While speaking at a rally for the Texas Restoration Project, Arlington pastor Dwight McKissic asked if God might have a purifying purpose in the shaking Katrina gave our country. A few people had a fit about it. Others sought to distance themselves from such a politically incorrect question. Governor Perry was on the program with Pastor McKissic and a spokesman for the governor’s office said: “The governor does not agree with that. But far be it for the governor to try to divine the will of the Almighty.” Was the preacher’s even raising that question insensitive or was it prophetic?

Christians are often asked by cynics to answer for God in the face of tragedy that only he could have prevented. The implication is that we must have settled this question if we continue to follow a god who must be either powerless or wicked. No simple answers are to be had. In fact it’s a bad question. It’s narrow to think of God having a single purpose for New Orleans on August 28 any more than for Austin on that same day. More importantly, he has millions of purposes for that day, and for the blessings and tragedies of this one. Some of those will become clear in the lives of individuals.

For this reason (dangerous ground here), we expect to meet people for whom August 28 marked a positive life change, as well as those for whom it was a lifelong catastrophe. For most, it will be like the other shakeups of life, an experience that may bring us important lessons but no one would choose to repeat. When Jesus said, in Matt. 5:45, that God brings the rain on the “righteous and the unrighteous” he was referring to indiscriminate blessing, but we can also imagine in most every case that some will find the details of this common grace to be inconvenient or destructive.

Don’t forget in the midst of our focus on one tragedy that thousands of events just as devastating for individuals happen each day in large and small towns not directly affected by a hurricane. Lost jobs, sick children, crime, broken families, and thousand other manifestations of sin’s effect tower over the other details of our lives anytime we face them. They happened in New Orleans also, perhaps at a higher than average rate, during what most considered to be the best of times. Some find these more localized disasters to have a refining effect. Others never get past the bitterness of the loss. To a large degree we all trudge through the same corrupting creation. Some can do it without ever seeing the mercies that often accompany the wounds. As neighbors who bear many of the same scars, we carry the good news of those mercies and of the God who grants them more generously in the midst of suffering.

Katrina was not the gentle soaking rain that breaks a drought. It was furious and destructive. Hundreds of thousands had their calendars cleared in a harsh way. Many hundreds were killed. There is no single description of God’s purpose for all these people. There is a purpose for each one, an impact that washes over the lives of many others who travel to Louisiana or Mississippi, or Alabama?and for those who meet evacuees in their own home towns. A thousand journalists working a thousand days will not tell all the stories. And the stories will move outward from here. Some will never return to their former homes. New communities formed around evacuees will plant in Lubbock and Ft. Smith and Shreveport and a score of other places. Small changes have an impact we may hardly notice. Massive changes are unavoidable for a whole generation. Though with less loss of life, the hurricane of 2005 will ultimately affect more lives than the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in 2001.

Even in our limited vision, the stories will not be all bad. Thousands who formerly scoffed at Christians have been touched by the love of Christ in the past few weeks. I’ve seen Moslems praying in a Southern Baptist church and I’ve seen self-absorbed suburbanites anxiously pursuing a chance to help those very strange to them. No doubt some children who lived in squalor will now grow up with new opportunity, and safety. Some who were oppressed by demonic lives of drug addiction will be set free and begin a new life in Christ. Some who lived in thrall to dark religions will spend eternity with God. And many of us for whom the poor were abstract, now put precious faces and names to Jesus’ call to feed and clothe the least among us.

What about judgment, though? That’s Dwight McKissic’s question that sent the more timid running for high ground. Do we squirm a little because the idea is daffy or because a prophetic word is supposed to make us squirm? Most of us live in cities that could be righteously judged, and we would know the reason why. God extends patience toward our home towns for the sake of both the saints and the lost. New Orleans, or for that matter Biloxi and Mobile are no exceptions. Many who would accept a prophetic message about God’s mercy (and only potential judgment) on unrighteous communities are unwilling to hear that message when mercy is lifted ever so slightly. It seems ungrateful and nearsighted to think we’re owed forbearance.

Although we’re not privy to much of God’s purpose or his evaluation of a people or place, we can easily judge the fruit of a life or community. The most pertinent evaluation we can make is of our own community. Hurricanes, and other “acts of God,” should remind us of his power and of his mercy.

If we look at the human stories we’ve already seen and further imagine those likely to unfold, purification is an apt description. Those formerly lost people who return to New Orleans saved will add a purifying element in a town that has a bad rep among respectable people. Those who remain lost will never be quite so confident in their self-sufficiency. Many of these will have heard the gospel from someone during their exile. It will either take root in their lives or continually judge their unbelief. Again, purifying.

FORT WORTH?The historic Baptist idea of religious freedom expressed in the First Amendment is under attack from the American judiciary, Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Sept. 9.

Land was the keynote speaker at the seminary’s first annual Baptist Distinctives Conference, a two-day event that this year examined “The First Freedom” of religious liberty.

“The greatest threat to religious freedom in America are secular fundamentalists who want to ghetto-ize religious faith and make the wall of separation between church and state a prison wall keeping religious voices out of political discourse,” Land said.

