(ABP) — Here are some of the top newsmakers in 2009 as reported by Associated Baptist Press.
John Upton
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1. The Baptist movement turns 400
Baptists gathering in 2009 celebrated the 400th anniversary of the Baptist tradition. While there are different theories of Baptist origins, most scholars today date the first Baptist church to 1609, when a band of Separatists from the Anglican Church who had fled England to avoid persecution established a congregation near Amsterdam. Baptists from around the world celebrated the event in conjunction with the Baptist World Alliance General Council meeting July 27-Aug. 1 in the Netherlands.
During the meeting John Upton, executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, was nominated as president of the Baptist World Alliance. If elected at next year's Baptist World Congress, he will begin a five-year term to end in 2015.
2. Maggie Lee Henson
On July 12 a bus carrying youth from First Baptist Church in Shreveport, La., on the way to a youth camp in Georgia overturned on a Mississippi interstate, injuring all on board. One of the most critically injured, 14-year-old Brandon Ugarte, died on the way to the hospital.
Maggie Lee Henson
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The other, the daughter of a church staff member, clung to life for three more weeks before succumbing to severe head trauma. Maggie Lee Henson's parents described her struggle in a website page that went viral, spawning a Facebook prayer group numbering in the thousands. After her death on Aug. 2, supporters determined to keep her spirit alive by recruiting people to do a good deed in her honor on what would have been her 13th birthday.
Nearly 18,000 people observed "Maggie Lee for Good Day" on Oct. 29. The name was taken from a song in her favorite Broadway musical, "Wicked," because she had dreamed of one day being an actress.
"My passion is acting and singing," Maggie Lee said in a family video played at a memorial service celebrating her life Aug.6. "My goals are to become a better Christian, a better actress and a better performer and a better daughter."
3. Wiley Drake
Best known for ubiquitous motions at annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention — including the one that led to the denomination's eight-year Disney boycott beginning in 1997 — Southern Baptists rewarded the irrepressible small-church pastor from Southern California by electing him the convention's second vice president in 2006.
Wiley Drake
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On June 1 of this year Drake said on a radio program he broadcasts over the Internet that the May 31 murder of an abortion provider in Wichita, Kan., was for him an answer to prayer. Invited by Fox News Radio to discuss the comment, first reported by Associated Baptist Press, the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., said he had been praying for George Tiller, one of the nation's largest providers of late-term abortions, using "imprecatory" prayer — selected Psalms from the Old Testament intended to invoke God's judgment upon an enemy. Asked by host Alan Colmes if he was directing imprecatory prayer toward anyone else, Drake replied: "The usurper that is in the White House is one, B. Hussein Obama."
Some SBC leaders — including a prominent African-American pastor who had already called for a resolution praising Obama's election — denounced Drake's comments. The SBC, which had been vocal in support of President Bush during his eight years in office, responded by passing a resolution applauding the significance of America's first black president but denouncing many of Obama's policies.
Drake, meanwhile, who was on the ticket in California during last fall's election as running mate for minor-party presidential candidate Alan Keyes, pursued a lawsuit challenging the legitimacy of Obama's presidency. Drake claimed Obama did not qualify for election because he was born outside of the United States — an allegation the Obama camp has repeatedly denied and that has been repeatedly investigated by journalists and found meritless.
A federal judge dismissed Drake's lawsuit Oct. 29. Drake's lawyer filed an appeal on Nov. 16. More recently, Drake lifted his call for imprecatory prayer, and said he is now praying that Obama will live long enough to be tried for treason.
Fred Winters
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4. Violence and churches
Fred Winters, 45, pastor of First Baptist Church in Maryville, Ill., died March 8 when a deranged gunman walked into his church during a worship service and opened fire. One of the bullets struck Winters, a past president of the Illinois Baptist State Association, in the heart, killing him instantly. Terry Sedlacek, 27, was charged with the murder. On Oct. 29 a judge declared Sedlacek unfit to stand trial and confined him to a mental institution. After relying on guest preachers during a period of mourning, First Baptist Church this fall called an interim pastor while it seeks a permanent successor to its beloved pastor of 21 years. The process is expected to take about two years.
The Illinois church wasn't the only Southern Baptist congregation to lose a pastor to gun violence this year. Jonathan Ayers, 29, pastor of Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia, Ga., was leaving a convenience store in nearby Toccoa Sept. 1 where he had just withdrawn money from an ATM. Rushed by undercover police officers wanting to question him about a woman he had given a ride who was a subject in a drug investigation, Ayers panicked and tried to drive away. Perceiving a threat, officers began firing at Ayers' vehicle, fatally wounding him. Family and church members held a vigil Oct. 3 demanding a complete investigation into the shooting. A prosecutor turned results of a Georgia Bureau of Investigation report over to a grand jury, which found officers involved in the shooting justified in using lethal force. A civil suit against the officers is expected from Ayers' survivors.
