of Jews, to be a French hero, and she volunteered to write an introduction to an English translation of his speeches so Americans could see the virtues of the Vichy government. A White House official said the proclamation was an early draft that was mistakenly released. That was replaced with a new version that does not mention Stein, but the original remained on the White House website for several hours. Cronn said it is “hard to fathom how even a ‘draft’ of a proclamation for Jewish Heritage Month includes a Nazi collaborator in the first place. It’s as if the White House press staff just opened up a book of famous Jewish names at random and said let’s take this one, without even reading the most basic biographical information about the person.”
• Writer Da Tagliare has expressed concern over Gov. Chris Christie’s being eyed as a vice presidential candidate. Writing in godfatherpolitics.com, Tagliare cited possible reasons for his popularity as being “his strong budget cuts in New Jersey and his strong stand against the unions representing government employees.” But Christie, Tagliare says, “has a track record of siding with or embracing Muslims.” “New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has hugged, embraced and spoke out for a Muslim that was deported because of his radical views. He supported the firing of a man who was exercising his First Amendment right of free speech. He appointed a Muslim who believes in sharia law to a state superior court and then ridiculed the head of the largest city police department in America for keeping surveillance on Muslims after the 9-11 attack that destroyed the Twin Towers in his city. . . . If I were Mitt Romney, I would definitely think twice or even three times before selecting Chris Christie as his vice presidential running mate.”
• There’s outrage in Norfolk, Va., after a white couple was attacked by dozens of black teenagers, and the local newspaper did not report the incident for two weeks, despite the victims being reporters for the paper, reports WorldNetDaily. When the Virginian-Pilot then covered the crime, it did so not as a news report, but rather as an opinion piece. “The couple had been stopped at a traffic light, and “wave after wave of young men surged forward to take turns punching and kicking their victim,” the article says. The newspaper is coming under heavy criticism from residents in the greater Norfolk area, known as Hampton Roads. “It is unbelievable that the Virginian-Pilot would BURY this story for two weeks for politically correct reasons. That is sad and disgusting,” said David Englert of Norfolk. “Any attack by a mob of people on any innocent victim should be put under a bright spotlight for all involved to be judged and exposed as appropriate, and to make sure that the criminal justice system does its job to protect those who obey the law.”

Baptist Trouble

The leading abolitionist newspaper in the country was The Liberator, published in Boston by William Lloyd Garrison, the country’s most outspoken abolitionist. The front page of the Sept. 29, 1843, issue announced, “The Baptists too in Trouble.” It reprinted an earlier piece from The Baltimore Weekly Visiter [sic], which commended the Vermont Observer, a Baptist paper, for its position on “the subject of northern and Southern co-operation in the missionary enterprise.” This, the papers agreed, reported the “startling facts and anxious fears with regard to the accumulating slavery difficulties in the American churches.”

The Vermont paper cautioned, “We are released from co-operation with others only on one of the three grounds.” The first is the impossibility of cooperation, and the second is when a greater amount of good can be accomplished “by a division of labor.” The third was put, “The fact well ascertained, that by our co-operation, we are countenancing some serious, grievous error in doctrine or practice, of which those may be guilty with whom we co-operate.” Any of these “may justify, nay demand withdrawal from those with whom we have hitherto labored.”

In the United States at that time, no national conventions or associations of Baptist churches existed, but churches cooperated in missions through the Triennial Convention (General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions, convening every three years). The papers urged the freedom-loving Baptists of the North to make one final effort at the next Convention to persuade the Baptist churches in the South to abandon slavery altogether. “The time has not [yet] come for a withholding of our co-operation.” But, “if the Baptists of the South will not repent of their sin, and regard the wounded feelings and conscientious appeals of their brethren at the North, then withdraw.”

Sounds like ecclesiastical separation for theological reasons to me. This was not the GARBC, but it was about missions.

