JANUARY 10, 2013 • ISSUE 1
From ‘Choice’ to ‘Life’ Forty years after Roe v. Wade, Southern Baptists continue to uphold the sanctity of human life—but it took a decade or more to grasp what that really meant.
+ In texas: Gov. Perry backs bill to stop abortions at 20 weeks + Pflugerville ISD to keep same-sex benefits
Contents 2
News, at your virtual doorstep— and some thoughts 40 years after Roe
3 Quick Hits
4 COVER STORY
Among Southern Baptists the abortion issue gained clarity in the minds of the rank-and-file during the same decade that the battle for the Bible was waged.
7
Pflugerville ISD to keep same-sex benefits Domestic partners of Pflugerville Independent School District employees can benefit from a controversial insurance plan that some say may violate state law.
12
Yes, America has a higher ratio of legally owned firearms to population than other countries. We also lead the world in the percentage of mother-only families.
14 BOOK REVIEW In “Acceptable! Transforming Flawed Lives Into Living Sacrifices, Through the Word,” Rudy Gonzalez challenges readers to understand the function of God’s Word as a tool of sacrifice.
15
8
Safer societies have stronger families
Churches needed to blanket El Paso with gospel
Gov. Perry supports bill to stop abortions at 20 weeks Texas Pre-Born Pain Act would ‘establish a state interest in pre-born life that can feel pain.’
TEXAN Digital is e-published twice monthly by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, 4500 State Highway 360, Grapevine, TX 76099-1988. Jim Richards, Executive Director Gary Ledbetter, Editor Jerry Pierce, Managing Editor Russell Lightner, Design & Layout Stephanie Barksdale, Subscriptions Contributing Writers Bonnie Pritchett, David Roach, Emily Crutcher, Robert Castillo To contact the TEXAN office, visit texanonline.net/contact or call toll free 877.953.7282 (SBTC)
JANUARY 10, 2013 TEXANONLINE.NET 1
Jerry Pierce
News, at your virtual doorstep— and some thoughts 40 years after Roe
I
f you weren’t living here already, welcome to
the age of digital news. Rest assured, the paper TEXAN will be en route to your mailbox soon, due there around Jan. 21 and arriving monthly thereafter. But what you hold in your virtual hands is the first edition of TEXAN Digital, our new, twice per month electronic newsmagazine. TEXAN Digital will dovetail with the paper TEXAN, allowing us better stewardship of Cooperative Program funds and, we think, more and better ways to report news. Free of printing, paper, postage and a few other realities of ink, we think this new way is rich with possibility. Our aim remains to do journalism that furthers God’s kingdom and Southern Baptist ministry in an excellent, Christ-honoring fashion. Our print edition is award winning and, best we can tell, well received. We expect no less from our digital edition (and our new website that will debut very soon). So thanks for reading TEXAN Digital. We pray that you are edified and even better informed than before, and that Christ is honored because of it. ••• This first edition falls in the same month as the 40th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. I often have to remind myself that abortion in America is not some bad dream, that people really do this horrific deed, right here, in the freest nation on earth. The abortion total since 1973 is approaching 55 million. Those are abortion industry numbers. There was a time a goodly number of Southern Baptists (and others) didn’t know much about the issue. That’s apparent from the essentially pro-choice resolutions SBC messengers passed, beginning in 1971 and continuing through the end of that decade (See the 2 TEXANONLINE.NET JANUARY 10, 2013
cover story). Thankfully, the truth prevailed—as it always does—and most Baptists saw this wasn’t just a “Catholic issue.” Over Christmas I asked my mother, a Great Depression-era baby, when it was that she first heard the term “abortion.” Must have been in the 1970s, she said. It didn’t come up in polite conversation and she’d never given it much thought until a film explaining what abortion was and why it mattered was shown at our church. By then, a conservative rally in the SBC, driven by a belief in the verbal (every jot and tittle) and plenary (from Genesis to Revelation) inspiration of Scripture, was gaining steam, helped along no doubt by the abortion issue. Weighed against passages such as Psalm 139, Genesis 1:27, and Luke 1:15 and 1:41, the killing of pre-born babies became anathema to those with a high view of Scripture. Forty years after Roe and almost 30 years after the SBC turned the ideological rudder, what we make of God’s Word remains key in navigating not just the abortion issue but life itself. The truth that people are made in the image of a benevolent, transcendent God from the moment of conception affects every relational decision we make. It’s a worldview changer. The great temptation has always been rooted in the question, “Has God really said?” The droves of marginally religious folk seem to wander in a foggy state as it pertains to truth, helped along by a mist in too many pulpits. No wonder a critical mass of Americans sheepishly look away as the showdown plays out over the federal government’s heavy-handed contraceptive and abortifacient mandate. No wonder they don’t have an answer when a fellow traveler remarks with zeal that “people should be able to marry who they want” without interference from government or religion. Has God really said? Well, yes he has. And today’s abortion battle—and other contentions in the wider culture—require an apologetical element that begins in the Garden of Eden and the beauty of what should have been, springs forward to a gospel promise of what can be here and now, and then on to what will be when King Jesus makes all things new. I saw one writer refer to it as aspirational apologetics. I like that. We owe our fellow citizens a wide-angle view of why we are pro-life: Namely, that each person is crafted and chiseled fearfully and wonderfully in the image of God. Such a view has deep, deep implications. All that to say: We still have a prophetic role to play and a sure Word to proclaim. God really has said.
