If you want to see how leftist someone is, use the term “American exceptionalism” in his presence and see how red his face becomes. The term refers to unique aspects of our nation that cause us to be successful and often laudable when compared to other countries. Sure, there’s a bit of bluster in the way the term is used—the United States is beneficiary to great ideas from many sources. I do think we can see places and events where the particular mix of ideas and application in our country is notable in the flow of human history. 

I had this sense last week as I walked the halls of the Texas capitol and met and prayed with several lawmakers. It’s a dynamic place, full of activists, lobbyists, reporters and a few befuddled Baptist preachers. The days that our Texas Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee was there, we saw groups of school children, 4-H clubbers, scores if not hundreds of Catholics gathered for their own lobby day and a large number of pro-family activists who came for a marriage rally on Monday. There were areas of agreement with those diverse groups, but they certainly represented different agendas. None of those groups heckled one another, shoved or threw things at one another. No one was afraid to tout his own cause, regardless of who sits in the governor’s office. Some of the leaders we met were forward with their Christian faith and knew more than just a little of God’s Word. They weren’t even mildly concerned about who might hear them quoting Scripture. 

Many of you know countries where this isn’t true. I’ve worshipped with believers who snuck into their meeting places and have myself walked for blocks so my informer cab driver wouldn’t know where Christians were gathering. You know there are places like that, but you should also know that some Western countries, those that contributed much to our own culture, restrict religious and political speech in a way not constitutional in the U.S. Some of what I heard and saw in Austin would have been illegal in even some “civilized” countries. 

The liberty I saw being exercised at our state capitol is repeated in 50 states as well as in our nation’s capitol. As I said in our April TEXAN, religious liberty—specifically that growing out of the Christian view of man and God—is foundational to other liberties. A personal relationship between an individual and God is the basic story in the Christian Bible. Yes, God dealt with nations and churches and families, but in the midst of that it was kings and priests and pastors and soldiers and shepherds God judged as individually obedient or disobedient servants. Individuals stand before God to answer for their deeds, not communities or political parties. In this life that means that an individual believer communes with God without a human priest or magistrate as intermediary. 

The most significant threat to our liberty is not a political party or another theistic religion; it is a growing antipathy for the exercise of any non-Naturalist religion. Many consider the idea that a person owes his first allegiance to God to be against the common good. The threat to those who crowd the halls of our state house in support of a conviction, and to the diversity of our lawmakers, comes from the same mind that persecutes Navy chaplains and Christian florists. If our cultural majority attempts to compel by force the religious consciences of chaplains and business owners, why would anyone think that his opinion about gambling, farm subsidies or pre-K education will remain sacrosanct? 

Our freedom to petition our leaders and to rally on the capitol steps is then a legacy of the Christian faith that influenced our founders, and our founding documents. The residue of that gospel legacy is stronger in some places than others. But we must struggle to avoid being cynical, even as it fades. The influence of Christians is still present, even in the lives of those who are not believers. Everywhere there are leaders who are genuinely trying to do the right things as they represent us at various levels of government. Some are believers and some are not; some are sincerely wrong and some are right more often than not. Don’t let the most outrageous examples of corruption and mediocrity make you despair. Some of our leaders are believers who themselves seek God’s will. And of course the Lord is not powerless before those even who care nothing for his will. Pray for our Texas leadership as they move into the last weeks of their biennial session. It’s godly to do so, and many are people for whom the gospel is more than a memory. 

HOUSTON—The U.S. Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit heard arguments April 7 from lawyers representing two Texas Baptist universities demanding an exemption from the Health and Human Services contraceptive mandate and the “draconian fines” levied for non-compliance. In a press conference outside the U.S. court house in Houston, representatives for the schools said their identity as Christian institutions and financial solvency is threatened by the government’s demands.

A federal judge in December 2013 ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, East Texas Baptist University and Houston Baptist University, exempting the schools from compliance with the U.S. Health and Human Services mandate requiring employers to provide for their employees insurance coverage for contraceptives, including abortifacients. The federal government appealed, forcing the universities to continue to defend in court their identity as Christian institutions.

“It’s not just a simple matter. It’s not only a theological matter, as important as that is today, or only a matter of a sincerely held religious belief,” HBU president Robert Sloan told reporters outside the courthouse following the hearing.

“In some ways our right to exist as an institution to hold these beliefs and perhaps even our very survival as a whole is at stake.”

