WASHINGTON—Joe Biden’s statement during Thursday night’s vice presidential debate that no religious institution is required to refer, pay for or provide contraception under the federal Health and Human Services’ contraception/abortion mandate is “woefully inaccurate,” according to a law firm representing dozens of Christian colleges and organizations that say it violates their First Amendment religious freedoms.

The non-profit Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents Houston Baptist University and East Texas Baptist University, among others, in lawsuits contesting the HHS mandate, released a statement on Friday from its executive director, Kristina Arriaga, saying she was “so shocked when [Biden] said this I could barely breathe.”

Responding to debate moderator Martha Raddatz’s question about his Catholic faith and abortion, the vice president stated, “With regard to the assault on the Catholic Church, let me make it absolutely clear: No religious institution—Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic social services, Georgetown hospital, Mercy hospital, any hospital—none has to either refer contraception, none has to pay for contraception, none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact. That is a fact.”

“But the facts are exactly the reverse” of what Biden claimed, said Kyle Duncan, a Becket Fund lawyer. ”Under the mandate, nearly every Catholic hospital, charity, university, and diocese in the United States—along with millions of institutions of other faiths—must refer for, must pay for, and must act as a vehicle for contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs. If they do not, they face millions in fines. That is a fact.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also took issue. “This is not a fact,” the bishops wrote. “The HHS mandate contains a narrow, four-part exemption for certain 'religious employers.' That exemption was made final in February and does not extend to 'Catholic social services, Georgetown hospital, Mercy hospital, any hospital,' or any other religious charity that offers its services to all, regardless of the faith of those served.”

Arriaga wrote in an email to Becket Fund supporters, “Since last year the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has led the charge against the Administration’s unconstitutional HHS mandate, which forces many religious organizations—many of them Catholic—to violate their deeply held religious beliefs, or pay crippling fines.”

As of Friday, there were 35 separate legal challenges to the mandate representing hospitals, universities, and businesses opposed to it on religious grounds. HBU and ETBU filed their lawsuit on Tuesday (Oct. 9) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida—a Becket Fund client—has pled in their lawsuit that they could face in excess of $17 million in fines for not complying, plus potential civil liability for not providing such coverage. HBU and ETBU claim they stand to face $10 million annually in fines.

The HHS mandate became effective in August, with non-profit religious organizations given until August 2013 to comply. The federal Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama gave the HHS the ability to issue the mandate.

“As I said, we at the Becket Fund are not in the business of endorsing any political candidate. But, we can certainly point out when a government official uses all the strength of his position to state something that is so woefully inaccurate,” Arriaga said.

Wheaton College, an evangelical school near Chicago, and Belmont Abbey, a Catholic school in North Carolina, are among other schools Becket is representing in the suits.

Abortion rights groups were mostly quiet with regard to Biden’s HHS mandate remarks, instead focusing on the Romney-Ryan ticket’s perceived threats to women’s health care.

Nancy Keegan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said of Ryan’s debate performance, “He refused to say whether American women should be worried about the future of their reproductive freedoms if he and Gov. Romney win the White House. Let me be clear: The Romney-Ryan ticket is extremely dangerous to women’s health and Americans should be very concerned about the future of women’s health and rights if Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan win on November 6.”

Keegan’s has praised the HHS mandate, saying in July that opponents of it wish to “deny any essential health-care service, including contraceptive coverage” and are waging attacks on “women’s health.”

-30-

REDWATER—A painted mural on the wall of a rural northeast Texas chapel covers a name, scribbled on sheetrock by a young boy on behalf of his father. Few if any in the small, ever-changing congregation know it’s there. But James Cooley does.

He has since lost track of the boy and his father, but he believes, someday, the man will return to the chapel seeking relief from drug and alcohol addiction just as his son prayed he would when he wrote his name on the wall.

Cooley understands addiction’s draw and its destruction, not only on the addict but anyone foolish (or merciful) enough to care for the person who has lost all concern for himself. Incarcerated three times, married just as many, and in and out of drug rehabilitation facilities, Cooley’s existence centered on drugs. But in one sobering experience, when Cooley realized he was to blame for the unconscionable plight of a little girl, he heard God speak. It was his Damascus Road.

