WASHINGTON (BP)–A federal judge dismissed a legal challenge to government funding of embryonic stem cell research July 27, dealing an unsurprising setback to opponents of the lethal experimentation.

Royce Lamberth, chief judge of the District of Columbia District Court, ruled in the Obama administration's favor less than a year after suspending federal funding of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). Lamberth's latest decision came after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals removed his preliminary injunction on such grants.

In his new opinion, Lamberth said the appeals court's April decision “constrains this Court,” forcing him to dismiss the lawsuit. 

The case involved a challenge to President Obama's 2009 executive order that overturned a more restrictive funding policy under President Bush. Obama ordered the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to devise guidelines consistent with his decree.

In August of last year, Lamberth found the NIH guidelines violated a law that prohibits federal funds for research in which a human embryo is destroyed. The ability of stem cells to convert to other cells and tissues has provided great hope for developing cures for various diseases, but extracting stem cells from an embryo results in the destruction of the days-old human being.

In September, an appeals court panel of three judges lifted Lamberth's suspension of ESCR funding while the case went forward. In a 2-1 decision in April, the panel returned the case to Lamberth but virtually killed the challenge.

Foes of federal funds for ESCR were disappointed but not shocked.

“It's not Lamberth's fault, but once again, the Clintonesque public policy expediency technique is used to get around the law through the playing of semantics games,” bioethics specialist Wesley Smith said on his blog. “I wish I were surprised, but I predicted this very outcome late last year. The politics of this were always too white hot in our increasingly less principled country to permit a literal following of the clear purpose” of the law in question.

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which helped represent non-embryonic stem cell researchers who brought the suit, said its lawyers and others are weighing their options for an appeal.

“Americans should not be forced to pay for experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments, and violate federal law,” ADF senior counsel Steven Aden said n a written statement. “In these tough economic times, it makes no sense for the federal government to use taxpayer money for this illegal and unethical purpose.”

The initial disagreement between Lamberth and the appeals court stemmed from the Obama administration's policy in light of an annual, spending bill rider known as the Dickey-Wicker Amendment. First approved in 1996, Dickey-Wicker says federal funds are not to be used for “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero” under a related law.

In his 2010 ruling, Lamberth rejected arguments by lawyers for the Obama administration that Dickey-Wicker is ambiguous and permits federal funding for research on stem cells after they have been removed from embryos.

The appeals court, however, agreed in its April opinion that Dickey-Wicker is ambiguous, saying although the law “bars funding for the destructive act of deriving an [embryonic stem cell] from an embryo, it does not prohibit funding a research project in which an [embryonic stem cell] will be used.” The word “research” is “flexible enough to describe either a discrete project or an extended process,” the panel said.

The appeals court's determination that the word “research” in the law “is ambiguous binds” him, Lambert wrote in his 38-page opinion issued July 27.

Obama's March 2009 executive order overturned a prohibition instituted by Bush on federal funding of stem cell research that results in the destruction of embryos. Bush's 2001 order permitted, however, grants for experiments on stem cell lines, or colonies, already in existence at the time of his action. 

NIH's final guidelines, issued in July 2009, allowed funding for research on stem cells derived from embryos created by in vitro fertilization but not implanted. The embryos had to be donated by the parents who underwent the fertility treatments.

ESCR has fallen short of other forms of stem cell experimentation that do not harm the donor. It has yet to provide any treatments for human beings and has been plagued by tumors in lab animals. 

Meanwhile, research with adult stem cells and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells has produced therapies for more than 70 afflictions and demonstrated promising results, respectively, without injuring donors.

The Dickey-Wicker Amendment, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services' yearly spending bill, is named after its lead sponsors, former Republican Reps. Jay Dickey of Arkansas and Roger Wicker of Mississippi. Wicker is now a member of the Senate

The case is Sherley v. Sebelius.
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Tom Strode is the Washington bureau chief for Baptist Press.

ORLANDO, Fla. (BP)–A mobile pregnancy care resource center may be relatively new for the Florida Baptist Children's Homes, but it already has become a strategic advocate for life and the health of the unborn.

“Two babies and two souls were saved” when the unit was stationed next door to a Planned Parenthood clinic in downtown Orlando in late June, Mary Lou Hendry, director of sanctity of human life for the children's homes, reported.

