WASHINGTON (ABP) — Directors of the Baptist Joint Committee focused on the future during their annual meeting Oct. 2-3, hearing updates on a major capital campaign and honoring the first winner of the organization's essay-writing contest for high school students.
“In America today, religiously motivated legislation is becoming increasingly prevalent,” said James Gorsuch, winner of the newly established annual contest. He came to Washington from his North Carolina home to present the paper to BJC board members.
Gorsuch, who submitted the essay in his senior year of high school but is now a first-year student at North Carolina's Elon University, pointed to the heated debates over religion in public life in arguing that Baptists and other Christians in the United States have forgotten the examples set by their spiritual forebears. “America has drifted far from the example of such wise Christians as John Leland, Thomas Helwys, and John Clarke, men who understood that when a government endorses a faith, religious liberty is impossible,” he said.
Reginald McDonough, chairman of BJC's 70th Anniversary Capital Campaign, told board members that the three-year effort to raise $5 million is headed into its middle phase.
“We do feel that very soon we will surpass the $1 million mark in our pledges, which will be a very significant stepping-stone in the campaign,” McDonough, retired executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, said. The campaign is timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the church-state watchdog group's 1936 founding. Most of its funds will be designated to purchase, renovate and endow the maintenance on a permanent Washington home for the organization, which currently rents office space on Capitol Hill.
In other action, the group adopted a $1.15 million budget for 2007, a slight increase over its 2006 budget of $1.13 million. The board also welcomed four new members: Carmen Anderson of Tennessee, representing the Religious Liberty Council; Charles Beckett of Virginia, representing the BGAV; Dennis Dewey of Missouri, representing the North American Baptist Conference; and DeWitt Smith Jr. of Georgia, representing the Progressive National Baptist Convention.
Board members also bid farewell to two young BJC staffers. Staff attorney Stephen Reeves is leaving the organization Nov. 1 to return to his hometown of Austin, Texas, to work for the Baptist General Convention of Texas' Christian Life Commission. Emilee Simmons has left her post as BJC's associate communications director to become director of communications for the American Health Lawyers Association in Washington.
-30-