That was 17 years ago. Now Cooley and his long-suffering wife, Donna, encourage those on the path they once traveled as addict and enabler, respectively, to be overcomers in and through Jesus.

Their work is accomplished through the ministry of Damascus Home of Redwater, a 90-day, Christ-centered residential treatment program in Bowie County. The program borrows its name and operational model from a facility in North Carolina where Cooley finally found healing. So grateful was he for his release from drug and alcohol addiction that Cooley knew he had to help others.

In hindsight, it is little wonder that substance abuse defined Cooley’s life. He grew up on a North Carolina tobacco farm and often pondered as a child how his farming family was always the first to have the latest toys and gadgets. Eventually he discovered the family’s more substantive source of income, bootleg whiskey. The business expanded, moving into the more lucrative market of marijuana and illegal narcotics.

Cooley ended up in prison before his 20th birthday.

Then he met Donna. They married in 1972, divorced in 1983. Married again in 1989. Divorced again in 1993. And remarried, for keeps, in 1996. When asked which day they celebrate as their anniversary, Cooley quickly responded, April 19, 1995—the day God saved him. The couple has two adult sons, Jamie and Tracy.

Yet it wasn’t the plight of his own children that ultimately broke his heart and spirit after years of drug abuse and three terms in prison, but that of a stranger’s daughter.

Cooley said he was a functional addict, using alcohol and cocaine while holding down a job when he wasn’t in prison. The couple, both from North Carolina, moved back and forth from Carolina to Texas during the course of their marriages and divorces. Each time Donna took Cooley back, she thought, surely, her life would be better.

But her husband remained a slave to his addictions. In retrospect, Donna said she played the role of enabler. The more she tried to change her husband the worse he seemed to get.

“I was playing God. I was trying to fix him,” she said.

In 1993, at an especially low mark in their second try at marriage, Cooley was not working but he was abusing drugs excessively. Donna had had enough. Exasperated that her husband was not heeding her pleas for change and frustrated with God for not moving in their lives, she filed for divorce. Cooley left the family in Redwater and went back to North Carolina and the family business.

“I wanted to quit. I went in and out of treatment centers like going in and out of Wal-Mart,” Cooley said. “I was a drug dealer and had become my own best customer.”

It was the experience in a crack house with other addicts that did for Cooley what no state-run treatment facility could do. After three days of a drug-induced stupor, Cooley decided to leave and go back to his sister’s house. But as he shuffled through the group of unconscious and semi-conscious addicts, Cooley was startled into lucidity.

“I saw this little girl. She was swinging this [baby] bottle and crying,” he said. The child’s parents, his customers, were unresponsive to her cries.

Cooley knew he had not eaten in three days and presumed the toddler had not either. A search for food in the refrigerator revealed only roaches and clabbered milk. He left the house to get her something to eat.

“On the way to McDonald’s God began to deal with me. ‘Son, you’re a much better man than this,’” he recalled hearing in his head.

Cooley felt sorry for the hungry child and God did not pull any punches in speaking to his heart.

“Yeah, she can’t eat,” God told Cooley. “You took her mom and dad’s money.”

Cooley returned to the crack house with the fast food, gave it to the girl, and left. He drove to his sister’s house and parked in front of the house. In his moments of consciousness he cried out to God.

“I need you to come into my life and change me or take me out,” he prayed. That was April 19, 1995. Cooley went into his sister’s house, showered, packed a small bag and left for a state-run rehabilitation facility. On his way out the door he spotted his mother’s Bible. She had died at 50 years from complications of alcoholism. He grabbed the book and pushed it into his bag and silently prayed God would send him someone who could help him understand it.

At the facility a man gave him a flier for a Christian-based treatment center, something Cooley had never heard of. He slipped the brochure in his Bible and soon forgot it. But later, in prayer, God reminded him of the clinic and told Cooley he would receive relief from his drug addiction there.

After his obligatory time at the state-run facility, Cooley wanted desperately to enroll in the Christian clinic. Calls by his counselor revealed the unit was full and Cooley would have to wait. He believed if he did not get into the clinic his life would be over.

When his sister picked him up she told Cooley they would be going to the Christian treatment center—an emergency bed had been opened just for him.

There, he learned to live drug free—fully dependent on Christ. Damascus House taught him how to live in a way that life, family, and friends had not.

