The Star Herald, in the July 26 paper has a news article, “Attala Baptist Association, OWBGC look to build upon VBS Partnership.”
Reported is that in July, the Attala Baptist Association provided vacation Bible school (VBS) at Kosciusko’s Oprah Winfrey Boys & Girls Club, for children ages 5-8. Also reported is that the OWBGC Program Director hopes to have this Baptist program return in 2019 and has talked about extending it to older teenage children.
Perhaps the speechlessness I felt on reading this news impaired my comprehension, but one sentence in the article was difficult to comprehend. It appeared to be included to silence any concerns by readers as to whether OWBGC hosting a Baptist evangelical program for children was anywhere near acceptable practice. An unwritten “In case anyone is wondering” could have been a preface. The sentence reads, “Though the Boys & Girls Clubs of America is a secular organization, ABA delivered their Christian message freely, as participation was optional.”
On reading that sentence, I felt like retrieving George Orwell’s classic book, 1984.
In 1949 it sparked the concept of “doublespeak,” a verbal kissing cousin to “doublethink.” Sales of the book soared after President Trump’s election, although sales could have appropriately soared during the campaign of Hillary as well. Doublespeak disguises
untruth as truth, or truth as untruth, as in “fake news” while doublethink allows persons to express two contradictory opinions, perhaps to different audiences, as in “basket of deplorables.” To try and eliminate doubleness, I thus decided to rewrite the sentence and part of the article, as follows.
“The BGCA (Boys and Girls Club of America) is a national secular organization partially funded by the federal government and holding a Congressional charter. The OWBGC, as a representative club, thus has a secular mission statement which does not include promoting the doctrines of any religious denomination. Despite this the Program Director at OWBGC allowed the ABA (Attala Baptist Association), an evangelical Christian organization, to deliver a summer program for 5-8 year olds with the expressly non-secular missionary goal of telling kids about Jesus and the Kingdom of God. Because children’s participation in the program was optional, the ABA is considered to have freely delivered their Christian missionary doctrines, hence the secular mission of the organization was not ethically violated. The BGCA has detailed ethical guidelines requiring all club employees to uphold and not violate the mission statement.”
Perplexity, still exists however. First, how secular is OWBGC? BGCs receive federal funding and are definitely secular clubs, not religious ones. Nevertheless, clubs have a written Club Code to which children are to agree, stating “I believe in God and the right to worship according to my own faith and religion.” Meanwhile clubs claim to welcome all children, presumably even those from families not professing belief in God. Some communities have thus protested use of this religious Code by the secular organization. Does protest arise when an evangelical Baptist association is permitted to teach a summer Vacation Bible School at a club?
How exactly is optional participation in a religious program for 5 to 8 year olds carried out? Do the children themselves have the capacity for authentic choice if sports themed fun attractively masks religious indoctrination? Or, is being optional decided instead by parents, who might make their children attend, perhaps welcoming child sitting of any form, religious or otherwise, or who might make children either attend or stay away for various parental reasons, secular or religious.. If the club is indeed a secular community organization, how is the Program Director’s decision even permissible, to allow Baptists access to “freely deliver” a doctrinal, evangelical message about Jesus and the Kingdom of God. Might other denominations or faiths justifiably seek permission to present equally attractive, optional, but alternative programs, likewise freely delivered.
The “I believe in God” in the Club Code is a statement of monotheism, or belief in one God. Monotheism encompasses not only all Christians, but Jews and Muslims as well, the major three monotheistic religions. The latter two, however, definitely hold a radically different view about Jesus than that held by Baptists. This fact may not have been freely delivered to children in the Baptist VBS program, unless this view was portrayed as un-Christian false belief.
The ABA is one of several Baptist regional associations in Mississippi, organized under the Mississippi Baptist Convention. A major task for these associations is to actively serve as missionaries in their communities. Communities are viewed like Africa or perhaps China or Latin America, i.e. a place sorely in need of Baptist missionary attention. These associations are instructed by MBC to identify local groups in their community (the OWBGC perhaps?) to whom they can evangelize and ideally procure members through converts and baptisms.
Evangelization by associations is guided by characterizing the population of persons or households in each region as being either (1) Actively Evangelical or (2) The Unreached. In the Bible, if the parable of Jesus in Matthew 25 is recalled, all nations of people are divided into sheep destined for Heaven and goats whose destination is even hotter than Mississippi in summer. To the ABA though, all the sheep are Baptist, Active Evangelicals, and everyone else is a goat, The Unreached. In fairness though, the ABA seeks to have every goat experience Gospel Transformation and become a Baptist sheep.
The goal of associations, including the ABA, is to actively evangelize to the Unreached. Statistically for the region of Attala county the Unreached are around 70%, i.e. all people or households identified as not being attendees or members of local Baptist evangelical churches. Presumably this includes children of Unreached families, as might be present at OWBGC. As many as 30 churches may be under the Attala Association. Presumably, anyone attending any of the approximately 150 other churches in Attala, or synagogues or mosques if such even exist, is Unreached. The Unreached also includes those who express absolutely no interest in being reached and spend Sundays binge watching Netflix, sleeping in, washing their cars, or shopping in towns other than Kosciusko where stores actually open on Sunday. Persons considering themselves “spiritual” don’t escape either. Regardless of how they spend Sundays, the spiritual are Unreached goats and considered apt targets to be evangelized.
The Program Director of OWBGC is quoted in the news story as saying, “(The children) really responded.” Was this to the religious indoctrination masked as sports fun? If so, I’m sure the Mississippi Baptist Convention would be pleased to hear that, as well as news that the Program Director’s desire is to continue the religious program next summer and even expand it to other age groups. One reason perhaps is that participation in evangelical Baptist churches has markedly dropped in MS for several years now, with the blame being a failure of members to evangelize! While I don’t have a year for the data on their website, 70% of Mississippi Baptist churches are said to be plateaued or declining in membership.
The OWBGC thus provides is a field ready for missionary harvest! (John 4:35)
Regarding local Baptist associations, while Baptist churches are autonomous, as part of the Mississippi Baptist Convention, they must follow the Baptist Faith and Message. This statement of doctrine specifically condemns homosexuality. If a church does not follow the Faith and Message, as happened in 2017 to the Northminster Baptist Church in Jackson, the church gets booted out of the Convention. Apparently this church not only welcomed same sex couples, but let women serve in the ministry. (OMG!!) Similarly, in 2015 the University Baptist Church of Hattiesburg was booted out for being gay friendly. The statement of doctrine also asserts that life begins at conception. This is in line with defeated MS Proposition 26, one of the rare occasions when Mississippi voters acted sensibly in November 2011 and refused to enshrine in the Mississippi Constitution that life begins at fertilization or conception.(See NYT Nov. 8, 2011). Additionally, since the Faith and Message declares that every word in the Bible is considered “totally true,” the Earth was created in seven days, despite anything that science and blasphemous PBS Nova shows teach.
I totally loved this line in “The Green Mile” film based on the book by Stephen King. “I think this boy’s cheese slid off his cracker.” I think the Boys and Girls Club cheese has slid off its cracker, with an unknown degree of nudging by the Attala Baptist Association. While summer programs in Boys and Girls Clubs in other places offered educational yet fun summer programs in nutrition and health, or programs promoting interest in STEM activities (science, technology, and engineering), or art and music programs, or just good old secular summer fun programs, Kosciusko chose instead a Baptist evangelical religious program encased within a sports theme.