The two women intended to get abortions but instead, by divine appointment, each was able to see her baby on an ultrasound machine screen provided by gifts to the Psalm 139 Project of Southern Baptists' Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

The mobile pregnancy care resource center — housed in a reconfigured travel trailer donated to the Florida Baptist Children's Homes last year — offered its services from a vacant lot adjacent to the Planned Parenthood clinic in an economically depressed area of the city. The owner of the land granted the team permission to work from the parcel of land.

Few women came over to the unit that Saturday. Venturing into the community to encourage women heading to an abortion clinic to reconsider their decision can be joyful at times, Hendry said, but “it also brings you to a point of brokenness.”

While the pregnancy care center unit was on site, 25 to 30 babies were aborted by Planned Parenthood next door, Hendry said.

Yet Hendry focuses on the “significance of the ones” who are saved, noting it is pure joy to see a mother accept Christ and reject the idea that her unborn child is a disposable inconvenience.

The mobile pregnancy care center, Hendry explained, is a Christ-focused outreach to women and their families who find themselves in an unplanned pregnancy and do not have access to a pregnancy care resource center in their area.

Although designed to provide ultrasound screenings, counseling and other services to women in areas struck by natural disasters, the mobile care center doesn't sit inactive until the state faces a natural disaster but is being utilized in underserved communities in Florida.

In May, the Florida Baptist Children's Homes team provided pregnancy care services and information to young women in an area of west Orlando which does not have a pregnancy care resource center.

“During the four hours that we were set up we provided free pregnancy tests, biblical counseling, as well as ultrasound screenings for women to confirm that they were indeed pregnant,” Hendry said.

The outreach, called “Love Orlando,” was in partnership with First Baptist Church of Orlando's First Life Center for Pregnancy.

“One young woman came by our mobile center who was 33 weeks along in her pregnancy and had not had any prenatal care,” Hendry recounted. “She wasn't able to qualify for Medicaid and didn't have health insurance.

“We provided her with her first ultrasound where she could see her fully developed baby, which will be born in the next several weeks,” Hendry said, adding, “It's always an amazing moment when you are able to show mothers the new life that is living and growing inside their womb.”

The Florida Baptist team connected the woman with a nurse midwife to help with her needs through the remainder of her pregnancy and afterward.

The ultrasound machine, provided at no cost through the Psalm 139 Project, is an invaluable tool in helping to inform and educate women about their unborn child during a crisis pregnancy, Hendry said, noting, “She can see her baby's heart beating at the very earliest stages of pregnancy.

“It's important to note that nearly 80 percent of all women considering abortion choose life when they see their unborn child on the ultrasound screen,” Hendry stated.

Carmem Carmo, interim director for First Life Center for Pregnancy, said the Love Orlando outreach not only was a way to protect the unborn but also share the love of Christ.

“Our goal was to reach lost souls with the love of Jesus through this very unique pregnancy care ministry,” Carmo said. “We believe this project started in God's heart, and we definitely felt His presence that day.”

In Psalm 139, the psalmist affirms God's intimate involvement in his creation, writing, “For it was You who created my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother's womb.”

“We are on the front lines,” Hendry said, committed to “bringing light into darkness.”

This year, funds donated by individuals to the Psalm 139 Project provided a mobile ultrasound unit for the Arizona Baptist Children's Home to serve pregnancy care centers in Phoenix. Next, the project will underwrite the cost of an ultrasound machine and training in southern Louisiana, once sufficient financial gifts are in hand. Currently, there is a critical need for Southern Baptist outreach to women in crisis pregnancies in the greater New Orleans area. The Psalm 139 Project was launched in 2004 with the placement of an ultrasound machine in southern Indiana, with subsequent units placed in Florida, Arizona and four other states.

For more information about the Psalm 139 Project, visit psalm139project.org.
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This article originated with the Florida Baptist Children's Homes based in Lakeland, Fla., and has been republished by the Florida Baptist Witness and updated by the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (BP)–In a landmark legal brief that reads more like one from the ACLU or a gay legal group, the U.S. Justice Department argues that homosexuals exhibit immutable characteristics, have suffered a history of discrimination and that the federal government's marriage law is driven by prejudice.

The legal brief — called a watershed moment by gay groups — seeks to have only part of the Defense of Marriage Act overturned, but its legal reasoning goes much further. The same legal arguments have been used in successful state court lawsuits to legalize gay “marriage.” If adopted by a federal court, the arguments eventually could be used in overturning not just all of DOMA but also the traditional marriage laws in the 44 states that do not recognize same-sex “marriage.”