His life renewed, Cooley wanted nothing more than to reunite with his wife and sons. But Donna was hesitant. For years she had prayed for this very moment and yet she was afraid to take him back. She finally acquiesced and Cooley returned to Redwater.

Back in Texas, Cooley attended First Baptist Church of Redwater with Donna, where he discovered that he had been the focus of prayers over many years. And the church that had prayed him through the turmoil would share in the vision God had placed on his heart—to open a treatment center and transitional living home in Bowie County. He would call it Damascus Home.

Cory Calicutt, associate pastor of FBC Redwater, was new to the church when the Cooleys began seeking counsel for the direction of their ministry.

“I didn’t know the Jimmie Cooley with race-track arms, who was in and out of prison and a dead-beat dad. I didn’t know his story,” Calicutt said.

He knew Cooley as a man passionate about the needs of addicts, though. The new ministry’s home was a reclaimed drug house relocated to the Cooley’s five-acre lot. Then, a 10-acre dilapidated facility with a main house and cabins in Maud, Texas was donated to the ministry. After an unsuccessful first run by another organization, Cooley was asked to direct the program that came to be called Straight Street. It was the realization of the vision God gave him following his stay at Damascus House in North Carolina.

Not long after, the couple was able to expand the ministry to women when an empty nursing home near Atlanta, Texas became available. All of the buildings are owned debt-free. As money and volunteers were available, the complexes were turned into livable homes for clients seeking admission into the 90-day program.

At the center in Maud, Cooley wanted to turn an empty building into a chapel. All he needed, as with the other projects, was people and money. God supplied both in a way that continues to touch his heart.

During the course of the remodeling effort, work came to a halt for lack of funds. At FBC Redwater, Cooley put out the plea for funds. He needed 40 panels of sheet rock at $10 each. Surely, he thought, there were 40 people in his congregation with $10 in their pockets.

A boy approached Cooley with a sock in his hand and asked the man if he could borrow 80 cents. Why, Cooley asked?

The boy had cleaned out his piggy bank and offered Cooley all he had, $9.20. With 80 cents more, the boy explained, he could pay for a panel of sheet rock so that his father, an addict, could go to the new chapel at Damascus Home.

Offerings from the church were more than enough to finish the chapel. Before one wall of the room was painted with a recreation of Thomas Blackshear’s popular painting “Forgiven,” Cooley had the boy write his dad’s name there and pray that he would someday be among the men who daily worshiped Jesus and thanked him for their healing.

He has since lost track of the boy and his dad. But he prays and believes that God will bring that dad back to Damascus Home of Redwater in answer to that little boy’s prayer.

Since 1995, God has worked through the Cooleys to bring hope to what Cooley says is an “unreached” people group in far northeast Texas. The couple serves as Mission Service Corps volunteers with the North American Mission Board, bringing tough love and the dogged determination of Christian conviction to men and women lost in the haze of drug and alcohol addiction.

But they have not done it alone. The support and love that FBC Redwater once gave a mom, her two boys and her wayward husband now is transferred to the men and women who have become a part of their church family.

“As I began to bring these men to church they fell in love with them,” said Cooley of the members of FBC Redwater. “God has used this ministry to change our church.”

HOUSTON—Two Texas colleges—Houston Baptist University and East Texas Baptist University—have joined the legal fight against the Obama administration’s abortion/contraceptive mandate, saying they’re standing up for what Baptists long have defended—religious freedom—and underscoring that it is not merely a Roman Catholic issue.

The Oct. 9 lawsuit is the 33rd suit against the mandate, which requires employers to provide employee health insurance that covers contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs. The latter drugs often are labeled “morning-after” or “week-after” pills and come under brand names such as Plan B and ella, and can act after fertilization and even after implantation, thereby causing a chemical abortion. Churches are exempt from the mandate, but religious organizations—such as Christian colleges, hospitals and businesses—are not.

The mandate was issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in August 2011 and went into effect in August of this year, although HHS gave nonprofit religious organizations another year—until August 2013—to comply. The new health care law signed by President Obama opened the door for the mandate. The law itself does not require coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, although it did give HHS the authority to determine what is and is not covered under the new law, often dubbed “Obamacare.” The Supreme Court upheld the law earlier this year but did not deal with the issue raised by the mandate lawsuits.