Jonathan Ayers
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On Sept. 28, 69-year-old Mary Shepard, treasurer of First Baptist Church of Anna, Ill., and 76-year-old Leona Mount, a custodian, were working inside the church when they apparently encountered a burglar who beat them severely while robbing them. Willis Bates, 45, of Anna was charged with attempted murder and held on $1 million bond. Both women are expected to recover, something that Pastor Tony Foeller described as a miracle.
Other churches became indirectly involved with violence. Texas Baptist chaplains were among the first to minister following a Nov. 5 shooting at Fort Hood that left 13 dead and 29 wounded. College Park Baptist Church in Orlando, Fla., opened its doors a day later after a former disgruntled employee shot up the offices of a nearby engineering firm, killing one.
Baptists in Samson, Ala., ministered in the wake of a March 10 killing spree by Michael McLendon, who took 10 lives before turning a gun on himself. A little more than two weeks later, First Baptist Church in Carthage, N.C., offered shelter to residents of a nearby senior-citizen center where a gunman killed eight and wounded two others March 29.
5. Broadway Baptist Church ousted
On June 23 the Southern Baptist Convention severed a 125-year relationship with Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, after an unprecedented year-long investigation by SBC officials of newspaper reports that the church affirms homosexuality. A motion from the previous year's convention asked that the church be ruled not in "friendly cooperation" with the denomination under an SBC constitutional ban on churches that act to affirm or endorse homosexual behavior.
Youth from Broadway Baptist Church paint a home in Nashville during their summer mission trip.
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Previously the provision, adopted in the 1990s, had been applied to congregations that take only some formal action, like ordaining gays or conducting gay marriages, but the SBC Executive Committee found that by recognizing gays as full members, including allowing them to serve on committees, the church had violated the ban.
After the decision a Baptist-affiliated college in Kentucky un-invited youth from Broadway who were scheduled to stay at the college during a mission trip. At the last minute, Broadway leaders made alternate plans for the youth, including painting the house of an elderly couple in Nashville, Tenn.
Michael Cox, a professor of music theory and composition at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, chose to take early retirement rather than resigning his membership at Broadway.
6. Generational shift
In addition to being the 400th anniversary of the first Baptist church, 2009 marked 30 years since the beginning of a movement called the "conservative resurgence" that changed the face of the Southern Baptist Convention. Many of the leaders of that movement, along with some of the organizations spun off in its wake, have begun to exit the scene, raising questions about future directions of Baptist life in the United States.
Some of the younger potential leaders coming through SBC seminaries these days do not identify with what they regard an overtly political and narrow moral agenda of thou-shalt-nots that prevailed in recent decades. They have gravitated toward culturally relevant trends like the emergent church and expanded their political activism beyond opposition to abortion and homosexuality to embrace concerns like the environment, poverty and nuclear disarmament.
Many on the fence about their future in denominational life flocked to this year's SBC annual meeting in Louisville, Ky., to support a Great Commission Resurgence movement spearheaded by SBC president Johnny Hunt and Southeastern Baptist Theologial Seminary President Danny Akin.
A committee appointed at the SBC annual meeting to study ways to make the denomination more effective took an even higher profile when Jerry Rankin, president of the SBC International Mission Board, and SBC Executive Committee CEO Morris Chapman announced upcoming retirement dates. The surprise resignation Aug. 11 of the head of the North American Mission Board means that three of the highest-profile jobs in SBC life will soon be open, signaling significant change in the near future.
7. International religious freedom
While Baptists around the world celebrated in 2009, in some places it was despite increasing hostility and government restriction.
In Uzbekistan, three Baptist leaders were convicted Oct. 29 of tax evasion and involving children in religious activities without their parents' permission, charges Baptists there said were untrue.
Authorities cracked down in July on Camp4Joy, a summer camp for children Uzbek Baptists have held annually for several years, after a state-run news agency carried reports of alleged activity illegal under the country's restrictive religion law. Baptists say parents who send children to the camp know it is run by Baptists and that it doesn't owe any taxes because it is non-profit organization.
Pavel Peychev, general secretary of the Baptist Union of Uzbekistan; Yelena Kurbatova, the union's accountant; and Dimitry Pitirimov, director of the youth camp, avoided prison but had stiff fines levied against them following a drawn-out trial in October. Recent reports suggest authorities are trying to remove them from leadership in Baptist life.