“[G]ay and lesbian individuals have suffered a long and significant history of purposeful discrimination,” the department's brief states, pointing to death penalty laws going back to Colonial times but also including current-day laws defining marriage in the traditional sense.

The Justice Department's legal role is to defend the nation's laws, but President Obama has ordered the department to stop defending the 15-year-old law in court. The House of Representatives has filled the void by hiring its own attorney.

The law, often called “DOMA,” has two primary functions: It 1) defines marriage for federal purposes as between a man and a woman and 2) gives states the option of not recognizing another state's gay “marriages.” The Justice Department's brief, filed July 1 in a district court within the Ninth Circuit, sides with a lesbian woman who filed suit to have the part of the law dealing with the federal definition of marriage overturned. She is a staff attorney within the Ninth Circuit who wants her partner to receive legal benefits. They received a marriage license in California before Proposition 8 passed.

But the Justice Department's arguments, while only targeting one segment of DOMA that would not directly impact state laws, could be used later to target those laws.

“If a federal court finds these persuasive for purposes of interpreting a federal statute, then when it comes to interpreting a state constitutional amendment [defining marriage], they'll have the exact same analysis,” Daniel Blomberg, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund — which supports the Defense of Marriage Act — told Baptist Press. “It will be identical. The government's argument here could certainly be used to strike down not only all of DOMA but to force this definition on all of the states.”

The ACLU and gay legal groups have been making such legal arguments “for quite some time.”

“What is uncommon about this is the fact that the Justice Department has signed on in such a vocal manner to what even proponents of this perspective are saying is a quote-unquote gay rights manifesto,” Blomberg said.

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign — the nation's largest homosexual organization — called the brief a “watershed moment in the fight for LGBT equality.” Tara Borelli, an attorney with Lambda Legal, a gay group, called it an “historic shift with enormous significance.” Every presidential administration until the current one defended DOMA, and the Obama administration did so, tepidly, until this year.

The 24-page document broke new ground for the Justice Department by arguing that discrimination based on sexual orientation should be subject to what is called “heightened scrutiny” — a legal term that, if accepted by a federal court, would make it tougher to uphold the 1996 law. For heightened scrutiny to apply to gays, a four-part threshold would have to be met. It would have to be proven that homosexuals have suffered a history of discrimination, exhibit immutable characteristics, are a minority or politically powerless, and that the Defense of Marriage Act has no legitimate policy objective. The justice department contends that gays meet all four standards.

The Alliance Defense Fund and others who support DOMA argue that the law should be subject to what is called “rational basis,” which holds that as long as the legislature had a rational reason for passing the law, it can stand. Under rational basis, the court begins with a presumption that the law is valid. Generally, under “heightened scrutiny,” the opposite is true.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals previously has held that sexual orientation should not be held to heightened scrutiny. That holding is binding on the current case.

“Heightened scrutiny is a much more difficult standard to pass,” Blomberg said. “Even if DOMA was subjected to heightened scrutiny, frankly it should pass. We're talking about a law that ensconces the definition of marriage that has been true throughout American history and really throughout all of human history. So there's nothing about it that should be subject to heightened review concerns.”

The Justice Department lists a series of instances of discrimination against gays, including a period in the 1900s when homosexuals were not eligible for federal jobs. It then goes one to argue that same-sex couples have “limited political power” and, as an example, it mentions the “political backlashes against same-sex marriage” with the adoption of state constitutional amendments explicitly defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Perhaps the brief's most significant statement is that the Defense of Marriage Act was driven by prejudice.

“[T]he legislative history demonstrates that the statute was motivated in significant part by animus towards gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships,” it says, using a term that means spiteful or prejudiced.

Blomberg called the argument “plainly inaccurate.”

“The Defense of Marriage Act was passed by 84 percent of Congress and signed by President Clinton,” Blomberg said, “and all it does is state what has been the definition of marriage for the entirety of human history, and particularly for American history. Are they prepared to argue that all those definitions were entirely based on animus? It's an indefensible position. That makes no sense at all.”

The Justice Department brief further argues that the “overwhelming consensus in the scientific community” is that “sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic.”

Blomberg said his organization and others like it have argued the exact opposite.

“There is not sufficient evidence to show that this is really a definable class at all,” Blomberg said. “Sexual orientation is not immutable, it does change, and there are significant studies to support that and show that. And, of course, anecdotal evidence shows it on a broad scale, where you have individuals changing their sexual orientation on a regular basis.”