The list of businesses and organizations suing to overturn the mandate has grown in recent weeks, with arts and crafts company Hobby Lobby and Christian publisher Tyndale House joining the ranks.

Another Baptist school, Louisiana College, filed suit in February.

Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is representing Houston Baptist and East Texas Baptist in the suit, filed in a federal court in Texas. The schools say the mandate violates their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of religion and speech.

“The Universities’ religious beliefs forbid them from participating in, providing access to, paying for, training others to engage in, or otherwise supporting abortion,” the suit says. “… The government’s Mandate unconstitutionally coerces the Universities to violate their deeply-held religious beliefs under threat of heavy fines and penalties.”

Forcing the university to “pay a fine” for the “privilege of practicing one’s religion or controlling one’s own speech is un-American, unprecedented, and flagrantly unconstitutional,” the suit states.

The universities don’t have a problem with covering all contraceptives, only those that can cause chemical abortions, the suit says. The schools “consider the prevention by artificial means of the implantation of a human embryo to be an abortion,” and they affirm “traditional Christian teachings on the sanctity of life,” the suit states.

Houston Baptist President Robert Sloan commented, “While we are always reluctant to enter into lawsuits, the government has given us no choice. Either we violate our conscience or give in to the administration’s heavy-handed attack upon our religious freedom. We will not comply with this unconstitutional mandate, and we plead with our government to respect the liberties given by God and enunciated in the Bill of Rights.”

Samuel Oliver, president of East Texas Baptist University, said Baptists have a history of standing up for religious freedom.

“Baptists have always advocated religious liberty, and religious liberty is what is at stake in this situation,” Oliver said. “As the famous Baptist preacher George W. Truett once remarked, ‘A Baptist would rise at midnight to plead for absolute religious liberty for his Catholic neighbor, and for his Jewish neighbor, and for everybody else.’ We are rising today to ensure that religious liberty, the first freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, is protected and preserved.”

The lawsuit says the law and the government have “provided thousands of exemptions” to businesses but that the government refuses to exempt religious organizations from the mandate. For example, businesses with fewer than 50 employees are exempt from the health care law and therefore exempt from the mandate. Businesses also had the option of “grandfathering” in their previous health care plans and thereby avoid many of the new law’s requirements, such as the mandate.

“[T]he government refuses to give the same level of accommodation to groups exercising their fundamental First Amendment freedoms,” the suit states. “… The Mandate can be interpreted as nothing other than a deliberate attack by the government on the religious beliefs of the Universities and millions of other Americans.”

The HHS mandate provides an exemption for churches and church-like bodies provided they are nonprofit and meet all four of the following criteria: 1) “The inculcation of religious values is the purpose of the organization”; 2) “The organization primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the organization”; 3) “The organization serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the organization”; and 4) The organization is a church, an integrated auxiliary of a church, a convention or association of churches, or is an exclusively religious activity of a religious order, under Internal Revenue Code 6033(a)(1) and (a)(3)(A).”

Although the universities only employ Christians, they don’t fit the definition of a church as set forth by the criteria.

-30-

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) — I completely blew one of those “least of these” tests a few weeks ago. 

Craig and I were on our way back to Nashville after a few days in New Orleans. We'd been driving in heavy rain and were pretty tired. As darkness fell, we stopped for the night.

We'd had our last “go for it because you can't get fresh seafood at home” meal for lunch. After several days of gastronomic indulgence, we decided something lighter, and lighter on the wallet, was in order for supper. 

And that's why I found myself checking out the granola bars in Aisle 13. Dazed and confused by the number of choices, I turned to look for Craig … and it happened. 

An older woman brought her cart to an abrupt stop next to me and said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Oh, no!” I thought. “Pinned against a wall of granola bars by a Jehovah's Witness. If this is a test, Lord, I'm going to fail it!”

She was oblivious to my inner turmoil and began explaining to me that her daughter and grandchildren had moved back home to live with her and her husband. They had five people in their house now, and could I help her buy some food?

I had glanced at the young woman beside her and mentally calculated the price of her elaborately braided hair and dazzling manicure. Before the woman paused for breath, I had decided that my answer would be no.

