Bill Moyers, Commentary, NBC Nightly News, February 23, 1995

Let’s begin with a quiz with some familiar photographs seen often in the news. What does this man have in common with this man? And this man with this man? And this man with this man? You win a pair of angel wings if you said that Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, Jesse Helms and Jesse Jackson, Pat Robertson and Al Gore are all Baptists. So are Sam Donaldson and yours truly. Clearly, Baptists are a motley crowd.

The free exercise of conscience is the heart of the faith, the priesthood of the believer. And every local church is a democracy. No one can speak for all Baptists. But in the last decade, the Southern Baptist Convention was captured by a political posse allied with the Republican Party. Their hierarchy wants to impose conformity on the churches.

Suddenly, the 39 legal abortions preformed by Henry Foster, which he says he did reluctantly, are a theological sin and political opportunity. Despite studies showing Southern Baptists hold varying opinions about abortion, the hierarchy has pronounced al 15 million of them opposed to Foster’s nomination.

The irony is that Henry Foster, Md, himself a Baptist, has been a lifelong crusader against teen-age pregnancy and probably more successful at preaching abstinence then a dozen doctors of theology. But when God becomes a partisan, religion becomes unforgiving and all subtlety excommunicated.

Suppose, though, that instead of reading National review, New Republic, or The Nation, God reads only the human heart and looks with mercy on mortals like Henry Foster making hard choices in the anguished trenches of life. Would God then vote yea or nay on the nomination? I don’t know. And neither does any other Baptist.

April 1995