TEXAS
Texans drop $450 million on booze November alcohol sales in Texas were $449.1 million, according to the state comptroller’s office. Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington was the No. 2 seller in Texas, according to a report in the Austin American Statesman, behind Circuit of the Americas raceway in Austin, with bar receipts adding up to an estimated $2.3 million. The Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Grapevine was third with $1.7 million in alcohol sales.
Quick Hits TEXAS
Feds convict 3 in Houston sex trafficking ring A federal judge sentenced three Texas men to eight years each in prison
for trafficking adults and minors as young as 16 in sexually oriented businesses disguised as a modeling studio, health spa and massage parlor. The Houston Chronicle reported that Andre McDaniels, Ronnie Presley and Jamine Lake must also each pay $10,000 in fines and serve 10 years of supervised release after they finish their prison terms. According to the Chronicle, the women were often beaten and emotionally abused while their captors took whatever money they earned. Two more men convicted in the ring will be sentenced in June.
SOUTHERN BAPTISTS
CULTURE
Boyce College prof to lead complementarian group
Appeals court blocks Calif. gay therapy ban
Owen Strachan was named executive director of the Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, succeeding Randy Stinson. Strachan, 31, is assistant professor of Christian theology and church history at Boyce College in Louisville, Ky. The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) is a Louisvillebased group that supports a complementarian position on biblical gender roles—that men and women are equal in Christ but have different and complementary roles in the home and in the church. Stinson becomes CBMW senior fellow. Strachan has written for magazines such as The Atlantic Online and Christianity Today. Wayne Grudem, past president and co-founder of CBMW, said Strachan “brings a wealth of knowledge about theology and evangelical history to his new leadership role with CBMW.” —BP News
A federal appeals court last month blocked a California ban on “reparative therapy,” giving concerned parents the right, for now, to seek counsel for a child with homosexual tendencies. The first-of-its-kind ban would have gone into effect this year, but the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an emergency order until the court can hear full arguments on the measure’s constitutionality. The law, passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, says that therapists and counselors who use “sexual orientation change efforts” on minors would be practicing unprofessional conduct and subject to discipline by state licensing boards. JANUARY 10, 2013 TEXANONLINE.NET 3
From pro-Choice to pro-Life In the 1970s, the freedom-loving, soul competent “people of the Book” called Southern Baptists encountered an obscure issue called abortion and, eventually, came out pro-life. By Jerry Pierce
4 TEXANONLINE.NET JANUARY 10, 2013
n Jan. 22, 1973, the Supreme Court issued the landmark Roe v. Wade decision alongside its counterpart case, Doe v. Bolton, defining abortion as a constitutional right and trampling down the restrictions of dozens of states. During that same decade, while a few Southern Baptists were waking up to the reality of liberal theology being taught in some SBC seminary classrooms, abortion as a social and moral issue, with the sexual revolution as a backdrop, was rising to the fore. For a denomination often self-described as “a people of the Book,” official Southern Baptist statements on the issue in the early and mid 1970s claimed a respect for human life but also championed an essentially pro-choice message, lamenting abortion as fraught with “difficult decisions” and seeking a “middle ground” where abortion would be legal in cases in which the mental, emotional and physical health of the mother was threatened. Those early abortion resolutions issued by convention messengers included language that seemed to have something for nearly everyone. But it took a decade and, in many cases, an education on the whole issue in light of Scripture, to see a resolution reflecting what Southern Baptists today would recognize as a pro-life message. It wasn’t until 1980, for the first time, that a Southern Baptist resolution supported laws restricting abortion to only those cases where the physical life of the mother was threatened. It was a pivotal change from nine years earlier. The 1971 resolution laid the groundwork for a near-decade of similar statements, speaking of “difficult decisions” regarding abortion and casting as extremes to be avoided the positions of those who “advocate no abortion legislation” on the one hand, and of those who “advocate no legal abortion, or would permit abortion only if the life of the mother is threatened,” on the other hand.