The brief was filed at a time when Obama is still, as least in his public statements, opposing gay “marriage.” But he has said he is “evolving” on the issue, and his actions have left both sides of the debate questioning where he really stands.

Said Borelli, the Lambda Legal attorney, “The government itself has now forcefully argued that the marriages of same-sex couples cannot be treated as different and inferior under the law, and that any laws that treat lesbian and gay people differently must be reviewed with heightened scrutiny and presumed to be unconstitutional. Lambda Legal has been arguing that for years — it's great to have them on our side. The Department of Justice is living up to its name in seeking to uphold the constitutional guarantee of equality for lesbian and gay people.”

The Justice Department initially filed a motion to dismiss the case, but then changed sides in the case and is now fighting against its own motion.

“It is just bizarre,” Blomberg said. “It's very unusual.”

The case is Golinski v. United States Office of Personnel Management.
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Michael Foust is associate editor of Baptist Press. Read the brief online at http://www.scribd.com/doc/59626917/3-10-cv-00257-145.

ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP)–The North American Mission Board is sending $950,000 to Baptist conventions in seven states hard-hit by tornadoes and storms this spring.

The funds have been distributed based on a formula prioritizing the states' needs, NAMB President Kevin Ezell has announced.

The amount of funds by state follows: Alabama, $494,000 (52 percent of the $950,000); Missouri and Tennessee, $114,000 each (12 percent each); Mississippi, $66,500 (7 percent); Arkansas and Oklahoma, $57,000 each (6 percent each); and Georgia, $47,500 (5 percent).

“We are disbursing all the funds we received for spring storm relief,” Ezell said. “We are grateful to Southern Baptists for their generosity and want them to know the money is going where it is most needed.” Funds received after the current distribution will go to North Dakota for flood relief, Ezell added.

Through July 8, 1,719 donors had made 1,940 gifts totaling nearly $1 million to support the disaster relief efforts of the North American Mission Board and the state conventions, reported Carlos Ferrer, NAMB vice president and chief financial officer. This amount is in addition to monies Southern Baptists gave directly to state convention disaster relief funds.

“It's been an expensive year for disaster relief,” said Mickey Caison, NAMB's disaster relief coordinator, “and we haven't begun to get money for our upcoming North Dakota flood response yet.”

Southern Baptist Disaster Relief currently is gearing up for a major response in Minot, N.D., where flooding of the local Souris River has impacted 4,000 homes, requiring extensive mud-out work.

Even with this year far from over and in the midst of the annual hurricane season that does not end until Nov. 30, Southern Baptist Disaster Relief in 2011 will be remembered as the year of deadly tornadoes, historic flooding, an unusual number of state wildfires, earthquakes and even a tsunami.

Except for 2005 — the year of Hurricane Katrina — SBDR staff and volunteers have seldom been so taxed and spread so thin.

“We've had a lot of states involved in a lot of responses,” Caison said, adding that he thinks the SBDR network is continually gaining strength.

“Even though we've been stretched thin and involved in so many different states, our state leaders and volunteers continue to step up in ministry,” Caison said. “We've had the diversity of disasters in past years but not the diversity of disasters spread across so many states.”

Yet, 2011 will go down as another successful year not just because of the thousands of SBDR volunteers who have worked across the United States and Canada, and not because of the 412,000 meals prepared, the 28,000 “volunteer days” served or the 4,000 mud-out and chainsaw jobs completed.

Its success also will be measured in the 100-plus people who were led to Christ and 22,000 Gospel presentations, ministry contacts and chaplaincy contacts made during the first seven months of the year.

YEAR-TO-DATE RECAP

While the predicted effects on the West Coast of the tsunami from the 9.0 earthquake in Japan on March 11 turned out to be a false alarm, the same could not be said of the killer tornadoes that struck the South during two different weeks in April.

On April 15-16, more than 50 people died across 14 states — from Oklahoma to Virginia — by an onslaught of some 250 tornadoes. In North Carolina alone, 21 people died when a reported 60 tornadoes struck on April 16. In response, 1,500 North Carolina SBDR volunteers were mobilized for feeding and chainsaw work, reported Richard Brunson, director of Baptist Men for the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

On that same weekend in Alabama, an estimated 40 tornadoes tore through that state, including an EF-3 tornado that destroyed the sanctuary of Boone's Chapel Baptist Church near Prattville, Ala., and killed three family members who lived about 200 yards from the church in a mobile home.

