Southern Baptist

They're not professional construction workers. Some of them have never picked up a power tool. But despite their inexperience, more than 350 high school students from around the nation converged on the Baltimore area this week to repair homes for people in need.The World Changers high school construction program brought the students from a number of Southern Baptist church youth groups to Baltimore city and county. It is the first time the Georgia-based program has come to the Baltimore area to repair 26 homes for people who are elderly, disabled or have low incomes.

ATLANTA -- About 60 Hindus attended a rally yesterday at Centennial Olympic Park to protest what they see as efforts by the Southern Baptist Convention to denigrate Hinduism and convert Hindus.The issue erupted a week ago, when the Southern Baptist Convention published a "prayer guide" that made reference to Hinduism's shortcomings. Hindus took offense to the claims, including one that said Hindus do not have the concept of sin or personal responsibility.Southern Baptist leaders say the prayer pamphlets are not evangelical conversion manuals.

FERNDALE'S Robert and Joan Childs are motivated by the need to help others through their Christian faith. They are members of a response unit of the Maryland/Delaware Southern Baptist Convention Disaster Relief Program.They belong to Linthicum Baptist Church, whose former pastor, the Rev. Elwood Ulmer, spoke to them this year about a program that certified volunteers to respond to natural or other disasters in relief efforts.The couple received training through a Red Cross course given in early June at Glen Burnie Baptist Church, so they would be available to respond to the challenge of helping people affected by disasters.

SALT LAKE CITY -- The Southern Baptist Convention spoke out strongly yesterday on the importance of moral character in public office, but stopped shy of pointing a finger at the world's most famous Southern Baptist, President Clinton.More than 8,000 delegates at the annual meeting of the 16 million-member denomination voted to declare that "moral character matters to God and should matter to all citizens, especially God's people, when choosing public leaders."Their resolution pointed out that "serious allegations continue to be made about moral and legal misconduct by certain public officials."

SALT LAKE CITY -- The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination and an increasingly conservative force among American religious organizations, amended its essential statement of beliefs yesterday to include a declaration that a woman should "submit herself graciously" to her husband's leadership and a husband should "provide for, protect and lead his family."The amendment, a 250-word declaration on family life, was adopted by a show-of-hands vote at the Baptists' annual meeting here as an addition to the denomination's basic theological statement of beliefs, the Baptist Faith and Message Statement.

Like many Baptist ministers around the country, the Rev. David Albert Farmer took to his pulpit yesterday to address whether wives should submit to their husbands.But Farmer's sermon had a twist, made evident by its title: "Men, Submit to Your Wives -- If You Have One."Farmer, pastor of University Baptist Church in North Baltimore, is among a group of people who consider themselves devout Baptists, but out of step with the resolutions adopted last week by the Southern Baptist Convention that amended its Baptist Faith and Message Statement, the theological statement of its basic beliefs.

I FORGIVE Bill Clinton. I deplore his behavior and feel betrayed as a citizen and as a Southern Baptist - the denominational affiliation that I share with the president. Our Baptist doctrine condemns sexual sin. But it also tempers righteousness with mercy and grace, leaving judgment to God. So, on a personal level, I forgive him as one Baptist to another.But, with Southern Baptists, things are never that simple.Southern Baptists, like the rest of the country, are split over how to respond to the president's admission of an "inappropriate" relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

On the eve of Good Friday, President Clinton was searching for a message to console residents of Oklahoma City as they prepared to mark the first anniversary of the bombing there. He turned to a minister and a gospel hymn."The president told me, 'I want to be more to them than the president of the United States. I want to serve as a pastor to them in the midst of their suffering,' " recalls evangelical minister Tony Campolo. "He asked me to help him find the words."A Southern Baptist who can recall Bible verses from memory, Clinton embraces the bully pulpit of the White House.

As African-American Baptists gathered in conventions this summer, a question that kept coming up was whether the predominantly white Southern Baptist Convention is attempting to steal their flocks.It's a concern expected to be addressed this week as the nation's two largest African-American Baptist bodies conduct national conventions in Birmingham, Ala., and in Dallas.Some African-American Baptists question the sincerity of a highly publicized resolution approved in June by Southern Baptists repenting for the denomination's roots in slavery and apologizing for condoning racism.

Something new is coming to Howard County cable TV this fall: the Howard Baptist Association.The 24-year-old group of Southern Baptist churches in the county plans to launch a $35,000 advertising campaign on local cable channels and newspapers in October to let the public know that it's available to help them meet their spiritual needs. The campaign is a crucial part of the group's plan to more than double, to 10,000 members, by the year 2000.If the advertising campaign succeeds, the 4,500-member group intends to continue its media efforts, said the Rev. William O. Crowe, the group's director of missions.

