NEWS STORY: Baptist Leader Urges Members to Move Beyond Past Scandal to the Future

c. 2000 Religion News Service LOS ANGELES _ In his first annual presidential address since succeeding a minister convicted of money swindles, the Rev. William J. Shaw of Philadelphia told more than 15,000 National Baptists Thursday (Sept. 7) that too many among them “want to forget what we’ve seen” and “turn away because the price […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

LOS ANGELES _ In his first annual presidential address since succeeding a minister convicted of money swindles, the Rev. William J. Shaw of Philadelphia told more than 15,000 National Baptists Thursday (Sept. 7) that too many among them “want to forget what we’ve seen” and “turn away because the price of change is too high.”

Shaw, 66, urged delegates to brave “the discomfort of unknown territory” by reforming the National Baptist Convention, USA, a historically African-American denomination, with accountable systems of finances and organization.


The previous president, the Rev. Henry J. Lyons, was sentenced last year to five years imprisonment after conviction by a Florida court of racketeering and grand theft. Although Shaw did not mention Lyons by name or recap details of the sex-and-money scandals that wracked the denomination in recent years, he said the church cannot move forward honestly without examining itself in the mirror.

“The public defined us by the secular scandal rather than by the spiritual scandal,” said Shaw, who remains pastor of White Rock Baptist Church where he has served since 1956. “How others see us is not nearly as significant as how we see ourselves.”

“We had an organization without checks and balances,” Shaw told delegates to the 120th annual meeting at the Los Angeles Convention Center that ends Friday (Sept. 8). “What we see is not pleasant.”

More than five lawsuits are in litigation involving the church, he said in his address. Shaw also alluded to the debt still outstanding on the denomination’s Baptist World Center, which overlooks the Cumberland River in Nashville, Tenn.

After he was elected to a five-year term as National Baptist president one year ago, Shaw designated his $100,000 annual salary for that post to various scholarships. Shaw, emphasizing an overhaul of education in church structures, holds graduate degrees from Union Theological Seminary in New York and Colgate Rochester Divinity School in Rochester, N.Y.

Shaw also urged federal, state and local governments to look themselves in the mirror.

“Justice must be even-handed,” he said.

He also called upon governments to use economic and human resources wisely: “Stop demonizing our people as an excuse for underfunding our schools. … Stop making health care a partisan issue.”

Shaw called upon both major political parties to end the practice of racial profiling, which is said to result in many unwarranted arrests of racial and ethnic minorities.


(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

Months ago, Shaw noted sardonically, he requested convention appearances by Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush, but all that was scheduled on late Thursday were separate satellite television feeds to the convention floor. Gore spoke in the mid-afternoon and Bush was scheduled to speak in the late afternoon.

“Have we been written off?” asked Shaw.

Preceding Shaw’s speech, Martin Luther King III, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, questioned the “compassionate conservative” label worn by Bush and noted conservative political positions taken by running mate Dick Cheney.

“Now, I’m not telling you how to vote,” King, a layman, told the delegates. “You are intelligent enough to know right from wrong.”

DEA END DART

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