CLC'S LAND NOTES BJC ROLE IN ANTI-CONSERVATIVE MANUAL

by Art Toalston                                                                                         Vol. VIII, No. 6, June/July 1995

[Editorial Note: This is a very informative article. As you read it, keep in mind that both the Baptist Joint Committee and Americans United are in the Baptist General Association of Virginia budget. Check page 42 of the current BGAV Annual (every church office should have a copy) and you will see that the BJC appears in both the WM-2 and WM-3 budget options; AU in WM-2. Look at pages 37-38 and you will see that the Treasurer's Report for the ten months ending 30 September 1994 records the BJC received $38,340 and AU $1,049 during those ten months. Why should Southern Baptists contribute money to organizations which ally themselves with gays and lesbians against Christians?]

A 252-page manual titled, How to Win, A Practical Guide for Defeating the Radical Right in Your Community voices "special thanks" to the chief lawyer of the Baptist Joint Committee – the Southern Baptist Convention's former religious liberty lobby – and staffers from seven other organizations whose "hard work on the editorial and media committees made this manual a reality," according to an acknowledgments page at the front of the manual, published in 1994 and copyrighted by a group calling itself the "Radical Right Task Force."

BJC involvement in the manual was spotlighted by Richard Land, executive director of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission, in the CLC publication, Salt. The CLC replaced the BJC in carrying the SBC's religious liberty assignment in 1992 as part of the convention's conservative shift since 1979.

Land wrote that the manual "reveals the ugly, combative face of the secular left and its religious allies ... which have been seeking to influence society and public policy on a multiplicity of levels for many years by doing the very things it now criticizes the religious right for attempting to do. The How to Win manual unmasks the hypocrisy as well as the influence and intent of the religious left as it seeks to ‘win' the culture war."

Specifically, BJC general counsel Brent Walker was among those accorded special thanks at the front of the How to Win manual.

Land, in his Salt article, also noted:

 -Other organizations working in tandem with the BJC in the manual's preparation included Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and TV producer Norman Lear's People for the American Way.

- Three of the manual's chapters were written by BJC staff members (Walker, on opposing public aid to parochial schools, and W. Kenneth Williams, BJC scholar-in- residence, on intolerance and on opposing public prayer in public schools).

Listed in a 43-page directory of "Conservative, Ultra-Conservative, Religious Right, Secular Right, Traditionalist, Anti-Obscenity, and Far Right Institutions" are the National Association of Evangelicals, Focus on the Family, Campus Crusade for Christ, National Right to Life Committee, National Coalition Against Pornography, Coral Ridge Ministries led by D. James Kennedy, and Josh McDowell Ministries.

The manual's introduction urges action "against the un-American agenda of this radical movement."

The BJC executive committee, for example, adopted a statement targeting the religious right March 6, decrying the selling and distribution of materials with unfounded charges against public officials, their voting records, or their stances on public policy issues. Christians should "bring to the public square a full measure of integrity that reflects the high standards of our faith, shunning the hypocritical and immoral politics of personal destruction and deception," the BJC declared.

The anti-conservative How to Win, manual was forwarded to Land by a Baptist layman, Roger Moran, who has devoted numerous off-work hours the past six years to researching the Washington-based BJC and Americans United for Separation of Church and State and other organizations he describes as like-minded "religious left" allies opposing conservative Christian values in the public arena.

Moran is the owner of Brooks Brothers Trailers, Winfield, Mo., a manufacturer of trailers for electric power companies, and a member of First Baptist, O'Fallon, Mo. Moran played a key role in defeating Missouri Baptist Convention funding for the BJC and Americans United in 1991. He and a fellow Baptist layman, Kerry Messer, an independent lobbyist in the Missouri legislature, penned much of a recent 16-page edition of a monthly Christian newspaper, St. Louis MetroVoice, targeting "Americans United for Separation of Church and State and their agenda to separate America from God," according to a headline on the front page.

"This manual epitomizes what America's cultural war is all about," Moran said. "It is a war over ideas – and ideas have consequences."

To a large extent, he noted, "the battle is within the religious community – the religious left versus the religious right. The battle for the soul of this nation is going to be waged and won in the churches."

BJC involvement in the How to Win manual, Moran said, "is one event in a long chain of events – the most blatant example to date – of a so-called Baptist organization giving religious credibility to the agenda of the radical left."

The thrust of one of the manual's eight sections, for example, is for special civil rights status for homosexuals with one chapter noting, "You cannot successfully battle right wing forces without gay and lesbian participation." Another section's thrust is the pro-choice side of the nation's abortion debate. At the back of the manual are 23 pages of gay and lesbian public officials and organizations to join in efforts against the religious right.

Moran said the manual "is one more reminder of the BJC's consistent alignment and strong ties to left-wing groups ranging from Planned Parenthood to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force – and how completely out of touch the Baptist Joint Committee is with the principles and values of mainstream Southern Baptists."

Citing the BJC's ties to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Moran described AU as a key religious left "umbrella organization," with its 125 "national advisory council" members encompassing the BJC's executive director, James Dunn, and Walker; Cecil Sherman, coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship; and Meg Riley, director of lesbian and gay concerns of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Moran said the How to Win manual reflects several key facets of religious left beliefs and strategy:

- abusing the concepts of separation of church and state and of religious liberty "to restrict (from public schools and from the government and its programs) any ideology that reflects biblical values and principles," Moran said, "such as the teaching of sexual abstinence before marriage and of creation as an alternative explanation for the origin of man ... or hanging the Ten Commandments on the wall." Among the left, no objection is heard to public funding of artwork that desecrates Christ, but if it were artwork glorifying Christ, a cry of "separation of church and state" would be heard from the left, Moran said. He charged that the left's aims are to "1) restrict Christian influence in the legislative process, 2) censor the knowledge of Christianity from America's children, and 3) dilute and silence the church."

- crying censorship "to prevent the removal of materials that traditionally have been viewed as immoral and inappropriate for public school classrooms and public libraries," Moran said, citing as examples children's books depicting homosexuality as normative behavior now entrenched in numerous libraries.

-stressing "tolerance," Moran said, and making it "the gospel of the day. The religion of society will be so diluted that it is offensive to nobody. What is really at stake is the definition of sin. As our theology is diluted, our concept of sin changes to where it is virtually impossible to identify any behavior as sin ... apart from what the political correctness of the left says is sin. When we no longer view sin as sinful, what is it that we repent of? This whole issue is about repentance. Tolerance is a prerequisite for the advancement of wickedness."

-developing clergy networks "to divide and create a religious war in America by undermining the truth of Scripture through the use of `clergy' and `religious people," Moran said. He quoted a passage in the How to Win manual describing a clergy network as a key strategy to "oppose the agenda of the religious right from a religious viewpoint."

The manual states that clergy and their denominational groups can play a role in showing "that religious people believe the separation of church and state to be good for religion, that religious people support gay and lesbian rights, and that religious people - in fact, most mainstream religious denominations – support a woman's right to choose (abortion) for reasons rooted in their faith."

The "fundamentals of their faith," Moran said of the religious left, are freedom of conscience, freedom of expression and tolerance – noble ideals, but ideals Moran contended must be balanced with the lordship of Christ and traditional Christian ideals of morality. Moran said he believes in separation of the institutions of church and state and in the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, but not as defined and utilized by the religious left in pressing toward "absolute moral relativism. They are destroying the moral fiber of this country in the name of freedom." [BP]