In nearly the same breath, the ’71 resolution affirmed a “high view of the sanctity of human life, including fetal life, in order to protect those who cannot protect themselves,” and then in the subsequent, closing paragraph called for support of laws allowing “the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” Abortion-rights proponents found a friendly document in the ’71 resolution, which was used to encourage the high court during the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton cases a year and a half later. “Little did Southern Baptists know, or even realize, the implications of what they had just done” at the ’71 convention, wrote Jerry Sutton in his 2008 book “A Matter of Conviction: A History of Southern Baptist Engagement with the Culture.” Sutton, faculty dean and professor of preaching and church history at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, noted that the last paragraph of the ’71 resolution “essentially said abortion is acceptable under any circumstance and that Southern Baptists endorse a woman’s right to choose to terminate her pregnancy.” Reflecting back, Sutton added, “The problem was most Southern Baptists at that point had not thought much about the abortion issue, and the relatively few who did think about it considered it wrong with the exception of a small minority who controlled the Christian Life Commission, its policy and programming.” Six times between 1971 and 1979, SBC messengers spoke to the abortion issue, always affirming a “high” and later a “biblical” view of human life as sacred, warning on three occasions against “any indiscriminate attitude” about abortion but also sounding “our conviction about the limited role of government in dealing with medical services and personal counseling for the preservation of life and health.” The message, in short, was abortion as birth control is wrong, but: government should stick to its “limited role” in the abortion business, and women need “the full range of medical services” for the “preservation of life and health.” In 1974, with Roe established by the high court, an SBC abortion resolution looked back to the 1971 resolution, describing it as a “middle ground between the extreme of abortion on demand and the opposite extreme of all abortion as murder.” The 1974 resolution resolved to “seek God’s guidance through prayer JANUARY 10, 2013 TEXANONLINE.NET 5
and study” to find “solutions to continuing abortion problems in our society.” In 1976, the phrases “selfish non-therapeutic reasons” and “abortion as a means of birth control” were used in a negative tone and the phrase “innocent human being” was used to refer to the unborn child, yet the resolve to keep government from restricting “the full range of medical services” was kept, with similar language in subsequent resolutions in 1977 and ’79. But the 1980 resolution was significant for what it omitted from previous statements: Gone was the language about “limited government” in the abortion issue or the call to oppose any law restricting access to “the full range of medical services.” Instead, messengers opined: “All medical evidence indicates that abortion ends the life of a developing human being.” They went further, opposing abortion on demand, especially with tax money, and calling for laws “and/or a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion except to save the life of the mother.” If only one phrase in the 1980 language left any question where the SBC stood—a line abhorring the use of tax money for “selfish non therapeutic abortion”—the final two lines of the resolution calling for laws outlawing abortion except in life-saving situations left no doubt that messengers intended to send a pro-life message. It was a victory for conservatives and a firstfruit of the election of inerrantist Adrian Rogers as SBC president, Rogers having appointed the Resolutions Committee in 1980. In 1982’s “Resolution On Abortion and Infanticide,” the verbiage was stronger, and the right-to-life message was firmly carried on in the five subsequent liferelated resolutions of that decade. In the three decades since 1980, Southern Baptists have become among the staunchest supporters of innocent human life, speaking in numerous resolutions against abortion, euthanasia, destructive human embryo research, and human cloning. The election of Richard D. Land as head of the SBC’s Christian Life Commission (now the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission) in 1988 also marked a significant change. The late Foy Valentine, who headed the CLC until 1986, was a founding member of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights and influenced early Southern Baptist statements on the ethics of abortion. With Land, a biblical conservative and an articulate voice in the pro-life cause, the agency was on a markedly different trajectory regarding issues pertaining to the sanctity of human life. 6 TEXANONLINE.NET JANUARY 10, 2013
Abortion Facts – Texas Of all unintended pregnancies in Texas in 2006, 29 percent resulted in induced abortions.
29% 84,610
In 2008, 84,610 women obtained abortions in Texas, producing a rate of 16.5 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age, a 4 percent drop from 2005. That is roughly 15 percent of 579,700 pregnancies.
10,780
In 2005, 10,780 teens obtained abortions in Texas, producing a rate of 13 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-19.
67
In 2008 (latest data available), there were 67 abortion providers in Texas. SOURCE: Guttmacher Institute
Abortion Facts – U.S. 119,996
1.21
million
In 2009, New York reported the highest number of abortions (119,996) followed by Florida (81,918) and Texas (77,630). In 2008, 1.21 million abortions occurred in the U.S., down from 1.29 million in 2002 and 1.36 million in 1996.
33%
Women between ages 20-24 obtained 33 percent of abortions in 2009.
12%
Merely 12 percent of women included a physical problem with their health among reasons for having an abortion.