I wouldn't be writing this if I had politely said no and excused myself. Unfortunately, I proceeded to question the daughter about her choices and criticize her for putting her mother in the position of stopping strangers to ask for money. I eventually slowed down and told the older woman truthfully that I didn't have any cash, and she walked on.

As soon as I had turned back to the granola bars, I was overcome with shame. Craig reappeared, and I asked him to head for the checkout and get some cash back when he paid. I practically ran through the store, looking for the women, but they were not to be found. 

The situation is full of irony — we didn't have any cash because we had given it all away gladly the night before, to a man who ministers to the “least of these” of New Orleans. And we've been the recipients of many acts of generosity from our own parents, especially when our children needed something. 

Today I remember my words in Aisle 13 with regret and pray that the family's needs are being met by another believer or church. And don't worry — the Scriptures about unknowingly entertaining angels and serving “the least of these” often flash through my mind.

I want to be a generous person who is sensitive to the Holy Spirit when I'm faced with an outstretched hand, no matter whose hand it is. So the pride and arrogance that caused me to joyfully help the one who didn't ask and spitefully refuse the one who did confounds me. Yes, there was a test in Aisle 13, just not the one I expected. And obviously I wasn't prepared for either.

Sunday (Oct. 14) is World Hunger Sunday, and many Southern Baptists will hear statistics that will seem incomprehensible and distant. For me, those numbers are represented by one woman who humbled herself to ask for my help. I failed her, but I've learned that hard lesson and I won't fail the next person.

Southern Baptists have the opportunity to help every day by contributing to the World Hunger Fund, where 100 percent will be used to feed the hungry — in Jesus' name. You can read more about it, and donate online, at worldhungerfund.com .

Won't you join me in the pursuit of kindness that will reflect the love of Christ and bring glory to His name?
—-
Karen Cole is an editor at the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. 

DALLAS—Criswell College trustees approved on Oct. 4 a bold vision to expand beyond the school’s core Bible curriculum to “train biblical leaders in strategic disciplines” of business, law, communication and education, and continued working on the potential of a residential campus to accommodate expected growth and to better meet the needs of the 325-member student body.

“We feel confident this is the right direction for God to use our school to do something dramatic for the kingdom,” explained Tom Hatley of Rogers, Ark., who chaired the long-range study over the past year. “It’s time for the sacred to reintegrate the secular.”

Trustees were reminded of their founder’s identification of two proper functions of an education at a Christian college, hearing an audio recording from 1967 of W.A. Criswell’s appeal “to train and educate first a ministry for Jesus” and “second, that we might train Christian leaders to do God’s work in the earth.”

“For over 40 years, Criswell College has trained biblically passionate men and women to lead in church ministry and denominational service,” stated President Jerry Johnson in a release issued following the meeting. “Next year, we will introduce an expanded curriculum that will bring full circle W.A. Criswell’s dream of equipping leaders of all vocations to carry out their chosen profession or ministry through the Word of God, a Christian worldview and a strong Christian witness.”

The expanded curriculum will be developed by the faculty and approved by the board to enable the school to educate more men and women for “real-world ministry,” Johnson said. “Our vision is to train biblical leaders in strategic disciplines and charge them to impact every area of life with the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

Hatley added, “An expanded curriculum and new residential campus will allow us to fulfill Criswell’s original vision, bringing similar biblical revolution to the workplace and to secular environments.”

Trustee Ed Rawls of Plano described for the full board the initial meeting of the committee tasked with developing a vision for the future. “We needed to make a decision of whether Criswell College would remain a small Bible school, isolated in its influence, or make a jump to the next level of education.”

While surveys of alumni, faculty, students and friends confirmed the school had filled a niche as a theologically conservative training ground for ministers, Hatley said, “Others are doing what we alone once did.” Consequently, he said the group began asking what need was not being met and then rallied around Criswell’s original vision.

Trustee Keet Lewis said the committee imagined “a uniquely biblio-centric college education with intentional focus on the preparation for immediate deployment of graduates in the ‘white unto harvest fields’ as pastors, missionaries, church administrators, church planters and church revitalization coaches, as well as into marketplace ministry as leaders in business, medicine, law, public policy and other disciplines.”

“The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention has invested money, students, time and prayers in Criswell College,” noted trustee Jim Richards, who serves as SBTC executive director. “Now Criswell College must take the steps necessary to serve the SBTC constituency better by having a residential campus and an expanded curriculum,” he said, calling it the best decision for the convention, the college and the kingdom of God.