Sloan said East Texas Baptist University and Houston Baptist University v. Burwell “is clearly a matter of religious freedom.” HBU’s Christian underpinning and pro-life values “are not incidental” but “core convictions at the very heart of the Christian faith,” and compulsory violation of those convictions by the federal government is unconscionable.

“When somebody comes and tells me that my school has to do something it doesn’t want and it’s infringing on [the] rights given to it by the very supreme law of the land my heart breaks,” HBU freshman Jasmine Kelley told the TEXAN following the press conference. The government major was among a handful of HBU students who attended the press conference in defense of their school.

Attorney Eric Rassbach, deputy general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, defended the two universities in the case. The non-profit law firm defends the religious expression of people from a variety of faiths and, most notably, successfully defended the craft store giant Hobby Lobby before the U.S. Supreme Court against the same mandate.

 “We’re in court today because [the universities] have been put to a terrible choice between following their most deeply held religious convictions and paying outlandish fines,” Rassbach said.

The non-compliance penalty of $100 per employee per day totals $12 million and $8 million a year, respectively, for HBU and ETBU. Scores of other private religious institutions around the country are in the same fight, and at least one of those cases will likely end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Our clients have a religious objection to abortions,” said Rassbach. “They don’t want to pay for abortions. They don’t want to help people get abortions. They are not looking to impose their will on anyone else. They just don’t want to be involved,” said Rassbach.

He argued the compliance exemption afforded churches should also apply to all religious institutions like his clients. The imposition of government requirements antithetical to a religious institution’s mission also  illustrates the need for religious liberty legislation on the state and federal level.

But in recent weeks religious liberty laws have come under fire. Legislatures in Indiana, Arkansas and about 10 other states including Texas are drafting laws giving legal protection to individuals and businesses against government intrusion in matters of religious convictions.  The religious liberty laws do not codify an individual’s or business’s “right to discriminate” as charged by detractors.

Jonathan Saenz, an attorney and president of Texas Values, told the media, “The reason we are here today is because we have a federal law called the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act … that gives private, religious institutions a fighting chance in court when the government comes calling.”

Rassbach said Becket Fund attorneys have relied on the federal RFRA law in all of arguing its cases across the nation.

“It never occurred to me that the government would try to force HBU to change its mission,” said Morgan St. John, an HBU senior education major.

Joshua Jones, a senior government major, said he has seen the devastation caused by abortion and will fight any government mandate that makes him or his school complicit in its administration.

Mon ‘Sher Preston agreed. The HBU alumnus and director of student involvement and leadership told the TEXAN she was encouraged by the students’ willingness to take a stand on behalf of their convictions and their university.

In its effort to force religious entities to comply with the mandate, the government has put itself in the position of determining what institutions are and are not guided by deeply held religious convictions, Rassbach explained.

“It sets a very dangerous precedent,” Rassbach said, “for the government to come in and say, ‘Well, we just don’t think you’re really religious.’”

He said the government can ferret out fraud,“but what they can’t do is question the validity of those beliefs.”

Asked if the universities could fulfill the mandate by hiring a second party to administer the contraceptive mandate, Rassbach said, “There is nothing wrong with having some insurance regulation, but when you say we have to go out and get an insurance company that is going to provide this stuff we’re morally complicit. You don’t just say we have to outsource our consciences to somebody else.”

He said the circuit judges were very engaged during oral arguments Tuesday and asked “very penetrating questions of all parties.”

“I’m hopeful that we will have another ruling in our favor,” he said. “We were right back in December of 2013. And we’re right today. And we’re going to be right again tomorrow.”

Local pastors in Southern Baptist churches, state conventions spread across the country and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention are declaring an increased confidence in the Cooperative Program. If the first quarter report of contributions to the SBC CP Allocation Budget is indicative of a trend, the ministries and missions Southern Baptists value stand to gain greater funding.

Year-to-date contributions received by the SBC Executive Committee for the Cooperative Program totaled $64,702,035 between October 2014 and January of this year. That represents an amount that is 4.97 percent above contributions over the same time period a year earlier.

The convention-adopted budget is distributed 50.41 percent to international missions through IMB, 22.79 percent to North American missions through NAMB, 22.16 percent to theological education, 2.99 percent to the SBC operating budget, and 1.65 percent to the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

A 2014 survey conducted by the SBC Executive Committee shows an increase in confidence among pastors that the Cooperative Program supports ministries and missions valued by their churches—moving up to 81 percent from 73 percent in a 2012 survey that asked the same questions of pastors.