3/4
90%
Three-fourths of women who had abortions said having a baby would interfere with work, school or other responsibilities, and about the same percentage said they couldn’t afford the child. More than 90 percent of Down syndrome babies are aborted. SOURCES: Guttmacher Institute, Centers for Disease Control, National Abortion Federation, National Institutes of Health
Pflugerville ISD to keep same-sex benefits As opponents of controversial insurance plan, including Baptist pastor, were accused of hate, ‘raw emotion, not logic’ drove public comments, pastor says. By Bonnie Pritchett PFLUGERVILLE
Domestic partners of Pflugerville Independent School
District employees can benefit from a controversial insurance plan adopted by the administration and approved by the board of trustees in a 5-1 vote last month. The policy is the only one of its kind in the state and, some contend, puts PISD in conflict with the Texas Constitution, setting it up for future legal battles. PISD Superintendent Charles Dupre adopted the policy in August based on committee recommendations following an annual review of employee insurance plans. The program allows employees to claim domestic partners—homosexual or heterosexual—as dependents on their insurance. But public opposition voiced during the October school board meeting prompted trustee Jimmy Don Havin to call a public hearing on the matter and consider rescinding the policy. More than 200 people filled the Pflugerville High School cafeteria to address the issue. A majority lauded the plan and decried its opponents as hatemongers. “As a pastor I was overwhelmed with the lostness of our community and the total lack of understanding of the issues,”
said Steve Washburn, pastor of the 2,000-member Pflugerville First Baptist Church for 22 years. The community lies amid suburban sprawl about 14 miles north of downtown Austin. Since 1990, the town’s population has grown tenfold, from just over 4,000 people to 46,936, according to 2010 U.S. Census estimates. During the public comment portion of the meeting, “raw emotion, not logic” underscored remarks, Washburn said. Efforts to caricature opponents of the plan as “hatemongers” left the pastor defensive and discouraged. Instead of reading from a prepared statement, Washburn pocketed his notes and spoke directly to his detractors. “I do not hate,” he told the crowd. “That is not my reputation.” But his vocal opposition to the policy in recent weeks seemed to put him in conflict with the “hate-free policy” of Pflugerville High School where he made his address, Washburn said. Students attending the meeting held on their campus donned pink t-shirts emblazoned with “Stop the Hate.” Other clergy, including a lesbian pastor of an Austin congregation, called the policy the “right,” “loving,” and the “fair” thing to do. Another pastor took Washburn to task for feeling “bullied,” claiming those deprived of insurance coverage as the real victims. While accusing the policy opponents of “hatred” and “intolerance,” proponents offered little substantive rationale for keeping the policy, said Jonathan Saenz of Texas Values, the Austin public policy arm of Plano-based Liberty Institute. Some championed the new policy as a magnet for new, highly qualified teachers. But Saenz called such rhetoric “abJANUARY 10, 2013 TEXANONLINE.NET 7
surd” because there is no evidence to prove such a statement, he said. Five of the district’s 2,500 employees enrolled in the plan, which went into effect Jan. 1. Saenz, an attorney and president of Texas Values, said the district’s actions could land it in court. The policy conflicts with the Texas Marriage Amendment passed in 2005 by 76 percent of voters, he said. Texas Values filed a brief with Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office seeking an opinion on the PISD policy and that of a handful of other Texas municipalities and counties with similar insurance plans. To date, those policies have gone unchallenged in court. Saenz wants to force a legal opinion before other governmental entities follow PISD’s lead. If Abbott rules against PISD, Saenz said the district would have two options: drop the policy or wage an expensive legal battle. With school districts across the state short on revenue, Saenz said the latter would not be in the district’s best interest. In the board’s closing arguments before the vote, Saenz said it was clear they did not like having to defend the actions of the superintendent. But their favorable vote—5-1 with one abstention—made the board culpable for any future legal action against the district. Washburn said representatives from two teachers’ associations told the board the majority of the district’s employees favor the plan. But he said they produced no documentation backing their claims. Teachers from the 2,000-member Pflugerville First Baptist Church opposed the plan but did not want to be seen as “going against their boss” by speaking out, Washburn said. 8 TEXANONLINE.NET JANUARY 10, 2013
Gov. Perry supports bill to stop abortions at 20 weeks Texas Pre-Born Pain Act would ‘establish a state interest in pre-born life that can feel pain.’ By David Roach Gov. Rick Perry announced last month that he would support a
bill in the upcoming legislative session banning abortions in Texas beginning in the 20th week of pregnancy—the point at which many scientists believe a baby can feel pain. The bill, known as the Texas Pre-Born Pain Act, was proposed by Texas Right to Life and is being drafted by state attorneys at the request of legislators for this legislative session. Ten other states have already recognized the need to protect unborn children who can feel pain, a press release from the governor’s office said. “This session, I’m calling on the legislature to strengthen our ban on the procedure [abortion], prohibiting abortion at the point a baby can feel the pain of being killed,” Perry said at a pro-life event in Houston. “We have an obligation to end that kind of cruelty.” According to Texas Right to Life, the Texas Pre-Born Pain Act would “establish a state interest in pre-born life that can feel pain” and “apply that state interest by prohibiting all abortions on preborn children who feel pain.” Elizabeth Graham, director of Texas Right to Life, told the TEXAN in an interview that most scientists agree increasingly that infants can feel pain by the 20th week of pregnancy.