Early this year a Baptist pastor in Azerbaijan was found guilty of what supporters say are bogus weapons charges and given "a two-year corrective labor sentence." Hamid Shabanov, pastor of a house church of approximately 60 members in the town of Aliabad, was arrested in 2008 after police claimed to have found an illegal weapon in his home. Supporters said Shabanov did not own a gun and believe the evidence was planted.
Two Baptist leaders in Cuba were held two weeks for what authorities deemed suspicious behavior while delivering funds raised in the United States to churches. Rubén Ortiz-Columbié, coordinator for special projects of the Eastern Cuba Baptist Convention, and Francisco "Pancho" Garcia, director of the convention's teen department, were arrested Oct. 3 and released Oct. 17 without formal charge.
A December study by the Pew Research Center said 70 percent of the world's population lives in a country where religion is restricted significantly.
Julie Pennington-Russell
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8. Women in ministry
Forty-five years after the first Southern Baptist woman was ordained to the gospel ministry, female Baptists remain controversial for some Baptists. In November the Georgia Baptist Convention voted to end a 148-year-old relationship with First Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga., over the congregation's 2007 vote to hire a woman as senior pastor.
Convention leaders said the decision to call Julie Pennington-Russell, a veteran pastor who previously led Baptist churches in California and Texas, put the Atlanta-area congregation out of step with the majority of Georgia Baptists. Most other Southern Baptists in the state agree with an article of faith adopted by the SBC in 2000 saying, "While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture."
Moderate Baptist groups like the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship are more open to the idea of women in ministry, but women seeking employment in ministry roles still confront what has been termed a "stained-glass ceiling." After several years of financial hardship, Baptist Women in Ministry restructured this year and hired a full-time executive director, Pam Durso, to reinvigorate the support group formed in the 1980s.
9. Baptists and the economy
Many churches cut budgets and curbed expenses to cope with the country's economic downturn, and denominational groups are feeling the pinch.
A roll call of Southern Baptist Convention entities began the year with announcements they were downsizing, freezing salaries of implementing other cost-cutting measures.
Beginning in March the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship reduced spending by 20 percent, including a cut in pass-through funds for independent partner ministries like seminaries and Associated Baptist Press.
This fall a number of Baptist state conventions adopted reduced budgets, some for the second year in a row.
David Pierce
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10. Clergy sex abuse
As in other denominations, clergy-sex-abuse scandals continued to rock corners of the Baptist world in 2009. David Pierce, who worked for nearly three decades as minister of music at First Baptist Church in Benton, Ark., pleaded guilty Aug. 27 to four counts of sexual indecency with a child. Court records alleged a pattern of using his position to groom boys for voyeurism and sexual gratification that may have gone on for decades.
While some still regard sexual abuse of children by clergy mainly a Catholic problem relating to celibacy and homosexuality, a September study by Baylor University's School of Social Work found that clergy sexual misconduct is no respecter of denominations. The report said in a typical congregation with 400 adult members, an average of seven women in attendance on a typical Sunday were victimized by clergy since they turned 18.
First Baptist Church in Benton wasn't the only Baptist group to receive unwanted publicity for sexual abuse.
Darrell Gilyard, and African-American pastor who is not a Southern Baptist but as a young preacher was mentored and groomed by some of the denomination's highest power brokers, went to prison after pleading guilty to molesting a 15-year-old girl and sending lewd text messages to another at his former church. Joshua Spires, a former pastor of First Baptist Church in Jay, Okla., received a 10-year sentence after pleading guilty to sexual abuse of a 15-year-old girl. In August a jury in Arizona convicted Christopher Decaire, youth minister of East Tucson Baptist Church, of molestation of a 13-year-old. In November Frank Brown, 45, former pastor of Bellmead First Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, who also formerly worked at a Baptist church in Illinois, was sentenced to 50 years in prison after pleading guilty to sexual abuse of a child. Stephen Wayne Carter, director of Baptist-affiliated Cale Retreat and Conference Center in Hertford, N.C., took a leave of absence after his arrest July 1 on charges of taking indecent liberties with a child and first-degree sex offense involving a child. Jack Duffer, 40, youth minister at Seaford Baptist Church near Hampton, Va., faced multiple charges of sexual abuse of a minor after his arrest Aug. 21. Before moving to Virginia two years ago Duffer was pastor of a Southern Baptist church in Hawaii.
Christa Brown, Baptist outreach director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), published a memoir and expose in June claiming the Southern Baptist Convention has more than 100,000 clergy, but no effective system of denominational oversight to protect children from sexual abuse.
The SBC's LifeWay Christian Resources reported Aug. 4 that one in eight background checks it conducted on volunteers or prospective employees found a criminal history that might have kept an individual from working or volunteering at a church.
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.