There was a coffeehouse vibe in the basement of a Bolton Hill brownstone where 20 or so men and women gathered on a recent evening. Mostly in their 20s and 30s, they had hugged hello as they filed into the brightly painted former architecture studio. They had poured the free-trade French roast and unpacked the cupcakes. They had broken into small groups for an icebreaker - name the three people you would take to a desert island - and laughed when it turned out that several had come up with MacGyver, the resourceful secret agent from the 1980s television show.

HAROLD ALFOND, 93 Founder of Dexter Shoes Harold Alfond, the founder of a shoe business and a philanthropist who donated tens of millions of dollars to nonprofit organizations, died Friday in Maine, where he had traveled from his Palm Beach, Fla., home to be treated for cancer. The founder of Dexter Shoe Co., Mr. Alfond shared his wealth with the University of Maine, to which he gave more than $8 million, as well as with other institutions and causes. The Harold Alfond Foundation has given away more than $100 million to charitable causes, said Sen. Susan M. Collins, a Maine Republican.

The Rev. Henry Bruce Land Jr., a retired Southern Baptist minister and military chaplain, died of an infection complicated by Parkinson's disease Oct. 2 at St. Agnes Hospital. The Catonsville resident was 87. Born in Martinsville, Va., he decided to enter the ministry at 17 and earned degrees at Wake Forest College and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. During World War II, he took chaplaincy training at the College of William and Mary and joined the Navy. One of his first assignments was preaching three Sunday services to 3,000 new recruits at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station.

GREENE COUNTY, Ala. -- In a natural cathedral formed by looming pines, Deacon Charles Spencer studied the ashes of Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church and vowed to protect his own place of worship 10 miles away. "We have six churches within eight miles of our church in Union, and me and my deacons have been watching in shifts every night," Spencer said Thursday. Amid the piney woods, swamplands and cotton fields of rural Alabama stand hundreds of remote "family chapels" of varied denominations, some 100 years old or more.

On May 26, 2005, DOROTHY MAE. Friends may call at the FAMILY OWNED MARCH FUNERAL HOME EAST, 1101 East North Avenue on Wednesday after 8:30 A.M. The family will receive friends at Southern Baptist, 1701 N. Chester Street on Thursday at 11 A.M. Funeral Services will follow at 11:30 A.M. See www.marchfh.com

Friends may call at the family owned MARCH FUNERAL HOME EAST, 1101 East North Avenue, on Wednesday after 8:30 A.M. The family will receive friends at Southern Baptist, 1701 N. Chester Street, on Thursday at 10 A.M. Funeral Services will follow at 10:30 A.M. See www.marchfh.com

On Friday, November 12, 2004, LAURA BELLE PREVATT FORSYTHE, died at the Hadlow Center of Community Hospice of Northeast Florida in Jacksonville. Born in Middleburg, Florida on August 1, 1913 to the Rev. Gideon Asbury Prevatt and Alice Eugenia Harris Prevatt, she was valedictorian of her graduating class at Green Cove Springs High School and attended Massey Business College in Jacksonville. Her father founded Middleburg Baptist Church, now known as the First Baptist Church of Middleburg.

In an uneasy alliance with an ally of Israel, a national Jewish group is calling for closer ties with Christian evangelicals, who have long supported the Jewish state. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, concluding a four-day national meeting here yesterday, called on Jewish communities to engage evangelicals to work jointly on issues of mutual interest. That includes support for Israel, religious accommodation in the workplace, social services and a movement to pass legislation protecting the rights of religious organizations.

OUR HEART aches for them. They have a long way to go toward recovery," Joan Childs wrote last month in a journal she kept while a volunteer at the disaster site in New York. Joan and her husband, Robert, were there with the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Program. Members of the Linthicum Baptist Church, the Ferndale couple were part of a group of 15 people from the Maryland-Delaware Southern Baptist Association who spent about a week at the site to feed police, firefighters, Marines and Red Cross workers, and people who were displaced from their homes because of the Sept.

The secretary general of the National Council of Churches, a mainline Protestant and Orthodox group, is warning against using a manifesto supporting marriage issued this week as a weapon to attack gays and lesbians or as a statement against same-sex unions. Bob Edgar leads the NCC, which comprises 36 mainline Protestant and Orthodox denominations. He expressed his concerns in a letter to the organization's General Assembly, meeting this week in Atlanta. "A Christian Declaration on Marriage," released Tuesday in Washington, was signed by an unusually broad-based coalition of Christian groups, including the U.S. Catholic Bishops, the Southern Baptist Convention, the National Association of Evangelicals and the NCC. It called for a recommitment by churches to marriage and decried the high rates of divorce, cohabitation and children born to unwed mothers.