“The consensus is that when surgery is done on a pre-born child in utero … anesthesia is given to babies at 20 weeks,” she said. “Neonatologists and neonatology surgeons are anesthetizing children then to save their lives because they can feel pain. And so we would say that they can also feel pain if they are undergoing excruciating dismemberment.” Texas Right to Life cites the opinions of numerous scientists and doctors to support its position. For example, Jean Wright, a Savannah, Ga., anesthesiologist specializing in pediatric critical care medicine, told the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution in 2005 that by 20 weeks after fertilization, all the physical structures necessary to experience pain have developed. And according to Richard Schmidt, past president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “It can be clearly demonstrated that fetuses seek to evade certain stimuli in a manner which in an infant or an adult would be interpreted as a reaction to pain.” Supporters of the Pre-Born Pain Act say that this and other medical data will give credibility to the legislation. Perry said his ultimate goal is “to make abortion, at any stage, a thing of the past,” though Roe v. Wade “prevents us from taking that step.” But he said the Supreme Court allows states to restrict the procedure if they can show a “compelling state interest” to do so. “I don’t think there is any issue that better fits the definition of ‘compelling state interest’ than preventing the suffering of our state’s unborn,” Perry said. “We
Samuel’s worldwide reach This 1999 photo by freelance photographer Michael Clancy, circulated worldwide at the time after first appearing in USA Today, shows the tiny hand of pre-born Samuel Armas at 21 weeks development, holding on to a surgeon’s finger during in utero surgery for spina bifida. Clancy, who was pro-choice at the time, said the experience changed his views on abortion. Texas Gov. Rick Perry and prolife legislators are pushing for the Texas Pre-Born Pain Act, which would ban abortions 20 weeks or later except to save a mother’s life because of a consensus view that unborn babies beyond 20 weeks experience pain. BP file photo
cannot, and we will not, stand idly by while the unborn are going through the agony of having their lives ended.” Texas already has numerous restrictions on abortion, including a ban in the third trimester except in rare cases when the mother’s life or health is threatened. Yet if passed, the Pre-Born Pain Act would save approximately 1,000 additional lives each year—the number of abortions estimated to take place in the state annually after the 20th week of pregnancy. Graham said she hopes the bill will encourage other states to follow suit. “Establishing a state interest in protecting lives could inspire other
states to look at where their state interest could fall in protecting lives,” she said. Legislative sponsors for the bill were to be determined after final drafting was complete, Graham said. “We’re looking at a big pro-life majority in the House and in the Senate, so we ought to expect some big pro-life accomplishments,” state Rep. Bryan Hughes, a leading abortion opponent in the legislature, told the Austin AmericanStatesman. “I think the people back home are sending a message by continuing to send strong pro-life majorities to the legislature, and that’s what emboldens us.”
JANUARY 10, 2013 TEXANONLINE.NET 9
After rape, Southwestern Seminary student counts blessing of adoption
I
By Emily Crutcher
t was the spring semester of 2010.
“You, O Lord, keep my lamp burning;
my God into light.” turns my darkness
—Psalm 19:28
Above: Jones, holding David, the boy she gave birth to, at the Hope of Light Banquet on October 26, 2012 Right: Jones, in the middle holding David with her family standing around her, parents to the right, and David’s adoptive parents, Kelsey and Tyler, on the left. Photos by Daniel Deason
10 TEXANONLINE.NET JANUARY 10, 2013
Jennifer Jones was excited to travel to South Asia to study abroad while getting her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Texas at Arlington. Meanwhile, Kelsey Williams was at home, “coming to grips with the reality that we had just celebrated yet another Christmas without children.” Kelsey Williams and her husband Tyler Williams had been trying desperately to have a child. “I made an appointment to see a doctor, which was when I was diagnosed with low progesterone,” Williams said. “The remainder of the spring would entail many doctor visits, tests and medical procedures, and the introduction of fertility drugs,” she recounted. The fertility treatments had failed, and soon they had adopted their first child, Jedidiah, an 11-month-old. Jones, now in South Asia, was one month into her stay when she met a young Afghan Muslim man who was also studying at the university. “I thought he just wanted to be my friend, and I saw him as an opportunity to learn
about Islam, again for the purpose of mission. I knew him for the last four months of my time in India and for the first three months he was one of the nicest guys I had ever known … respectful, caring, and being a perfect gentleman. Then, a month before I left for home, he changed.” “He knew that I was a virgin, he knew that I was saving my first kiss for my wedding day, but all that did not matter to him; he wanted what he wanted,” Jones said, alluding to his raping her after she rejected his advances. Out of fear of reprisal and stories of abuse at the hands of government officials for women who pressed charges against men, she never reported the incident to South Asian authorities, she said. And not long after she returned home to Texas, she was gripped with fear to find out she was pregnant. “Fear that threatened to choke me,” Jones said, “Fear that said I could not live my life anymore because of the humiliation of being unmarried and pregnant.” “It was at this point that the devil came in and began to feed me lies like ‘No one will know if you just get an abortion,’” she recalled. “’An abortion will fix it all. It will all go away like it never happened.’ These lies were so inviting because the thought of telling my parents and my church that I was pregnant brought me trembling to my knees. Of course I knew that abortion was wrong, but now I was faced with an unplanned pregnancy and my convictions began to waver,” she admitted. But by August, Jones had chosen adoption for her child through Chosen Christian Heritage in Duncanville, Texas, a ministry of Living Choice Inc. About the same time,