But the outbreak was merely a foretaste of what was to come on April 27 when some 300 people were killed in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and Arkansas by an even deadlier spate of tornadoes. More than 249 were killed in Alabama alone when a mile-wide tornado plowed 200 miles northeast from Tuscaloosa up to Fort Payne and over into Ringgold, Ga. Dozens of Southern Baptist churches were destroyed or damaged.

In the two weeks following the April 27 tornadoes in Alabama, SBDR mobilized nearly 5,900 trained volunteers from 10 state conventions, including 200-plus SBC chaplains who fanned out across the state to help tornado victims cope with the stress brought on by grief over lost loved ones and massive property damage.

The chaplains — many of them CISM (Critical Incident Stress Management) chaplains — not only comforted the tornado victims, but also first-responders affected by the death and devastation, said Mel Johnson, state disaster relief director for the Alabama State Board of Missions.

State conventions responding in the aftermath of the historic Alabama tornadoes included Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, South Carolina, the Southern Baptists of Texas and Texas Baptist Men.

Rick Lance, executive director and state missionary of the Alabama State Board of Missions, called the tornadoes “our Katrina.” NAMB's Caison called it the “storm you never want to see.” Initially, the Weather Channel dubbed the April 27 tornadoes as the “deadliest tornado outbreak since 1974” but as the body count climbed, that would later be revised to “the deadliest tornado outbreak since 1932.”

With DR response activity still under way in Alabama and the South, 2011's tornado list expanded to Joplin, Mo., a city of 50,000 where at least 159 people were killed by an EF-5 tornado on May 25. As in Tuscaloosa, Ala., U.S. President Barack Obama and NAMB's Ezell were among the officials who traveled to Joplin to survey the damage and encourage victims and survivors.

In Joplin, the tornado literally hit home for one SBDR volunteer, Gary Hunley, who lost his own home to the storm. Yet he continued to work in SBDR as one of the Missouri Baptist Convention's “Blue Hat” leaders.

“You just don't know where to start,” Hunley said as he and his wife Twyla sifted through what was left of their belongings. “You don't want to let people help you because you think other people need it more. Then you realize you do need the help.

“Southern Baptists have been a true blessing to me,” said Hunley, who was honored with his wife Twyla by a standing ovation by the 5,000 messengers and attendees at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Phoenix in June. “They have helped me grow in my faith,” Hunley said of fellow Baptists. “When you face something like this, you need to have your life in order. You never know how long you have,” he said.

In the wake of the Joplin tornado, some 400 SBDR volunteers from Missouri, Kansas/Nebraska and Oklahoma prepared more than 18,000 meals; chaplains made 4,000 visits and contacts; 400 chainsaw jobs were completed; 134 children were cared for; and nearly 900 showers and laundry loads were provided.

“We just appreciate the prayers and financial support and all the teams who volunteered,” said Rick Seaton, the Missouri Baptist Convention's director of men's missions and ministry. “It was a tremendous response and a big operation. It went well because of the 400 volunteers who made it happen.”

After the state disaster relief teams' deployment ended in storm-ravaged Alabama and Missouri, other state teams were deployed to Brimfield, Mass., and Williston, Vt., where three tornadoes ripped the region June 1, killing four and impacting 19 communities. Some 30 SBDR volunteers from Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania/South Jersey, New York, Connecticut, North Carolina, Maine and NAMB were deployed to Massachusetts. Working from of an incident command post set up at Friendship Baptist Church in Brimfield, they included SBDR recovery, feeding, assessment, chaplaincy and shower units.

SBDR teams also have responded to heavy flooding in Vermont, Kentucky, Ohio, Montana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, California, Iowa and Wyoming – along with a rash of wildfires, which have plagued Texas, Arizona, Kansas/Nebraska, Florida and Silver Lake, Alberta, Canada, with the latest fire in New Mexico.

From its disaster operations center in Alpharetta, Ga., NAMB coordinates Southern Baptist response to major disasters through a partnership between NAMB and the SBC's 42 state conventions, most of which run state disaster relief programs.

SBDR assets include 82,000 trained volunteers, including chaplains, and some 1,550 mobile units for operations in feeding, chainsaws, mud-out, command, communications, child care, showers, laundry, water purification, repair/rebuild and power generation. SBDR is the largest mobilizer of trained, credentialed disaster relief volunteers in the United States, including the Red Cross and Salvation Army.