On the state level, 23 state Baptist conventions have increased the portion of Cooperative Program receipts forwarded to Southern Baptist Convention missions and ministries this year, moving toward the goal of a 50/50 allocation between state convention causes and SBC causes. That demonstrates continuation of an upward trend spanning several years.

The Baptist Convention of Iowa and the Nevada Baptist Convention joined the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention as the only state conventions that forward half or more of CP receipts from local churches to the SBC without a “shared ministries” calculation. The SBTC, formed in 1998 with a 50/50 division from the start, moved to allocating 55 percent of undesignated receipts to the SBC in 2008.

SBC President Ronnie Floyd of Springdale, Ark., told a luncheon crowd at the SBTC Empower Conference that the story has never been better in terms of what is happening through giving to the Cooperative Program.

“We need to celebrate that we are reaching the unreached peoples internationally. We are strategically planting gospel churches nationally and internationally. We are preparing the next generation of pastors, missionaries and scholars effectively. We are extending compassion through hunger and disaster relief ministry dynamically. We are engaging the culture, always lifting high the cause of religious liberty globally.”

Floyd challenged those present to return to their churches, telling the story of what God is doing. “Give them the vision of reaching Texas, reaching America, reaching the world for Christ, and I’m telling you they’ll buy into that.”

Connection Community Church in Rowlett bought into the value of the Cooperative Program from the day the church was planted in November of 2010. Growing from 31 people meeting in a house to an average attendance of 475 to 500, Pastor Shane Pruitt sees the congregation as a child of the Cooperative Program.

“Somewhere some church in south Texas gave to the Cooperative Program and invested in these lives that are being changed here in Rowlett,” Pruitt said.

“It’s in the DNA of our church that we realize we are a beneficiary of CP giving and see the benefit of giving toward that so that the story can continue in other places in Texas and around the world.”

The thirst for spiritual awakening continues to express itself through the SBTC’s regional Pastor Prayer Gatherings across our state. We are not quite at the halfway point of praying in all of Texas’ 18 regions, yet we have experienced powerful times of prayer. I encourage you to make every effort to be a part of the prayer for spiritual awakening coming to your area.

I sometimes have difficulty understanding the balance, timing and relationship between obedience and blessing. It’s sort of like the chicken/egg dilemma; which came first? Do times of blessing bring obedience or does obedience bring times of blessing? To bring that dilemma to the issue of revival, renewal and awakening, does obedience introduce times of awakening or does awakening result in seasons of obedience? To believe that we are to pray and sit around until the fire falls before we step into obedience fails to pass the “smell test.” However, going out on our own without the power and presence of the Holy Spirit to make us successful woefully falls short as well.

It seems we cannot have one without the other; both are somewhat simultaneous. We pray and obey while we trust the Spirit to be at work. As Southern Baptists we have a built-in mechanism to help us on the obedience side. We call it the Cooperative Program. Let me explain.

The promise of our Lord in the Great Commission to be with us always is connected to the premise that we should always be involved in making disciples of all nations. Should we expect the presence, power and provision of the Holy Spirit if our lives and ministries are not attached to making disciples of the nations? I think not. God is not about making any of us successful or famous but about making his son famous. As we embark on the same track, he will be with us.

Make no mistake about it. The Cooperative Program is about making disciples. For those of us who attended a Southern Baptist seminary, it helped us financially. For those on the mission field, it pays their way (Ask any missionary, and they’ll be quick to tell you). We are in a season during which the Cooperative Program is under scrutiny by those wishing to make it better. I’m all for it. There are also those who wish to radically change it. If there is a better way for us to fund the ministries of disciple making than what we have undertaken together through our state and national conventions, I’m all for that as well. But until that way is discovered, I’m all in for CP. I encourage you to get all in as well.

Every spiritual awakening has been preceded by prayer and obedience. There have been no spiritual awakenings that did not produce lasting results from obedience by those touched by the quickening of the Spirit. As we continue to pray and obey, and as awakening comes, I am convinced that one of the lasting results will be a great increase in the amount of our offerings given to ministries that are making disciples of the nations. Our mechanism, our delivery system is in place. We call it the Cooperative Program.