WASHINGTON (ABP) — The Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs will become the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty after the agency's directors approved a name change Sept. 27.
Holding their annual meeting in Washington, D.C., representatives of the national and regional Baptist bodies that support the group voted unanimously to alter their certificate of incorporation. The alterations include the name change, designed to better reflect the BJC's mission of advocating for religious freedom and church-state separation.
“'Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs' is a relic from the old days when there was possibly more of a public-affairs mission [for the organization],” David Massengill, chair of the BJC's bylaw revision committee, told board members in recommending the change.
The Washington-based group deals strictly with legal and legislative issues regarding the First Amendment's two religion clauses — that ban both government establishment of religion and government infringement on religious exercise. The BJC does not deal with other public-affairs issues in which Baptists might be interested.
Therefore, Massengill said, the name change was in order.
The change came about with a revision of the group's incorporation documents, as well as its bylaws, to bring the documents better into line with District of Columbia law for non-profit corporations.
Opening the board's meeting with a devotional message, Falls Church, Va., pastor Jim Baucom told BJC leaders that many Baptists don't understand or appreciate the concept of church-state separation anymore. Therefore, Baucom said, the organization needs to focus its public message more on advocacy for religious freedom — and then note that such freedom is underpinned by the separation of church and state.
“It is religious freedom that we need to begin preaching, not church-state separation…. It is the job of our forebears that we need to begin doing again,” Baucom said. “This is what Baptist life is all about — that we believe that we have a God that we love because we choose to love him, not because we are coerced to love him. And any union between church and state leads to coercion.”
The board also voted to enter into a fund-raising campaign that would culminate in 2006, the 70th anniversary of the BJC's founding. The campaign would center around raising funds to build, buy or lease a religious-freedom center somewhere in Washington. The building would house BJC's offices as well as meeting space for educational and lobbying efforts.
A document provided to board members says the center would “provide a strategic base to protect and advance religious liberty.”
For several decades, BJC has rented office space from the Washington office of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The Capitol Hill building is located adjacent to both the Supreme Court and the Senate office buildings, and only a block from the Capitol. Rent for the space will exceed $80,000 this year.
After the board approved the campaign's outlines, chairman Jeffrey Haggray appointed a steering committee to set more specific fund-raising goals and plan implementation of the campaign.
The committee's members are Reggie McDonough of Tennessee, Barbara Baugh of Texas, Sue Bennett of Oklahoma, Mark Wiggs of Mississippi, Pat Ayres of Texas, Russell Tuck of Virginia, Reba Sloan Cobb of Kentucky, Richard Ice of California, Susan Stewart of Georgia, and Cynthia Holmes of Missouri.
In other business, the board approved a 2005 budget of $1,096,100. The proposal represents a $33,000 increase over BJC's 2004 budget.
The board also re-elected its current officers — Haggray, executive director of the District of Columbia Baptist Convention, as chairman; Ray Swatkowski, executive vice president of the Baptist General Conference, as vice chairman; and Bennett, a Tulsa businesswoman, as secretary.
The new BJC bylaws created a treasurer position separate from the executive director's position. To fill that new slot, the board elected Valoria Cheek, president of the American Baptist Extension Corporation, as treasurer.
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