The following provides some necessary background to the series I'll be writing on the May 26-28 Memorial Day Celebration at Stone Mountain in Georgia. It presents material on the political and theological character of the Southern Baptist Convention and highlights the extraordinarily close relationship between the Bush Administration and the SBC.

Neither the coverage from Americans United, or the following story in the Washington Post, took note of a key aspect of the Memorial Day event ; the sponsoring groups, the Task Force Patriots, Holman Bible Ministries, and LifeWay Books, were all tied to the Southern Baptist Convention. In other words, the event wasn't just Christian, or Protestant. It was wholly colored by the theological beliefs of the SBC, a denomination concentrated in the American South, which exerts inordinate influence in the US military, and which has enjoyed a close relationship with the Bush Administration. The SBC shares, with President Bush, aggressively pro-war views. Functionally, both George W. Bush and most of the leadership of the SBC at least, but possibly a majority of the SBC's membership as well, embrace what some would call a "theology of war".

The Memorial Day celebration I attended was a celebration and valorization of that "theology of war" and the event, and even the fact that such brazenly sectarian sponsoring groups could attract such elaborate planned participation on the part of both the US Army and especially the US Air Force, was suggestive of the extent to which religious viewpoints sympathetic, at least, to the SBC's agenda may have made inroads within the US military.

Let's turn, briefly, to a passage from a 2006 US Army War College paper describing, in dispassionate terms, the nature of the problem:

For many evangelical Christians, regardless of their profession, their religious beliefs are so strongly embedded that it is difficult to separate their personal views from their professional opinions. Without a firm understanding of this potential pitfall, it could threaten our military's religious pluralism and tolerance at a time when America's population and Armed Forces are more diverse, ethnically and religiously, than ever before. Fortunately, the military's unshakable faith in [The] Constitution makes the possibility of sustained, open conflict between military and civilian authorities implausible, at least for the foreseeable future. The real danger to strategic decision-making is the gradual decline in effectiveness that leaders may not notice until it is too late. America's military leaders must ensure preconceived notions based on religious or political ideology do not adversely shape the decision making process, nor can it allow intuition based on "automated expertise" to override an objective evaluation of relevant possibilities. Failure to do so can result in lead to an erosion of trust with civilian leadership and degrade national policy decisions.[ excerpt from "The impact of religious and political affiliation on strategic military decisions and policy recommendations", by William Millonig, Graduating Class Of 2006, for the Strategic Studies Institute of The US Army War College

An exclusively SBC event : The Bush Administration and The Southern Baptist Convention

[introductory note: I am not discussing, below, technical points that might be relevant specifically to legal distinctions on church-state separation, and I am not claiming, as of this installment, to provide evidence that the event in question crossed the line.]

The three sponsoring religious organizations, Task Force Patriot, Holman Bible Ministries, and LifeWay, were all associated with the Southern Baptist Convention and so the participation of the US military in the event seemed to endorse a fractional, extreme sectarian element within American Christianity which, among other positions, advocates "wifely submission" to husbands (19) and has taken increasingly strong opposition to women Southern Baptists serving as leaders and pastors (20).  The SBC has long opposed abortion rights, but lately the SBC may be moving in the direction of attacking legal birth control as well (24). Additionally, the falsified "Christian nation" version of American history promoted by historical revisionist David Barton and others may have made deep inroads within SBC culture (25), and the Convention has been linked to Christian Reconstructionism (23). The Southern Baptist Convention has attacked other Christian denominations as "inconsistent with Biblical Christianity" (11), and the rightward, theocratic drift of the SBC can be seen in growing tendency within the Convention calling for a mass exodus of Southern Baptists from public schools (22) .

The extent to which the SBC has enjoyed the special favor of the Bush Administration was demonstrated in a recent exclusive meeting, between US Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and representatives of the SBC, in which Gonzalez appeared to be, in effect, "deputizing" the entire 16 million member Southern Baptist Convention to enforce supposed infringements on "religious liberty". (6)  The current political extremity (17) of the SBC can be seen in a recent public statement, made by the current Vice President of the SBC, that appeared to condone domestic terrorism (7)

The SBC was alone among both American Christian denominations and major America religious groups in supporting, prior to the US invasion, George W. Bush's goal of attacking Iraq (8) . In 2004, over 200 prominent Christian theologians signed a statement accusing Mr. Bush of promoting a "Theology Of War". (1) Additionally, there is a long history of both active and former SBC leaders vilifying Islam and Mohammed.

Public rhetoric at the three day Stone Mountain event, and especially during the four hour worship service I recorded on Sunday May 27th, contained all of the elements described by David Domke in a November 2004 article (2) Domke wrote describing his study of the political and religious rhetoric from George W. Bush ( and also from key members of the Bush Administration in the 2001 to 2003 period covered in Domke's study )  which, according to Domke, featured four especially notable elements:

"Simplistic and exclusionary black-and-white conceptions of the political landscape, most notably good vs. evil and security vs. peril

Calls for immediate action on administration policies as a necessary part of the nation's "calling" and "mission" against terrorism

Declarations about the will of God for America and for the spread of U.S. conceptions of freedom and liberty

Claims that dissent from the administration is unpatriotic and a threat to the nation and globe"

If any one major American religious, and Christian, denomination has enjoyed the special attention of the Bush Administration, that denomination has been the Southern Baptist Convention ; even top SBC leaders such as Richard Land have admitted the relationship is quite close (10) and some suggest the SBC functions as more or less an appendage of the GOP (15). Leaders and representatives from the Southern Baptist Convention (9) have repeatedly been invited, for exclusive meetings, to the White House during George W. Bush's 6 and 1/2 years in office and both George W. Bush (3) and also top members of his administration have attended and spoken at SBC events (26).