More than 300 people, including registered conference participants, seminary students, faculty and staff were in attendance as Land presented his paper titled, “The Role of Religious Liberty in the Founding and Development of America.” Land told the conferees that America has been, is and always will be a “very religious” country.

“This drives post-modernists crazy because they think that as a country evolves, religious dedication should fade,” Land said. “Religious liberty is the unique Baptist contribution to the Reformation.”

Land traced the history of Anabaptists and Baptists to explain how they came to cherish?and even die for?the idea that government should not interfere with the people’s right to believe, or not believe, and practice, or not practice, whatever faith they chose.

He explained that as successful as the Protestant Reformation was in taking “church” back to the “primitive” New Testament model, magisterial reformers such as Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin were never “quite able to separate church from state.”

On the other hand, “Baptists understood that the ‘parish church’ concept was not biblical,” Land said. “This became the cause of Baptists.”

From Oliver Cromwell and the English Interregnum, to Baptists in the 1660s fleeing to Colonial America to escape religious persecution, to the stand Baptist pastors took to make sure the First Amendment was incorporated into the new U.S. Constitution in 1791, Land demonstrated that “current controversies” in America about the separation of church and state are nothing new.

“We have never separated religion from politics in America,” Land said. “In 1854, 3,000 New England clergymen signed a petition to the United States Senate demanding an immediate end to the practice of chattel slavery and denouncing the Missouri Compromise. ? Pro-slavery senators urged the Senate to ignore the petition on the grounds of separation of church and state. But the preachers refused to shut up. They understood ? that most Americans want to talk about God (in political discourse).”

Land said that Baptists have always believed that the state must be separated from the church largely because the state always “pollutes and corrupts the church.” Thomas Jefferson affirmed that idea in 1802 when he wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association saying that, “their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”

But Land said that the Supreme Court’s modern application of that doctrine “is twisted” because Jefferson meant for the First Amendment to protect the church from the state, but not vice versa. “The restrictions of the First Amendment are on the government,” Land said. “They are not on people of faith.”

Southwestern Seminary President Paige Patterson addressed the question of whether the concept of religious liberty is compatible with the doctrine of the exclusivity of salvation in Jesus Christ. Patterson drew on personal experiences to explain that this question often arises from people of faith who are not believers in Jesus Christ. They often think that Christians want to restrict freedom of religion simply because Christians understand unbelievers are “going to hell” unless they believe in Jesus Christ.

Patterson turned to “the biblical witness” and “the historical witness” to refute that misunderstanding. He explained that belief in the exclusivity of Jesus Christ for salvation and a vigorous defense of religious freedom are not mutually exclusive.

“Jesus Christ does not favor coercion,” Patterson concluded as he reviewed passages on the life and teachings of Jesus from the Gospels of Matthew and John.

Patterson acknowledged that an objection to that conclusion might arise based on the account of the Jesus driving out the money-changers from the Temple in Matt

First there were the desperate cries for mercy as Southern Baptists learned of Hurricane Katrina’s widespread destruction. From winds wiping out churches and residents in Gulf Coast cities of Alabama and Mississippi to the intense storm and subsequent flooding that included much of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and the surrounding area, the resulting tragedy was unimaginable.

Then came the offers of money as Southern Baptists contributed designated gifts for Katrina relief in the offering plates of tens of thousands of churches. Within several days of setting up an online giving link on the website of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, thousands of dollars were transferred through credit card payments. Checks arrived at the SBTC offices from as far away as Anchorage, Alaska and West Sussex, England.

A strong year of giving through the Cooperative Program missions-funding method allowed the 16-million member denomination to be ready to be even more generous through allocation of existing funds, potentially offering $7 million towards Hurricane Relief from budget surpluses.

By Labor Day weekend, well over 30,000 new volunteers?most not Baptist?were trained through SBTC alone, preparing for the quarter million evacuees housed in major cities like Houston and Dallas. Baptist volunteers staffed feeding units that headed to Louisiana before the rain ended. By mid-September, Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers had served more than 2 million meals in the affected area.

SBTC churches quickly lined up with offers of short-term and extended housing to meet the needs of many of the Louisiana evacuees. Many spread the word to meet transportation needs, reuniting displaced families or helping them resettle to new quarters.

Now a long-term initiative announced by the North American Mission Board (NAMB) will help damaged Southern Baptist churches recover through the “Adopt a Church” initiative. SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards is urging the more than 1,700 affiliated churches in Texas to consider adopting the more than 100 churches wiped out by the hurricane and another 200 that were damaged.

Participating churches agree to help with clean-up, rebuilding, pastor’s salary and outreach. Smaller churches could join together to accept the assignment of one small church, while many of the large Texas congregations could handle a multi-staff Louisiana church on their own.

By helping Louisiana congregations whose facilities were badly damaged or destroyed, the affected church can get back on its feet in 12 to 24 months. Mission and construction teams would assist in recovery and rebuilding, provide care packages, collect special offerings, offer training to encourage and strengthen staff and assist pastors by replacing ministry libraries lost or damaged.

After a church registers for Adopt a Church through a NAMB link at www.sbtc.com/katrina, the SBTC will assume the responsibility of matching partner churches, individuals and families. Those without Internet access may call the SBTC at 877-953-SBTC for Katrina relief-related inquiries.