Baptist of the Year: Al Gore

Al Gore, pictured here from "An Inconvenient Truth," is EthicsDaily.com's 2007 Baptist of the Year.

Al Gore is EthicsDaily.com's pick as Baptist of the Year for 2007. He has pressed for the global good with a compelling message about the danger of climate change and a clear call for moral responsibility, knitting together science and faith, reason and passion. He has refused to be distracted by the character-assassins, the fear-mongers, the science-deniers and the merchants of short-term gain. He has remained faithful to his mission of protecting the earth and its inhabitants.

In the opening paragraphs of his Nobel Peace Prize lecture, Gore said, "I have a purpose here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I have prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it."

With an acknowledgment of Providence, Gore tethered his speech to his moral vision. He quoted the Bible, refused to make God responsible for human inaction, called squarely for an ethic of love for neighbor, confessed human failure and placed moral authority at the tip of the needed plan for planetary redemption. His address was profoundly Christian without being offensively so.

"The earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong," he said. "We are what is wrong, and we must make it right."

Gore appraised realistically one of the major obstacles to making things right—the deficit of leadership. Quoting from Winston Churchill about those who ignored the threat of Adolf Hitler, Gore spoke about the character of too many world leaders: "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent."

Gore has challenged that leadership deficit with a decisive doggedness that surely comes from the depths of the prophetic vision.

Regrettably no Baptist has received less applause from Baptists than Gore, a shameful but not unexpected reality from a people snarled in religious fear, suspicious of science and stuck in the rut of spiritualized reading of the Bible.

"No prophet is accepted in his own country" (Luke 4:24, KJV), remarked Jesus after he issued his moral mission statement in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4:18-19), which concluded with a pro-environmental vision. That vision proclaimed "the year of the Lord's favor," a time that protected the land, its livestock and laborers from exhaustion.

From that day to our day, people of faith have too often pushed aside the prophetic imagination that beckons us to shelter the earth, the powerless and the poor.

Yet our own well-being depends on remembering that God-given obligation to guard the garden and our neighbors from harm. If we fail to honor the prophetic witness, we abandon our reason for being and risk our own impoverishment.

Honoring Al Gore is one way to stir that moral memory with the hope of a renewed faithfulness among goodwill Baptists.

EthicsDaily.com acknowledges that our recognition is a modest one. It all but disappears in comparison with the long line of globally prestigious awards for the former vice president—the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, the third annual Quill Award, the Founders Award at the International Emmy Awards and an Oscar. Nonetheless, we offer a small Baptist voice of thanks to a faithful servant of the global good.

Tennessee's Nobel Peace Laureate becomes the first individual North American Baptist to receive EthicsDaily.com's Baptist of the Year recognition.

Lebanese Baptists were EthicsDaily.com's pick as the Baptists of the Year in 2006. They weathered a withering war. They showed physical courage and spiritual grace under unspeakable pressure. They used the best of technology to share their story. They shared their limited resources to house and care for a flood of Shiite refugees. They spoke with a compelling theological clarity about the Middle East that was long overdue, challenging the misreading of the Bible that mingles bad theology with bad politics.

Brit Paul Montacute was EthicsDaily.com's Baptist of the Year in 2005 for being a global Good Samaritan, who directed Baptist aid initiatives in response to two major natural disasters: the tsunami and the earthquake in Pakistan.

In 2004, EthicsDaily.com closed the year with a list of proactive Baptists who had exercised constructive influence for the common good and/or deserved to be watched in the year ahead. At the top of the list were three British Baptists: Doug Balfour, David Coffey and Tony Peck.

Another article from the leaer of this group...sounds like a group of liberal democrat baptists, a la Jimmy Carter.

Learn Just War Rules, Don’t Assume Nation Is Always Just

Robert Parham
03-27-07

Just war rules and claims of a just war share a common word with completely different meanings.

Placing the word “just” before the word “war” doesn’t make war morally just, contrary to the feelings of pro-war American Christians.

Some American Christians think that their nation’s cause is always a just one, always morally right. Therefore, wars are always just. Such thinking misunderstands the rules of just war.

The confusion between the two uses of just allows some theocratic Christians to manipulate their followers into supporting misguided military adventures. These Christians play a slippery game of conflating the two completely different concepts for purely political purposes.

Just war is a time-honored way to evaluate whether the use of military force has a moral justification to it. Just war offers a series of speed bumps to slow down a nation’s rush to war, a deadly slippery slope for the United States with its toxic blend of national self-righteousness and the military-industrial complex.

Just war argues that some wars are just, if they pass all rigorous rules. Passing one rule is not enough. Failing one rule is enough to keep a war from being certified as just.

Here are the rules of just war:

First is just cause. Stopping genocide is a just cause for war. Had the U.S. used its military to intervene in Rwanda to halt the genocide there, the U.S. would have used force morally. Invading a country years after genocide or mass murders have occurred hardly qualifies as a just cause. Ensuring access to oil is an unjust cause.

Second is just authority. Going to war requires in our system of government the approval of Congress. The president cannot unilaterally go to war. Just authority ensures that the citizenry understand the reasons for war and grant their assent to war. Of course, just authority is based on the assumption that the governing authorities are truthful with the public about the dangers.