On the international front, SBDR continues to support ongoing responses in earthquake-ravaged Haiti and Japan, Caison noted.

With the Florida Baptist Convention and the Baptist Global Response (BGR) relief organization leading the effort, Southern Baptists have built 2,000 new concrete block houses in Haiti at a cost of about $2,500 each. Using concrete blocks, wood and tin purchased in Haiti — as well as local Haitian labor — Caison said at least 1,000 more homes are in the works.

In Japan, SBDR is partnering with the International Mission Board, the Japan Baptist Convention, Tokyo Baptist Church and BGR to provide training as well as recovery and clean-up assistance following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country's northeastern area.
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Mickey Noah writes for the North American Mission Board.

 

TYLER—When Tyland Baptist Church burned nearly to the ground 18 months ago at the hands of arsonists, the church was about to begin an evangelism training effort.

“We were to begin that Sunday. We said, ‘OK, we are going to do this.’ The enemy wants to keep you down when you are growing in the Lord,” Pastor David Mahfood said in a phone interview with the TEXAN on July 13, three days after dedicating the church’s 11,000-square-foot rebuilt structure.

“It still has that new church smell,” said Mahfood, his voice betraying abundant enthusiasm.

He said after news coverage of the arsons were national, the church received donations from individuals across the nation.  The church was underinsured by about $100,000, Mahfood said, but church giving and outside contributions covered the costs.

Meanwhile, others pastors donated theology books and study materials that burned.  Baptist Builders built the cabinetry.

“We are going without a few things, and some things we decided we probably didn’t need,” the pastor noted.

Thanks to a wide collaboration of church groups and the work of Colleyville-based All-Star Restoration, the 11,000-square-foot facility is the same size as what was destroyed. Everything had to be rebuilt from the foundation up.

All-Star Restoration specializes in working with volunteer groups in constructing churches, Mahfood said.

During their homelessness from January 2010 until a few weeks ago, Tyland shared the facilities of the nearby independent Willowbrook Baptist Church. Tyland was running about 120 people on Sunday, and Willowbrook about 35.

“Our normal service time bumped back to 9:30 a.m. and they moved theirs up to 11 a.m.,” Mahfood noted. “They had Sunday School while we had church, and then we traded places at 11. They did not have Sunday evening services and we did, so there was no conflict there.”

Mahfood said the two church staffs became close during their 18 months of shared space, with their pastor, Lloyd McCaskill, a 45-year veteran preacher, mentoring and sometimes spurring on the younger Mahfood during an uncertain time.

“Talk about the Lord blessing me with a mentor in an older pastor. It was a tremendous blessing,” Mahfood said. “It was just good, really sweet. We miss them.”

Tyland Baptist was the fourth in a string of 10 church structures arsonists hit across East Texas in January 2010. On Jan. 10 of this year, Jason Robert Bourque, 20, of Lindale, and Daniel George McAllister, 22, of Ben Wheeler, were each sentenced to life plus 20 years after pleading guilty to the crimes.

Four of the burned churches were Southern Baptist: Lake Athens Baptist Church in Athens, Little Hope Baptist Church in Canton, Tyland Baptist, and Dover Baptist Church in rural Smith County.

Mahfood said church members are “just completely pumped. They have been so supportive and unified during the process. In the last year we have buried 12 of our members, but the Lord has also sent 12 new members to us. We are a stronger congregation because of the difficulty.”

Also, Mahfood said his priorities have been reordered by the arson.

“A lot of things that were important before the fire don’t even make it on the radar now. It’s easy to say ‘The Lord will provide,’ but when you are actually in that situation, you realize how concrete his promises are. We had nothing. We had to turn to the Lord, and he brought us through. You always believe it, but now we know it.”

HOUSTON—Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a potential presidential candidate, has invited the nation’s governors to a prayer and fasting event on Aug. 6 at Reliant Stadium in Houston. Sponsored by the American Family Association, “The Response” is meant to be a non-denominational and non-partisan Christian prayer service, according to the AFA.

In a letter to the other 49 governors, Perry urged them to declare Aug. 6 a day to pray for “unity and righteousness.”

In a message on the event website—theresponseusa.com—Perry said: “Some problems are beyond our power to solve, and according to the Book of Joel, Chapter 2, this historic hour demands a historic response. Therefore, on August 6, thousands will gather to pray for a historic breakthrough for our country and a renewed sense of moral purpose.”