Williams, who wanted to adopt again, found Chosen Christian Heritage and the Williamses began working through the adoption process. On Tuesdays, Jones would go to the adoption agency, visiting with a counselor and scouting prospective families. Williams, meanwhile, had chosen Tuesdays to pray and fast for a child to adopt. By November, Jones was still going through the different adoption books of families—a virtual family resume—when she came across the Williams’ adoption book. After reviewing their profile and diligently praying, Jones chose the Williamses. They met the first time the Friday before Thanksgiving in 2010. Jones invited Kelsey Williams to a sonogram appointment, where they learned she was carrying a boy. And when Jones was induced, Kelsey was there in the delivery room at her invitation. “I clung to Jeremiah 29:11 during my pregnancy, and amazingly I delivered on Jan. 29, 2011. This is just one of the many miracles the Lord gave to me,” Jones recounted. The passage speaks of God’s plans to prosper Israel and to give them a future and a hope. Williams said before they knew for certain they would seek adoption, she penned a prayer in her journal: “God, I’m asking for something BIG, undeniably You, undeniably good, undeniably positive and exciting—that will strike a belief in You and Your supernatural ways in every heart whose ears hear of Your mighty work in our lives.” “God answered in a way that was undeniably him, and we give him all the glory,” Williams said.
GOOD OUT OF BAD “All my life,” Jones recalled, “I have heard Romans 8:28 quoted, that God can take something that the devil intended for evil and use it for his good. Oh, how I have seen that first-hand now. I have learned that God does indeed give us strength for each day as it comes. He does not give us the grace and strength for tomorrow because we do not need it yet. He is our complete fulfillment each day without end.” Jones is now working on her master’s degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and also volunteering in a crisis pregnancy ministry. To the woman in an unplanned pregnancy, Jones offered some advice. “Right now, you might think that there isn’t any hope left in your life. The way you thought your life was going to go has just changed in a moment. My first advice is to not make any decisions right now.” Also, she added, “Peace of mind will come with the more information you have and as you begin to look to God for your support and guidance.” On Oct. 26, 2012, Jones and the Williamses came together to celebrate the gift of life at Living Choice Inc’s Hope of Light Banquet in Duncanville, where Jones and Kelsey Williams told how God’s providence and grace helped each in her trials. “There were many factors that I considered when I made my choice of adoption. But by far the most important aspect of the decision was what was going to be the best for my son,” Jones said.
JANUARY 10, 2013 TEXANONLINE.NET 11
Gary Ledbetter
Safer societies have stronger families
P
erhaps the hundreds of efforts
by professional pundits to help us understand the tragedy visited last month on Newtown, Conn., will serve to teach us an important lesson—things like that don’t happen for just one reason. Such horror will not then have one simple solution. More money or legal support for the mental health industry will not be the magic pill. Our challenge is much more difficult than laws or budget allocations can begin to address. During my lifetime and memory our culture has changed its mind about some things. I remember when we had cigarette commercials on television, when pretending to be drunk was a staple of some comedy routines, and when there was a stigma attached to some kinds of sexual behavior. About the same time that cigarette commercials were banned from TV, the first primetime program showed a main character, a hero, living with a girlfriend without benefit of marriage. Sexual immorality was certainly not new to entertainment media but in this context, the normalized portrayal of this behavior was novel … for a little while. In those days, a girl who was pregnant out of wedlock was “in trouble” and a divorced family was a “broken home.” Jump forward a few years. Now, a movie is rated PG if a main character smokes; public intoxication is not rare but also not exactly respectable; sexual behavior has become a casual matter; high school kids throw baby showers for one another; and marriage is fairly optional for the rearing of happy, healthy kids—at least in pop culture. The facts are a bit more stark. Those who follow their celebrity heroes into divorce and serial marriage find that it’s not as much fun as it seemed. Divorce is the number 12 TEXANONLINE.NET JANUARY 10, 2013
one cause of poverty among women and children. Most children who live below the poverty line live with single or divorced mothers. Boys who live with single mothers are significantly more likely to be depressed, friendless, act up in school, drop out, and go to jail. Girls who live without benefit of a biological or adoptive father are likely to have an unreasonable selfimage, act out sexually, and go with boys who will treat them badly. Kids who grow up this way are more likely to become parents who divorce, are poor, etc. Ninety percent of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes, as are 63 percent of those who commit suicide. Yes, America has a higher ratio of legally owned firearms to population than other countries. We also lead the world in the percentage of mother-only families. How do children learn how to relate to the opposite sex except by watching their parents? How do kids learn to deal with other people at all unless they have involved and positive interaction with a dependable woman who will tend to nurture them and a dependable man who will tend to challenge them toward independence and achievement? Kids who live with both parents even develop a higher IQ than do those who live with only one parent. Pastor, does this call to mind any occasion when a troubled couple told you that they were divorcing “for the good of the children?” Reversing the trend in our culture away from healthy and lifelong marriages doesn’t sound as simple as allocating more money to counsel troubled young people. In fact, I can