Al Gore, pictured here from "An Inconvenient Truth," is EthicsDaily.com's 2007 Baptist of the Year.
Posted on 12/30/2007 6:08:54 AM PST by Libloather
Baptist of the Year: Al Gore
Robert Parham
12-28-07
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.
Robert Parham is executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics.
Exactly.
By all rights and measures, I am a moderate Protestant and I think this Robert Parham is a fake and a tool.
It's hard to tell sometimes who is a willing participant in all this and who is being held hostage by world players. I'm thinking Gore is having too much fun at this for it to be the later.
“So telling bold face lies and scaring kids to death to promote an anti-American political agenda is both ethical and Christian. If it is, I don’t want any.” ~ Always Right
Me neither.
In reality, he is just another shake-down artist who failed to declare his financial interest before whipping up worldwide alarm with his trademark errors and exaggerations. He’s the director of Lehman Brothers, a global finance house that wants to control the worldwide managed market in carbon-emissions trading. He founded his own “green” corporation, Generation Investment Management, and is a paid member of the Board of a renewable-energy company. In the UK, if anyone made a speech containing so many deliberate and unidirectional errors as he did in Bali, and failed to declare his financial interest, he would be committing a criminal offence. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1942155/posts
Between him and the theologically challenged “Reverend” John (’Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen’ ) Houghton, et.al., it’s hard to say who are the biggest “Liars for Jesus”.
There is such a thing as pathological science. Science becomes unhealthy when its only real question -— “what is true?” -— is sabotaged by vested interests, by ideological Commissars, or even by grant-swinging scientists. Today’s Global Warming campaign is endangering real, honest science. Global Warming superstition has become an international power grab, and good science suffers as a result. ~ James Lewis
‘Global Warming’ as Pathological Science November 02, 2007 http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/global_warming_as_pathological.html
I’m Southern Baptist and believe me, I’m as stunned as anyone that this particular group would pick anyone like this man who IMO has absolutely no character and wouldn’t know the truth if it hit him in the face. I think that this is a break-away group of Baptists who consider themselves progressives not members of the “normal” Baptists.
Americans are not stupid..they are just busy. What the morons want is for us to stay asleep...while they play on their greedy godless little playground that they call politics.
This guy is truly a Baptist Turkey (sorry). But one sentence stood out as memorable, his comment on the Lebanese Baptists:
“They weathered a withering war.”
I can just hear Dorothy saying that as she strides down the Yellow Brick Road.
Thank you so much for coming to my rescue. Happy New Year to you!
Happy New Year to you Old Mountain man! God Bless you in the year ahead.
Follow the link and click around. This ‘ethics daily’ is sponsored by the Baptist Center for Ethics (BCE). This organization intends to develop a new Baptist Conventent. It has a convention planned at the Carter Center and Jimmy started this thing.
From their website:
“What is the New Baptist Covenant?
The New Baptist Covenant is an informal alliance of more than 30 racially, geographically, and theologically diverse Baptist organizations that have come together to form an authentic and genuine prophetic voice for Baptists in North America. The movement was birthed on April 10, 2006, when 18 Baptist leaders gathered at The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, at the invitation of prominent Baptist and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, to discuss new ways of cooperating. The 18 representatives committed themselves and their organizations to reaffirming traditional Baptist values, including sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ and its implications for public and private morality. The group has specifically committed themselves to their obligations as Christians to fulfill the biblical mandate to promote peace with justice, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick and the marginalized, and promote religious liberty and respect for religious diversity.”
Also, from their website:
“Why was the Southern Baptist Convention not invited to participate in the New Baptist Covenant?
While a number of the leaders in the New Baptist Covenant are members of Southern Baptist Churches, and individual Southern Baptists and Southern Baptist congregations are expected to participate in the Celebration, the SBC’s leadership has to date not been involved in this initiative. The organizations represented in the New Baptist Covenant are members of the North American Baptist Fellowship, an affiliate of the Baptist World Alliance. The Southern Baptist Convention withdrew from membership in the North American Baptist Fellowship and the Baptist World Alliance in 2004.”
Quite simply this is a group of ‘progressive’ baptists who want to undermine traditional baptists while promoting policies of the progressive movement, ie, democrats.
They came for the Baptists first and I said nothing.
stupidity, arrogance, and unmitigated chutzpah; a few of the things that cannot be detached from democrats.
this should have been an extreme barf alert.
Next time I run into my Baptist friends at the liquor store, I’ll make sure to ask them what they think of their coreligionist, Albert Arnold Gore. ;-)
Somebody needs to explain to these people what a Baptist truly is. They don’t have a clue.
Baptist gnip...
Don’t know whether to laugh or barf about this!
He’s not Baptist. He’s a Globalist.
Were we blessed we were to get GB as president? It wasn’t supposed to have happened. Can you imagine this man as president?
Exactly.
“theologically diverse” = false prophets = subversive pagans
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=dncfalseprophets
Gore is getting nervous about what he’s done and is trying to position himself as ethical, while completely not.
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