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* Timothy George and Al Mohler have it right: either we in the Southern Baptist Convention must return to our roots in Reformed theology, or our denomination will become just another irrelevant mainline group ["Passing the Southern Baptist Torch," May 15]. Process theology, extreme Arminianism, and business as usual will doom us.

- Charley Buntin

Mayfield, Ky.

* I found the article "Black Southern Baptists" [May 15] interesting. I grew up in southern California in an area where no one cared that Bing Lum was Chinese, James Armstrong was black, Rosendo Limon was Mexican, Manuel Mejia was Chicano, or I was white. Individuals were judged individually, not on the phony basis of "race."

Also, for a year in Dallas I was a member of a black Southern Baptist church. I joined it for the same reason I've joined every other church I've been a member of. I was convinced that becoming a member of Second Chapel Baptist Church was what God wanted me to do.

That church never did pay attention to my color. I can't speak for all white Southern Baptists or for all black Southern Baptists. But if my interaction with Second Chapel Baptist Church of Garland, Texas, is any indication, "racism" in the Southern Baptist Convention is on its way out.

- Robert McKay

Marlow, Okla.

FROM MELTING POT TO SALAD BOWL

As an immigrant from Korea, I agreed with many of the points raised in Tim Stafford's "Here Comes the World" [May 15]. It dealt with many of the serious misconceptions held by Americans whose ancestors came earlier. I would take exception to the view that the melting-pot immigration policy could or should reach the boiling point. The continued existence of organizations of hyphenated Americans reflects the inability of America to be a melting pot. It is instead more like a salad bowl. Each ethnic group has its own flavor (identity), which, when mixed with the many other groups in the bowl, makes the salad taste great. Compared to the ethnic strife in most of the world, we are indeed blessed.

- Chinkook Lee

Potomac, Md.

* Stafford is to be commended for his balanced treatment of contemporary immigration in the U.S. Nevertheless, by employing an assimilationist approach, he encourages a we/they discourse that subtly assumes "we" to be white evangelicals and "they" the "others" who will dissolve into the American "melting pot." Since America and American Christianity have always been pluralistic, I question the necessity of retaining that perspective. Furthermore, by conflating the experiences of post-1965 nonwhite immigrants with those of earlier European immigrants, the racial dimensions of the current debate are ignored.

The "Anglo-Saxon" nativism of the previous century differs from the twentieth-century problem of the "color-line." "Americanized" nonwhites still have difficulties integrating into a society that tends to privilege one race and gender.

- Prof. Timothy Tseng

Denver Seminary

Denver, Colo.

Stafford makes quite an assumption about the ability of Christianity to survive the tides of population migration and cultural upheaval.

Remember the five apostolic cities of the early church? There were Jerusalem, Ephesus (or Antioch), Alexandria, Rome, and Constantinople. Where are they now? Only Rome remains as a nominally Christian city.

Where is it written that Christianity will survive in the USA? The American continents are not even mentioned in Scripture.

- Leon G. Johnson

Bath, N.Y.

"SADLY INCOMPLETE"

* "Your World Is Too Small" [May 15, From the Senior Editors, by Miriam Adeney] sounded a valuable call to a wider view of life before God than evangelical Christians habitually inhabit. I fear, however, the author may have moved toward "selling the farm" by confusing laudable religious forms of expression from those who at root worship idols with some God-given insight into truth. Affirmation of prayer in the public sector is a world apart from calling on the only true God in the name of Jesus. Such religious expression is not simply "sadly incomplete." It is subject to God's judgment. A spirit of grace in the world is indeed a virtue, but the appreciation of irreligion is like looking at a wall painted by a child and mentioning it in the same sentence about one painted by a professional.

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July 17 1995, Vol. 39, No. 8