The Liberator editor commented on these reports, “The above is but one of the many indications of the troubled state of the Baptist church, on account of slavery, which we have lately noticed. We have seen somewhere, a long article from the Rev. William Henry Brisbane, late a citizen of South Carolina, and the owner of thirty slaves, (since emancipated,) in which a new Baptist organization is openly and urgently proposed.”

In fact, another group of Baptists, with Brisbane as a leader, was already separating. It had met in Boston on May 4 and created “a provisional committee” to explore the feasibility of a missionary society separate from the Triennial Convention, a society that would not have anything to do with slavery or those who had anything to do with slavery. (Was this “secondary separation”?)

Then a larger gathering was held on May 31 in the chapel of Tremont Baptist Church (later Tremont Baptist Temple). “Brother Brisbane” from Cincinnati presented the report of the provisional committee and introduced the preamble for the constitution of the American and Foreign Baptist Missionary Society (The Liberator, June 16, 1843).

The constitution began innocently enough: “The object of this Society shall be to carry out the commission of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.’”

Now the rub of the matter: “This Society shall be composed of members of regular Baptist churches, of good standing, who are not slaveholders, but who believe that involuntary slavery, under all circumstances, is sin, and treat it accordingly; and who pay one dollar annually to the Society.”

(Note the significance of the constitution’s language for the name adopted by the GARBC: “members of regular Baptist churches.” As was common in Baptist documents of the time, this refers to Baptist churches in the regular [orthodox] sense.)

Among the initial officers elected was its corresponding secretary, Dr. William Henry Brisbane. So, what about this Dr. Brisbane? Who was he? The Liberator’s editor described him, inadequately, as “late a citizen of South Carolina, and the owner of thirty slaves, (since emancipated,).” It was he, then, who “openly and urgently proposed” a separate, separatist Baptist association. (The southern churches also broke away in 1845 to form the Southern Baptist Convention.) Brisbane’s Society continued until after the war, when its purpose had been accomplished.

The Man

Born in Black Swamp, Beaufort District, S.C., into a slaveholding planter family in 1806, Brisbane was sent to New England to receive the classical education expected of the landed aristocracy. He first attended preparatory school in New Haven and then the American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy in Vermont (now Norwich University). His father, Adam, had given him to Adam’s own brother to rear on Milton Lodge on the Ashley River north of Charleston, and this adoptive uncle fashioned him as Anglican. Upon return to South Carolina, however, the young man asked to be baptized by Pipe Creek Baptist Church. He studied at Furman Theological Institute in Edgefield, which became Furman University and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The Pipe Creek church ordained him and called him pastor. Then he took up residence in one of the family’s townhouses on Charleston’s Meeting Street and attended the city’s First Baptist Church, where his family had been members for over a hundred years. He established and edited the Southern Baptist and General Intelligencer, a denominational paper that strongly supported and promoted slavery as a Biblically authorized institution. Accordingly, he took on the most threatening Baptist voice against slavery, Francis Wayland, president of Brown University in Providence. Each time he put his own pro-slavery arguments in writing, he recognized their weaknesses. This slaveholding advocate gave up. (I have used his frustrations to demonstrate to my writing students that “you don’t know what you think until you read what you wrote.”) He admitted he could not support slavery with the Bible, but insisted it is, nonetheless, allowed by the Bible because the word slave is used in relation to Christians. Even this political accommodation cost him subscribers, and he gave up the paper as well.

He became pastor of several small Baptist churches in the low country. The minutes of the Beech Branch Church state, “Elizabeth and Jacob [colored], property of Bro. Brisbane [my emphasis] were baptized and become members.” Brisbane attended lectures and received a Doctor of Medicine degree from the Medical College of South Carolina in 1837. The more he studied the Bible, the more he recognized slavery as a sin. And he preached it as sin. As offensive as his sermons were to slaveholders, the last straw with them came when Brisbane divested himself of field hands by selling them to his overseer. The violent reaction caused him to flee the South for the border city of Cincinnati.