Offering his full support of the concept, trustee Jack Pogue of Dallas said the board should honor the theology on which the school was founded, but be ready to replace the facility in which it resides.

Trustee Jack Brady of Dallas asked whether approval of the proposal constituted a commitment to move to a new campus. Rawls responded, “If you make that decision you have no choice but to move to an outside location. We do not have enough room, enough expansion space. There is no way to support the university model here.”

Noting that a number of Bible colleges had gone out of business in recent years, trustee Harold Rawlings of Florence, Ky., added, ‘If we continue in the way we’ve been going that will be true of this school. This is a great step forward. It means the saving of Criswell College.”

Brady said he preferred to give more time to pray about the matter, while all of the other trustees there stood in support of a motion to begin the process toward an expanded curriculum and possible relocation.

Prior to deliberation, the board heard from Founder’s Day chapel speaker Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., who said their vision would either expand or limit the future of the college. “You let the size of your God determine the size of your vision,” he said, encouraging them to begin with vision casting, not problem solving.

In other business, the board promoted James W. Bryant to senior distinguished professor of pastoral theology. While serving as minister of evangelism and church organization at First Baptist Church of Dallas, Bryant was tasked by W.A. Criswell to explore the possibility of beginning a Bible institute. In 1971 he became the school’s first academic dean.

He pastored churches in New Mexico, Texas and Arkansas, led Luther Rice Seminary as president and taught religion at the University of Mobile before returning as academic dean at Criswell in 2002. In 2004 he began teaching pastoral theology.

Trustees also instituted a policy for instructional compensation for the president and vice presidents, approved trustees eligible for re-election and agreed to enlist a real estate firm to explore the sale of property in Arlington.

Newly elected officers include Lewis as chairman, John Mann of Springtown as vice-chairman and Pogue as secretary.

-30-

COTTONWOOD SHORES—How far would you have to go to find a town without a single church?
Until recently, the surprising answer was that you wouldn’t even have to leave Texas. Nestled between the upscale communities of Horseshoe Bay and Marble Falls in the Hill Country, the small working-class town of Cottonwood Shores didn’t have a single Christian congregation until Birth of Hope Baptist Church was planted last month under the leadership of church planter Shawn Condon.

“This was the first time for the townspeople of Cottonwood Shores to have the opportunity to come to a Southern Baptist service,” Condon told the TEXAN. “And that evening in our first service we had 26 Cottonwood Shores townspeople to come. When we gave the invitation, we had 11 people walk the aisle [to join the church].”

There was one church in Cottonwood Shores previously. But it was didn’t grow and eventually disbanded, leaving town officials longing for another church to help solve the town’s numerous social challenges.

Providentially, God was working at Buchanan West Baptist Church 26 miles away in Buchanan Dam. Led by Pastor John Taylor, the church was looking for a place to plant a new congregation. When Cottonwood Shores arose as a potential location, a delegation from Buchanan West visited the town’s mayor and city developer late last year. Her response to the idea of a church made it clear that God was calling them there.

“We mentioned the word church,” Taylor told the TEXAN, “and they said, ‘That’s what we were just sitting here thinking about. Our community needs a church that will help the community grow.’ It was almost like a divine appointment from my perspective.”

After that meeting, Buchanan West began taking surveys door-to-door in Cottonwood Shores, determining people’s openness to the gospel. By February they were ready to start a 15-week Bible study on Christian doctrine, which met Monday evenings at the local library. At Easter, momentum built when they participated in a community egg hunt, allowing them to meet between 150 and 200 kids along with their parents.

As the Bible study drew to a close, Taylor and his team began talking with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention about securing a church planter to partner with them in Cottonwood Shores. They discovered Condon and he was an obvious fit.

Driving from his home in Granbury, he joined the team from Buchanan West at the community Bible study and, along with his wife, worked at a Cottonwood Shores Vacation Bible School in June with nearly 30 children in attendance.

“His heart just broke for these people,” Taylor said.

After going through a church planter screening process with Condon and Buchanan West, the SBTC began a partnership to help fund the plant. The convention will provide some financial support for three years, with funds decreasing each year in an effort to help the church become financially independent. Condon is required to submit monthly reports and participate in periodic training activities.