imagine us doing the latter but cannot imagine how difficult it would be to encourage healthy marriages and families. But consider this: When some other social phenomenon is so solidly proven to be causative in negative outcomes, we tend to frown on it, big time. We begin to vilify those who encourage it or who profit by it. Think again of the way we view drug dealers or cigarette companies, even the way we often portray the users of those products. Is it your impression that our society discourages divorce or single motherhood? In some cases we’d have to admit that our churches do not do enough to support strong marriages or encourage traditional families. No-fault divorce has resulted in a rapid increase in the number of broken families, poor kids, and emotionally disadvantaged adults, as well as an industry that would fight tooth and nail to preserve these harmful laws. So last December a troubled young man who lived without a father, spent his days alone with video games, and who seemed unable to make friends, murdered his single mother and then destroyed 20 grade school kids. Is it reasonable to blame this event on too few mental health resources and too many guns? Regardless of how you answer that question, it is clear that our continued scorning of traditional families is reaping a bitter harvest in America.
Family First Aid 2013 Conference • Feb. 15 & 16 click for registration info
Pearceys to lead HBU’s Schaeffer Center Best-selling author Nancy Pearcey and writer-editor J. Richard Pearcey have teamed up to create the Francis Schaeffer Center for Worldview and Culture on the campus of Houston Baptist University. The purpose of the Francis Schaeffer Center is to “promote foundational research and out-of-the-box creative thinking based on historic Christianity as a total way of life informed by verifiable truth concerning God, humanity, and the cosmos,” according to the center’s mission statement. Nancy Pearcey serves as director of the Francis Schaeffer Center. Formerly an agnostic, Nancy is professor and scholar-in-residence at HBU and the author of books such as “Total Truth,” “The Soul of Science,” and “Saving Leonardo.” She is editor at large of The Pearcey Report. She was heralded in The Economist as “America’s preeminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual.” “Our goal at FSC is to equip students in every major to
be critical and creative thinkers,” Pearcey said. “Under the visionary leadership of President Robert Sloan, Houston Baptist University is moving forward strategically to implement a Christian worldview approach more intentionally and comprehensively across all the disciplines.” The Center is named for noted author Francis A. Schaeffer, whose work with wife Edith at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland won international respect for giving an “honest answer to honest questions.” Time magazine hailed the Schaeffers’ work as a “Mission to Intellectuals.” J. Richard Pearcey serves as associate director of the Center. Richard is scholar for worldview studies at HBU, as well as editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report. He is formerly managing editor of the Capitol Hill newspaper “Human Events” and associate editor of the “EvansNovak Political Report.” —HBU News Services
JANUARY 10, 2013 TEXANONLINE.NET 13
BOOK REVIEW
‘Acceptable’ challenges readers to undergo the biblical ‘scalpel’ By Robert Castillo In “Acceptable! Transforming Flawed Lives Into Living Sacrifices, Through the Word,” Rudy Gonzalez challenges readers to understand the function of God’s Word as a tool of sacrifice. Gonzalez, dean at the William R. Marshall Center for Theological Studies at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, shares how God’s Word as a sacrificial knife in the hands of a master cutter can remove what can never honor the Lord. In this way the believer is as a sacrifice in the hands of a Levitical priest—inspected and purged under the lens of the Holy Bible. The author shares a skillful interpretation of Hebrews 4:1-13 and Romans 12:1 while using a historical and biblical understanding of Levitical sacrifices found in Leviticus 23. The book helps readers better grasp the New Testament language of “sacrifice.” Gonzalez’s chapter on “Rest: The Language of Anguish” is splendidly insightful as he mentions the commandment to rest helps us as it did Israel realign ourselves to God through heartfelt repentance (Leviticus 16:29-31). To not rest during the appointed time could lead to a person’s demise even to death (Leviticus 23:29-30), the Sabbath being a time when one surrenders to the biblical scalpel. The author ends by reiterating the aim of the Bible as the “perfecting” work of God in the believer (Philippians 1:6) through the means of the Word. This small but weighty book is challenging, especially against the tendency toward a casual or purely academic reading of the Bible. 14 TEXANONLINE.NET JANUARY 10, 2013
Former missions prof dies By Keith Collier FORT WORTH
Justice Anderson, longtime Southern Baptist missionary and missions professor, died Dec. 29. Anderson and his wife Mary Ann were Southern Baptist missionaries to Argentina from 1959-74. During that time, Anderson served as professor of church history and homiletics at the International Baptist Theological Seminary in Buenos Aires. Additionally, he served as president of the Argentine Baptist Mission in 1965 and 1972; vice president of the Argentine Baptist Convention, 1962 and 1965; and interim president of the seminary from 1968-69. After returning to the states, Anderson served in pastorates and interim pastors and joined the faculty at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary as the George W. Bottoms professor of missions, founding the seminary’s World Missions Center in 1980. Anderson earned is master of divinity in 1955 and doctor of theology in 1965 from Southwestern. He authored, contributed and edited many journals, articles and books on missions, including “Missiology: An Introduction” and “An Evangelical Saga: Baptists and Their Precursors in Latin America.” He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Mary Ann Anderson; children, Sandi Phillips and husband, Thomas, Timothy Anderson and wife, Aurora Pulido, Brad Anderson and wife, Ann, Suzie Person and husband, Kirk Person; 10 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren; and one brother, Gene Anderson.