Third is last resort. For a war to be morally just, the nation must first seek to resolve the conflict without military force. A nation must negotiate exhaustively before resorting to war.

Fourth is just intent. Revenge, economic gain and racial supremacy are wrongful reasons for war. The intent of war must be to restore peace, not avenge a father’s honor.

Fifth is probability of success. A just war must have a high chance to achieve its stated purpose. One of the stated purposes for the war against Iraq was to establish democracy, a noble but unrealistic goal given the cultural realities and the lack of historical examples of authentic democracies in the Middle East.

Sixth is proportionality of cost. That means the war accomplishes more good than harm. After four years of war with no end in sight and civil war cited by most objective observers, the costs of continued occupation creates more harm than good. Promising progress and pleading for more time and troops will not make the cost proportional to the destruction issued.

Seventh is a clear announcement. Reasons for war and reconciliation must be spelled out clearly. The other side must know beyond a shadow of doubt why an attack is likely.

Eighth is just means. As the argument for war must consider just rules, the fighting of war must follow just rules. Targeting non-combatant civilians is immoral. If non-combatant civilians are killed unintentionally, that is morally tolerable. That is what is called the double effect. Fighting a war in urban areas in the midst of a civil war makes the just conduct of war very difficult, if not impossible.

The Iraq war did not pass just war rules before it was launched. Given all the ideological, economic, theological and psychological forces that pushed and pulled our nation into war, the Christian community should have been the one institution to slam on the brakes. Indeed many Christians tried. Catholic and Methodist bishops, many denominational leaders and a host of Christian organizations opposed the war. Other Christian leaders remained silent. Not surprisingly, the Christian right blessed the war. They were wrong to do so. Those who were silent were also wrong.

The Iraq war does not pass just war rules now. Continuing it is morally wrong. The Christian community needs to speak with simplicity, clarity and repetitiveness about the moral necessity to end the war.

Robert Parham is executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics.

He has pressed for the global good with a compelling message about the danger of climate change and a clear call for moral responsibility, knitting together science and faith, reason and passion. He has refused to be distracted by the character-assassins, the fear-mongers, the science-deniers and the merchants of short-term gain. He has remained faithful to his mission of protecting the earth and its inhabitants.

In this world of moral relativity and semantic mysticism, every one of these things could be (and have been) said about Hitler or Stalin or Mao or Bin Ladin or Al Qaeda.. Anyone can posit a threat and make a clear call for what he claims is moral responsibility toward ameliorating the invented threat. And con-men, whether political or merely economic, always "knit together" science, faith, reason, and passion to make something that looks to the mark to be genuine. Screw Algore and his profits of doom--he is one of the greatest fearmongers and science-deniers walking the planet today. As far as "merchants of short-term gain" are concerned, Algore has gotten in on the ground floor of the economic opportunism opened up by his scare tactics: "We're all gonna die if we don't reduce the Danger Substance. Step right up, folks, step right up and buy Algore's Danger Substance and Guilt Reducer."

I have acquaintances that keep insisting Gore is going to be drafted by the Democrats to run for president. I tell them they are because:

1. He is making too much money right and with a U.S. carbon credit system looming he stands to make billions as an international broker and consultant. He makes a couple of million now just to appear in public with people like airline owner Richard Branson.

2. If Gore ran for president his finances would be open to public scrutiny. Not only might this be embarrassing but his partners won’t allow it because it puts the spotlight on them. From Newsweek Nov. 26:

[Gore has pledged to hand over his KP “salary” to Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit he chairs. But the gift is more symbolic than material. Gore’s salary—his cut of the 2 percent “management fee” that KP partners get on all investments—is typically a sliver of the total compensation that VCs receive. If Gore’s profit-sharing deal is anything like the firm’s other 23 partners, he’s also in line to collect tens of millions of dollars a year. That’s because partners carve up 30 percent of the profits if and when the alternative-energy start-ups that KP supports go public or are sold. (Kleiner Perkins declined to comment on Gore’s compensation, but his communications director, Kalee Kreider, confirmed that he plans to donate only his “guaranteed income” to charity.) Should Gore’s prospecting unearth a clean-energy gold mine the size of Google—which earned billions for KP partners—his share of the loot could make him U.S. history’s richest ex-veep. Emphasis on “ex”: Gore’s relationship with KP is perhaps the strongest signal yet that his days in politics are over. The firm is notoriously secretive about its finances, and it’s unlikely that KP would strike a deal with Gore if the association could subject the firm to public scrutiny. And anyway, with the kind of money Gore stands to make, why run for president?]

How smug and self-righteous these people are!

Also, how wrong. Let's look at the actual passage...

Luke 4:14-21 (New International Version)

Jesus Rejected at Nazareth

14Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

16He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. 17The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

18"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."[a]

20Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, 21and he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

Where does it say, "a time that protected the land?" Well, maybe they're using a different version. Let's check...

New American Standard Version, which I believe is the favored Bible of the Baptists

King James Version

Oops, it's not there either. What does the Bible say?

Genesis 1:26-30 (New International Version)

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.

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