Not able to manage without his domestics, Brisbane took them with him and became pastor of Cincinnati’s First Baptist Church. He fell in with such Cincinnati abolitionists as Salmon Portland Chase, Gamaliel Bailey, James Birney, and Jonathan Blanchard. He agreed to describe slavery before the Female Anti-Slavery Sewing Circle in February 1840 and spilled the beans about the cruelty and evils of slavery. This was too much for his deacons, who dismissed him because he had agreed to leave this volatile subject of slavery alone.

Brisbane started another Baptist church, expressly antislavery. He freed his domestic slaves, who remained with him for the rest of their lives as servants. The manumission papers were executed by Chase, then a local attorney, who later became Lincoln’s treasury secretary and then chief justice of the United States. This errant Southerner finally admitted to being an abolitionist, a term he had until then considered a dirty word.

Few pastors and elders of Baptist churches in the North attempted to dispute Brisbane’s exegesis or polemics against slavery, but they found his obsession inconvenient and irritating. They perceived Brisbane and other Baptist abolitionists much like, a century later, many in the Northern Baptist Convention perceived preachers in the Baptist Bible Union (1923, e.g., O. W. Van Osdel, R. E. Neighbour, W. B. Riley, T. T. Shields), that is, probably correct but decidedly inconvenient. A great number of Northern Baptist pastors, arguably, loved God and the Bible as His Word. Although properly bold in their own pulpits, they became suspiciously meek on the convention floor. Just as Brisbane and his colleagues would not tolerate slavery in world missions, the later men would tolerate no theological liberalism in theirs.

The Letter

W. H. Brisbane returned to South Carolina and repurchased his field slaves. He transported them via Baltimore to Cincinnati, where he finally freed them. It was at this time he wrote his epochal letter to the South Carolina Baptists, showing from the Bible that slavery is indeed a sin. He could never have gotten the letter through the mail and, so, entrusted copies to sympathetic friends who stuffed them in mailboxes within the various post offices.

His letter was, as The Liberator editor called it, “a long article.” He used 16,058 words, and later expanded it to book-length as Slaveholding Examined in the Light of the Holy Bible (Philadelphia, 1847).

“Dear Brethren: I feel constrained to address you this letter, both in justice to myself and deep solicitude for your spiritual welfare.—Having for years been associated with you in the service of our blessed Lord and Master Jesus Christ, and having been honored with a considerable share of your confidence, I feel that I am entitled to claim of you a hearing, now that a change in my opinions on a highly important and exciting topic may subject me to your censure and the loss of your christian regard.”

This expatriate pastor reviewed his productive and honored ministry as a Baptist pastor in the South, and then continued.

“But at length my views on the subject of Slavery began to undergo a change, and the state of feeling at the South not permitting me to make a dispassionate investigation, I felt it my duty to seek a residence where I could without restraint give the requisite attention, for determining fully my duty to God and to my fellow-men. The result was an entire recantation of all That [sic] I had formerly written in favor of holding property in man, and by this have I torn myself away from the association of those I was always accustomed to love and to honor.”

This estranged brother acknowledged the hatred and hostility he was even then suffering for his stand. “But Oh! Ye who bear the name of Christ, hear me fully before you condemn.—Let us first examine together the Word of God, and then you will know what has moved me to sacrifice property and friendship, and home and reputation. With christian patience and christian love, give me your attention to the close of this letter, whilst I endeavor to show you that the Holy God disapproves American Slavery.”

A good expositor, Brisbane started in Genesis and systematically proceeded through the Bible to the Epistles, laying out what the Bible teaches about slavery and separation from slavery—its concept, practice, and even associations.

In 1853, Brisbane moved to Madison, Wis., and became pastor of its First Baptist Church. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he preached on March 3, 1861, an incendiary message, “Duty of the Northern States in Relation to the Future of Slavery.” He might have gotten by with it if he had only preached the sermon, but many in the state legislature were in attendance (the church being on Capitol Square) and petitioned him to publish his sermon for wider circulation. As a result, he lost yet another church.