Churches needed to blanket El Paso with gospel
EL PASO
The last three years, churches across Texas have worked during spring break with SBTC missions and evangelism staff in south Texas cities such as Corpus Christi, Laredo and McAllen to bring the gospel to hundreds of thousands of people. Through the efforts, people have been saved and baptized and churches begun. The weeks of March 11 and March 18, churches are needed to bring the gospel to people in the El Paso area, working alongside local churches to sow gospel seeds among their neighbors by distributing thousands of door hangers, interpersonal contact, block parties, backyard Bible clubs, and other activities. The spring break effort will lay groundwork for the week of April 15, as Team Impact, a strength demonstration ministry, plans more than 100 character oriented anti-bullying assemblies in El Paso area schools, said Jack Harris, an SBTC evangelism strategist. Also that week, mass rallies for middle and high school students on Wednesday night and college students on Thursday night will be held. The week will culminate on April 20 with a city-wide evangelistic rally at the El Paso Coliseum. “We would love to see your church involved in this important effort to saturate the El Paso area with the gospel message,” Harris said. “Today more than ever, people need hope. There is no hope outside of Jesus. But with him, there is amazing hope for today and for eternity. So we need many, many churches to join hands in taking that message to El Paso over spring break.” For churches in the El Paso area, a planning and information meeting will be held at 11:30 a.m. Feb. 14 at Cielo Vista Church in El Paso, 3585 N. Lee Trevino Dr. 79936. For more information on the effort, call the SBTC evangelism office toll-free at 877-953-7282 (SBTC) or Chuy Avila, south Texas missionary/church planter, at 817-832-8875.
SENT Lab: Reaching internationals in Texas A SENT Lab to help churches reach international people groups immigrating to Texas, sponsored by SBTC missions, will be held 9 a.m.-3 p.m. on Jan. 26 at Prestonwood Baptist Church, 6801 W. Park Blvd. in Plano. These labs will provide training for locating, discipling and planting churches among these people groups. Churches will learn how to use a new tool called the Embrace Texas Map that will help them engage lostness around them. “There are two statistics we would like to change,” said Chad Vandiver, SBTC missions strategist. “First, 96 percent of multihousing residents do not attend a local church. Second, 86 percent of Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims do not have a Christian friend.” Vandiver said SENT Labs are tailored to address these missional challenges for local churches. Registration information is available at sbtexas.com/mtraining. Cost: $25, but college students are free with registration.
Dallas March for Life: Jan. 19 The Dallas March for Life and Rally will be held Jan. 19 in downtown Dallas, with the march beginning at First Baptist Church at noon and proceeding on a 30-minute walk to the Earle Cabell Federal Courthouse. Several events coincide with the march. A prayer time at the Routh Street abortion center (4321 N. Central Expressway) will be from 7:45-8:45 a.m., followed by a pro-life ministry fair at First Baptist Church at 10 a.m. and praise and worship at 11 a.m. FBC is at 1707 San Jacinto. The march, beginning at FBC, begins at noon followed by a rally at the federal courthouse, 1108 Jackson, from 12:30-1:30 p.m. For a schedule, visit dallasmarch4life.org.
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“THE COOPERATIVE PROGRAM NOT ONLY MAKES GOOD SENSE, BUT IT IS ONE OF THE MOST EFFECTIVE MEANS OF REACHING THE WORLD THAT I HAVE EVER OBSERVED.” —QUINCY JONES, STUDENT, SWBTS
JESUS TOGETHER, BUT
GETTING THE GOSPEL OF
CHRIST TO THE LOST PEOPLES OF THE WORLD IS DAUNTING
WORKING THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS
Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Toll free 1.877.953.SBTC (7282) www.sbtexas.com 16 TEXANONLINE.NET JANUARY 10, 2013