Especially in light of the extraordinarily close relationship between the SBC and the Bush Administration, Bobby Welch's public mention, from the main event stage on Saturday afternoon, May 26, that he would be reading a personal letter from George W. Bush written specifically for the event seemed to imply direct presidential endorsement not just of Christianity but especially of the SBC's interpretation of Christianity. George Bush has endorsed Welch more than once in the past ; in June 2006, for example, Bush praised Welch, then the SBC's president, in a "surprise" taped address to the 2006 SBC general convention (12) and Welch met privately with Bush, in the White House, in May of 2006 (13). On June 22, 2004, US GOP Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL)  praised Welch's nomination to be SBC president in a Senate floor statement ( 16).  Welch, author of "You The Warrior Leader", is described as a close friend to the now notorious Lt. General William G. "Jerry" Boykin and may be currently the most aggressive advocate of what could be characterized as "War Christianity" (14)

Furthermore, with 1,000 plus SBC chaplains serving within the US military, the SBC exerts considerable influence and, adding to that, the Bush Administration has just nominated SBC member Douglas L. Carver to serve as head of the US Army's military chaplain program. (21)

Footnotes:

(1) http://www.mediatransparency.org/storyprinterfriendly.php?storyID =67

(2) http://www.counterpunch.org/domke11132004.html

(3) George Bush may actually have addressed the SBC's yearly national conventions, via satellite, every year since coming into office. Below are examples from 2002, 2004, 2005, and 2006 :

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_13_119/ai_88581887

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=24 225

Transcript of 2002 address:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2889/is_24_38/ai_89239014

2005:  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_14_122/ai_n1486782 0

2006:  http://www.sbcbaptistpress.net/BPnews.asp?ID=23455

(4) http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/67896.htm

(5) George W. Bush's ties to individual Southern Baptist Convention leaders such as Richard Land and Bobby Welch have been extensive. As a Media Matters article ( http://mediamatters.org/items/200411300004 ) on the Land/GOP/Bush connection relates:

"

Land has connections to both President Bush and the Republican Party. As Land's online biography notes, "President George W. Bush appointed Dr. Land to two terms on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (September 2001 to September 2004)." In its post-election roundup of the election's winners and losers, TIME magazine noted on November 15: "As director of the political arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, Richard Land has enjoyed a long and close relationship with the born-again Bush. And when the President was forming his position on stem-cell research, Land helped convince the President to prohibit new embryos from being used in the research." The Miami Herald noted in a October 24, 2002, article that Land was a key supporter of Bush's decision to invade Iraq, drafting a letter to Bush in 2002 stating that "we believe that your stated policies concerning Saddam Hussein ... are prudent and fall well within the time-honored criteria of just war theory."
Land rallied support for Bush in the 2004 presidential election through the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission's " I Vote Values" Christian voter registration program; while officially nonpartisan, the program planned to register significantly more Republicans than Democrats, according to Land himself in an article in the June 18 edition of The New York Times (reprinted here)."

(6) http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/2/22/104711/204

(7) http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/5/2/155843/5848

(8) http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0314,mondo3,43030,6.html

(9) Bush meets with current SBC president, October 2006

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/images/20061011-5 _p101106pm-388-515h.html

Bush given "religious liberty" award by Richard Land, January 2007

http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=24866

(10) http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/06/if_not_america_ who.html

(11) SBC warns against Mormonism :

http://www.onenewsnow.com/2007/02/southern_baptist_convention_wa. php

(12) http://www.sbcbaptistpress.net/BPnews.asp?ID=23455

(13) http://www.christianindex.org/2215.article

(14) http://www.beliefnet.com/story/159/story_15983_1.html

(15) http://villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/2004/09/the_christ ocrat.php

(16) http://sessions.senate.gov/pressapp/record.cfm?id=223573

(17) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_14_121/ai_n6159291

(18) http://www.biblicalrecorder.org/content/news/2005/6_17_2005/ne170 605sbc.shtml

(19) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_n19_v115/ai_210032 78

(20) http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/06/14/southern.baptists.02/
      http://atheism.about.com/od/baptistssouthernbaptists/a/baptistwom en_2.htm  
      http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/southernbaptistconvention.htm

(21) http://militaryministry.wordpress.com/2007/05/21/

(22) http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/3/1/9149/94839
      http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/6/15/93237/6378
      http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/1/19/92512/8165

(23) http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/3/23/93721/1715
      http://www.talk2action.org/story/2005/11/24/71127/019
      http://www.talk2action.org/story/2005/11/30/10554/198

(24) http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/2/28/162836/267/

(25) http://www.thebigdaddyweave.com/2006/09/baptist-college-embraces- christian_08.html
        http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:VUYpTHnfrLIJ:www.floridabapt istwitness.com/5386.article+%22Southern+Baptist+Convention%22,%22 David+Barton%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=32&gl=us
http://www.coralridge.org/impact/2004_Sep_Pg6.htm

(26) http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/67896.htm