Balmer's True Vine Baptist DC Glorious Address

Here is the early tease from the July 2 news items from http://www.bjconline.org/ compliments of Don Byrd.
As Byrd says he hopes a link for the entire address will be up soon.
A friend and his brother, a kidney doctor were both in the room with the 500 at the luncheon on Sunday and there eyewitness account was Balmer had a prolonged and enthusiatic applause and standing ovation at the end of his remarks.
I hope Matthew helps me get the word to Collinsville, Alabama. I got notice of it all in George Truett's hometown, Hayesville, North Carolina.
I did what I could do.


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Balmer Calls On Baptists
Author and professor Randall Balmer delivered a stirring speech yesterday afternoon at the annual Religious Liberty Council luncheon. I was fortunate to be one of 500+ Baptists listened to Balmer – himself an Episcopalian – tell of the “urgent” need to rescue the Baptist heritage of freedom from the seductive call of political power embodied in the religious right. He carefully wove together, in contrast, the recent history of those “calling themselves Baptists” with that of colonial Baptists who helped inspire the religion clauses of the First Amendment and who knew what it was like to be in the persecuted minority.

Balmer called pet campaigns of the religious right, like those that would post Ten Commandment monuments at courthouses, “fethishes” that “denigrate the integrity of faith.” Of “prayer in school” controversies he said they are a “canard” that should be shown for what they are, since in fact it is state-sponsored prayer, and not prayer generally, that is found objectionable in the courts. And he received rousing applause when he added, of prayer, that true Baptists believe compulsory prayer – or prayer that is “rote” – makes a “mockery of faith.”

Throughout, he urged us – for the sake of our faith - to steer clear of the invitation to allow our religious perspective to gain the “imprimatur” of the government and pleaded with Baptists to return to our historic position of “watchman” on the wall separating church from state. Only then, Balmer insisted, would the church regain its prophetic voice and move back to the fringes of society where religion does its truest work, holding the seats of power to account on behalf of the poor and the sick and the disenfranchised.
His keynote address would be well worth a read. If I can find a link to text of his remarks, I’ll pass it along.
Posted by Don Byrd on June 30, 2007 09:45 AM Permalink
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Fox:
Great words well chosen by Balmer: fetishes, rote, mockery, canard, imprimatur. But my all time favorite is "counterfeit" as he rightly named Richard Land in his chapter on Baptists in Thy Kingdom Come.
Balmer is a grand fellow, and like me and Russ Beene he knows his Cane Ridge. I'm gonna get word to Bertis. Balmer is scheduled to speak at Furman University March 2008.