At Birth of Hope’s first service Aug. 5, Buchanan West members joined Cottonwood Shores residents, packing 60 people in a room at the library intended for about 40. The congregation’s name reflected its vision for breathing new spiritual life into the town.

In the first few weeks, one more new member joined the 11 who responded to the invitation that first night, and through their outreach efforts the church is averaging 30 at Sunday worship. It also holds multiple Wednesday night Bible studies, and Condon spends as much time as he can meeting with prospects in the town.

“The town’s acceptance of us really shows in our attendance and the ministries that we’ve started,” said Condon, who works part-time at a hardware store.

Though the SBTC contributes the largest share of Birth of Hope’s budget, the church also receives support from Buchanan West, the Burnet-Llano Baptist Association in Marble Falls and several other partners.

Barry Calhoun, SBTC church planting team leader, said Birth of Hope exemplifies the convention’s vision for church plants.

“Shawn Condon is a great fit for the church in Cottonwood Shores, and we’re already seeing his ministry bear fruit,” Calhoun said. “Birth of Hope Baptist Church represents what we hope to do in dozens of locations across the state—plant contextually appropriate churches as part of a comprehensive evangelistic strategy.”

Birth of Hope’s goal for the future is ambitious: to build a multipurpose building that would serve as a community center and spiritual lighthouse for Cottonwood Shores. For Taylor, such a building would help the congregation live up to its name.

A building “would serve as a symbol of hope,” he said. “That’s what it would represent.”

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior. (1 Timothy 2:1-3)

Please pray as you cast your vote to fill the office of the 45th president of these United States. As Christians, we are faced with two candidates from whom we must choose: Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. They both provide a difficult decision for the Christian; however, let us consider it our God-given right as American citizens to vote. The right to vote has long been accompanied by much suffering, and every individual should feel obligated to vote. In America, our ancestors fought, bled, and died for the rights of all people to vote. The choice of not voting should never be an option for those who believe that voting is a God-given right to those in a democracy. We should never choose to not vote simply because the choices are difficult.

There are very good reasons for every American to vote. The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1920, was the culmination of the women’s suffrage movement. This cause was fought at both state and national levels to achieve voting rights for women. In addition, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 allowed African-Americans their right to vote. This act echoed the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified on Feb. 3, 1870, and prohibited each state and local government in the U.S. from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

For these causes every voting-age American citizen should enter a voting booth on Tuesday, Nov. 6, and make a decision. Many believe this is an election that will change how God views America unlike any other presidential election. The consensus, for many who plan to vote, is that we have a clear choice for president and must vote for the person who espouses the views that most closely represent our personal belief system. There are others who see this election as not providing a candidate they can trust or feel comfortable with when casting their vote. Many who hold this view are saying, “I will not vote.” If this is your conclusion, please allow me to ask you to pray. Pray that God will lead and guide you as you consider which candidate to support with your vote.

Mitt Romney is a social conservative who supports the views that conservatives hold in high esteem. Many believe that voting for Romney will allow the cultic beliefs of Mormonism to flow into the mainstream of American society. On the other hand, President Barack Obama has alienated many because of his support for gay rights and same-sex marriage. Many voters believe that President Obama, a social liberal and professing Christian, will cause our country to become a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah.

It’s apparent that each candidate would place America in an estranged position biblically and with God. As biblicists, we are asked to vote against our religious convictions if we vote for either candidate. Please pray when you cast your vote for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. We must remember that both men are subject to the power and control of God. Our God hears the prayers of his people if they will humble themselves and pray for those in leadership.

Things happen after prayer and prayer changes things. No prayer—no power; little prayer—little power; much prayer—much power; but great prayer—great power. In researching the religious background of past presidents, it appears that very few were professing Christians, yet they held to Christian principles. They reflected an America whose people were mostly Christian and held to the values of the Christian faith. Consequently, please pray as you cast your vote. (1 Timothy 2:1–3) Pray for all the people as Scripture advises because some Americans are changing their moral views to reflect anti-Christian principles. It is people who influence leaders.

