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CHICAGO (BP)—A number of Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders disagreed yesterday with an assertion by the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago that "hate crimes" might result from an SBC evangelistic outreach in Chicago next year.

"We're not going there with antagonism in our hearts. ... In fact, the contrary," said Herb Hollinger, the SBC Executive Committee's vice president for convention news, in an Associated Press story distributed nationally reporting on a November 27 letter from the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago to SBC President Paige Patterson.

In the letter, the Chicago religious leaders ask Southern Baptists to "enter into discussion with us and reconsider your plans" for an SBC "Strategic Focus Cities" evangelistic initiative in Chicago next year.

Hollinger told the AP, "We have a message that we think will bring encouragement and hope to people."

James M. Queen, executive director of the Chicago Metro Baptist Association, told Baptist Press that the Strategic Focus Cities emphasis for Chicago will demonstrate "acts of love," helping local Southern Baptist churches with block parties and other supporting activities.

"We are not targeting groups," Queen said. "We want to show love, show our faith. Everybody needs to hear the gospel."

Queen said Jesus Christ mandated sharing "our faith."

"We are going to love them, pray for them," Queen added, and in the process feed and clothe them. "We are going to be peaceful people and bless our city."

Richard Land, president of the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said in a statement November 29 that the Chicago religious leaders' objections to the SBC evangelistic initiative "underscore the significant and serious problems with the whole hate crimes ethos."

"The objections raised by the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago should be profoundly disturbing to people who truly believe in the practice of our First Amendment free exercise of religious rights in America," Land said.

"People who commit crimes against persons and property should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," Land stated. "If a person murders someone, it shouldn't matter why they did it—society should condemn the crime in the strongest terms possible."

Land, however, continued: "To say that Southern Baptists should refrain from an evangelistic campaign because it might, as the council said, 'contribute to a climate conducive to hate crimes,' is not a very far step away from then claiming that the act of witnessing itself to those whom you believe need to be saved is a 'hate crime.'

"I think it is instructive that those who criticize Southern Baptists' efforts to evangelize cities or groups always preface their criticism by acknowledging Southern Baptists' right to express our beliefs," Land observed. "It seems they affirm our right to express our beliefs as long as we agree not to do so. As soon as we seek to practice what we preach, they severely criticize our 'arrogance' and our 'presupposition' that non-Christians 'are outside God's plan of salvation,' as Chicago's United Methodist Bishop Joseph Sprague said in press reports.

"I grieve," Land said, "as I am sure John Wesley does from beyond the grave, that a Methodist minister would make such statements in response to fellow believers' attempts to heed the Great Commission commandment of Jesus our Savior, who it should be remembered did say, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me' (John 14:6)."

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November (Web-only) 1999, Vol. 43