Col. C. C. Washburn appointed Brisbane chaplain of the 2nd Regiment Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry. (Washburn rose to major general and became a U.S. senator and Wisconsin governor.) While the regiment was on patrol duty in Missouri, Brisbane resigned due to ill health (he was 56). His old friend S. P. Chase appointed him chairman of the U.S. Direct Tax Commission for South Carolina. In this role, Brisbane confiscated the plantations of his relatives and former neighbors, for which he was “the most hated man in the Beaufort District,” and even his memory is still hated there. The day Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation became effective (Jan. 1, 1863), it was Brisbane who read it at Port Royal to the first group of freed slaves. Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the white commander of black troops on duty, termed this “an infinitely appropriate thing.”

After the war, Brisbane returned to Wisconsin, where he practiced medicine and became pastor of the Baptist church in Arena. The slaveholder-cum-abolitionist who had actually freed slaves was a popular speaker at political rallies and church conventions until his death in 1878.

Not only a regular Baptist, Brisbane was a separatist Baptist at that. Although he lived and ministered a century prior to inception of the GARBC, there is yet a connection. The Reverend Doctor William Henry Brisbane was my great-great-grandfather.

Never have the demands been greater or the pressures more stressful than for pastors today. Higher expectations, louder critics, and deeper personal problems in the lives of those they serve often become a prescription for imbalanced living. Many pastors are discouraged and depressed. Some face stress-related health problems. Others quietly wonder if they should continue in the ministry.

But I believe God has placed deacons and other leaders alongside pastors to make a difference. These co-laborers can, with compassion and courage, help pastors keep their balance and maintain a healthy and effective ministry. Consider these eight suggestions for deacons regarding the pastors with whom they serve.

1. Seek to understand the pastor’s unique challenges.

I’m not sure anyone other than another pastor can fully comprehend the pressures of preaching weekly, the large administrative burden, the frequent criticisms, the many late nights, and the time spent in crisis counseling. But deacons can seek to learn about the special burdens of a pastor and take on the role of supporter and encourager.

2. Pay him generously.

I’m puzzled by the attitude among some church leaders that pastors should not be paid well. Scripture says otherwise (1 Timothy 5:17, 18), and when pastors are paid appropriately, one avenue of potential stress and concern is relieved. When pastors are free from financial worry, they can focus on other things, enabling more effective ministry.

3. Encourage him to take a day off each week and use his vacation time.

Some of us don’t know how to take a break! The needs of the people whom pastors serve are great and never ending. Deacons should hold the pastor accountable for taking time off to refresh his spirit and spend time with his wife and family. (And churches shouldn’t be stingy about vacation time. For lead pastors, in light of the growing weight of ministry these days, I suggest at least four weeks of vacation a year.)

4. Provide the time and means for ministry sharpening on a regular basis.

This might include pursuit of ongoing education at the church’s expense, in addition to at least one ministry seminar or conference each year. I also encourage churches to provide funds for the pastor to be a regular reader of books and magazines (online, electronic, and print) related to his ministry so he can stay informed, current, and motivated in his work.

5. Be concerned about his personal health.

Before I began serving in my last pastorate, one church leader informed me that the church was committed to my health and wanted to make sure that I had an annual physical; they would pay for any expenses not covered by insurance. I know of some churches that provide the pastor a fitness center membership as an encouragement in the area of his health and fitness.

6. Give him a weekend away with his wife each year.

Pastoral marriages can become strained, and little expressions of support and encouragement like this can go a long way.

7. Consider the value of a sabbatical.

The pressures on lead pastors are unique and more intense and demanding than on anyone else on the church staff. The weekly preaching commitment over the years is stressful, and the oversight of the entire ministry is a heavy burden. I’m encouraged that more churches are becoming aware of this challenge and are giving their pastors an 8- to 12-week sabbatical (apart from annual vacation time) after 8–10 years of service for the purpose of study, writing, or for what one pastor described as “refilling the well of [his] heart, soul, and mind.”

8. Pray for him.

A group of praying deacons is the single most important support ministry that can be provided for a pastor. Take the time to get to know your pastor and pray specifically for his needs and ministry on a regular basis—in both public and private. His ministry will be significantly impacted!