Also in 1 Timothy 2, Paul continued to encourage the Christian church to pray for kings who were pagan and ungodly men. These kings held the lives of all within their kingdoms under their control. The believers in the first church were also held to the tyranny of men in high positions who could make their lives as Christians lives of suffering or lives of quiet peace. Paul suggests that through prayer God could touch kings and leaders, and give them a heart for the Christian community. Consequently, finding favor with kings and leaders would allow believers to live lives of dignity as they worshipped God. Please cast your vote in prayer that God will influence the hearts of all people—kings and men in high positions.

The song “God Bless America,” composed by Irving Berlin in 1918 and revised by him in 1938, is a patriotic song of prayer that children in America once started their school day singing. It continues to bring tears to the eyes of adults who love this country:

“God Bless America, Land that I love, stand beside her and guide her, through the night with a light from above. From the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans, white with foam, God bless America, my home sweet home, God bless America, my home sweet home.”

Before candidate Mitt Romney made his VP pick this summer, there were a few days of “chatter” in which former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s name was floated. The selection would have checked a lot of boxes. But Condi has described herself as “mildly pro-choice.” And being pro-choice has become a disqualifier for the Republican ticket.

Happily, these days one of the bottom-line requirements for Republican White House hopefuls and their running mates is that you’ve got to be pro-life. The pro-life position has long been a political winner for Republicans. Polls now show the country tips pro-life.

But there’s a stark contrast between the positions of the two major political parties on this issue.
Our Declaration of Independence explains that humans “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Republican Party platform recognizes “that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.

But, in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court found in the Constitution another “right”—to abortion. The Democrats’ platform “strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay.”

It’s been a struggle, but the country has mostly held the line against forcing citizens to pay for the abortions of others. The possibility that taxpayers might be required to fund abortion almost derailed the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

We now know those concerns had merit. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ mandate, under the ACA’s “preventative care” provision, requires employers, including religious organizations, to provide insurance that covers, without copay, contraception, even the kind that can work by causing abortion. This assault upon the religious freedom of groups who oppose contraception, abortion, or sterilization must not be allowed to stand.

The Affordable Care Act authorizes the HHS secretary to craft most of its implementing regulations. The HHS mandate is likely the tip of the iceberg. Coverage of surgical abortions, as a “preventative service,” could be next.

Congressional budget battles also touch the sanctity of life. In the last Congress, a stalemate over federal funding of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, nearly shut down the government. Proponents of such funding insist that cutting it deprives women of screenings, birth control and other services, and constitutes a war on women.

Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, decries such rhetoric, insisting that, “The politicization of ‘women’s health’ has almost completely obscured the victimization of women in abortion clinics across the country and the way in which a profit-hungry abortion lobby fights any protections for women.”

The Affordable Care Act has raised the stakes in this election for the unborn, and also for the medically vulnerable and the elderly. Upon inauguration, a president could take immediate action on behalf of life beginning by launching the effort to repeal and replace the ACA.

And, there’s an area in which congressional action is long overdue. We have the technology to learn a lot about the pre-born baby. The dark side of this ability is that imperfections can be detected that motivate doctors and parents to consider snuffing out that little life. Amazingly, it’s perfectly legal in the U.S. to abort a child simply because he or she is not the gender the parents were hoping for.

Investigations done by Lila Rose and her team at Live Action reveal that Planned Parenthood is performing sex-selection abortions. A pro-life Congress should pass the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, (PRENDA) which would ban sex-selection or race-selection abortions. This bill, or another, should also address the disabled.

States are constantly passing laws to regulate and limit abortions. A pro-life administration would stop opposing and filing lawsuits against bills that

—defund Planned Parenthood

—bar abortions from taking place after the 20th week of pregnancy. (There is broad medical consensus that the fetus feels pain after this point, and probably much earlier.)

—require abortion clinics to meet health and safety standards similar to surgical centers or hospitals

—require sonograms, waiting periods, means of informed consent.

The next president could appoint three or more Supreme Court justices with lifetime tenure. The right Court could overturn Roe v. Wade and send abortion back to the states. Many would outlaw it.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life America, tells her audiences on college campuses, “If a candidate does not support the basic right to life, we believe they cannot be trusted to handle any other issue, fiscal or social, with honor and dignity.” Her generation is more pro-life than their parents. Let’s pray all of them are listening.

—Penna Dexter is a Baptist Press columnist and frequent panelist on the “Point of View” syndicated radio program.