c. 2003 Religion News Service
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. _ The right of faith-based organizations to hire and fire staff must be retained as the federal government seeks to make more funds for social services available to them, the National Association of Evangelicals said Thursday (March 6).
Members of the evangelical umbrella organization adopted a resolution at their annual meeting applauding President Bush’s faith-based initiative but which used forceful language about their desire to make staffing decisions on the basis of religion regardless of federal, state or local anti-bias employment laws.
“Such equal treatment without being accompanied by expressed legal guarantees of autonomy concerning the operation of a religious organization’s governance and internal administration is a false and dangerous promise for faith-based social service providers,” the resolution said.
The Rev. Bill Hamel, chairman of the board of the evangelical organization, said many evangelicals are concerned that greater government involvement in faith-based social services could cause them to have to hire people outside their faith.
“Faith-based organizations are based on having people of like faith and like vision,” said Hamel, president of the Evangelical Free Church of America. “They want the freedom to be able to hire who they want.”
NAE members also affirmed two other statements. One was a recent document from the World Evangelical Alliance leaders that called for prayer in light of the current possibility of war in Iraq and said “all paths of peace should be explored and all possible means should be used for resolving any conflict” when possible.
They also adopted the NAE’s second “statement of conscience” on religious persecution. It was approved by the board in 2002 but had not been brought to the membership since no annual meeting was held last year because the organization was undergoing change. The statement named Sudan and North Korea as countries with which it was especially concerned, and members amended it to include Vietnam.
During the business meeting, the approximately 100 denominational, church and ministry representatives gathered at Wooddale Church learned the leadership of the organization is again uncertain.
The Rev. Leith Anderson, pastor of the megachurch at which the NAE is meeting, has served as interim president since October 2001 but is resigning as of the end of the meeting Friday.
Anderson, who said he’s “moving on to other projects,” replaced Bishop Kevin Mannoia who served two years of a three-year term.
Hamel told the session the organization’s board had hoped to announce new leadership for the group at the meeting but, “We’re not there yet.”
Anderson said the NAE has improved its cash flow situation by closing its Azusa, Calif., office and making its Washington office the site of the group’s headquarters. Prior to the move to California, the group was based in the strongly evangelical area of Carol Stream, Ill.
He said the organization was “hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt” but finances are on an upswing.
“We have the best cash flow we’ve had in years, and a balanced budget,” Anderson said in an interview.
Tim Murphy, the NAE’s chief financial officer, said the group had total revenues of about $440,000 as of September 2002, the end of its fiscal year. That differs sharply from the 2001 total of $839,000 and the 2000 total of $1.1 million.
“With the transition in leadership, quite frankly, we lost credibility with our members,” he said. “I’m happy to report that our revenue for the first five months of our current fiscal year is already approximately 70 percent of our total revenue for last year. We’re no longer having to concentrate on how do we stop the hemorrhaging. We’re now able to focus on how we become a viable organization to our constituency.”
(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)
Prison Fellowship Founder Chuck Colson affirmed the NAE during a keynote address on Thursday at an evening service in which local residents joined convention attendees to fill the 2,000-seat sanctuary. But he admonished individual evangelicals for their casual treatment of church membership.
“Brothers and sisters, we evangelicals have a shamefully casual view of the church,” he said. “We have no business going around shopping from place to place, seeing where we like the services or the fellowship. We belong in a commitment.”
DEA END BANKS
