Disaster, devastation and death cannot be avoided when reflecting on 2005. But alongside the destruction were Alabama Baptist volunteers reaching out to make a difference in a devastated world.
Natural disasters seemed to be the thread that tied the year together. From floods and fires to hurricanes and earthquakes, a natural enemy of some sort seemed to attack somewhere in the world every other week. But it was the Indian Ocean tsunami that hit just days before the New Year that left people worldwide awestruck.
More than 200,000 deaths resulted from the tsunami that struck Southeast Asia Dec. 26, 2004. Triggered by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Indonesia, the tsunami caused $9 billion in damage. Hardest hit were Indonesia (where most of the deaths occurred), Sri Lanka, Thailand and India. Recovery is expected to take more than a decade.
Another 87,000 people were killed and 3 million left homeless when a massive earthquake hit Pakistan Oct. 8.
And the United States took its worst blow from a storm in recent history when Hurricane Katrina made her mark on Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama Aug. 29.
A Category 5 hurricane with 175 mph winds at her peak performance, Katrina came ashore near Grand Isle, La., as a Category 4 with 140 mph winds. Although New Orleans was first thought to have escaped catastrophic damage, levee breaks near Lake Pontchartrain drowned the city in a mix of sewage, gasoline and garbage — in some areas, 20 feet deep. About 1,000 people perished and millions were left temporarily, if not permanently, displaced.
Katrina not only left Americans shocked and bickering about how to best handle the situation, but she also proved to be the costliest storm in U.S. history. Insurance claims totaled $23 billion and reconstruction costs are estimated at $200 billion-plus.
As each of these events captured headlines for months, the aspect of relief efforts gained its own moment in the spotlight, particularly that provided by Southern Baptists.
More than 9,000 Baptist volunteers, including nearly 1,000 Alabama Baptists, participated in the Katrina relief efforts, which included preparing a record 13 million meals for hurricane victims and relief workers. This relief effort also included help provided after hurricanes Rita and Wilma, which followed on the heels of Katrina.
Alabama Baptists also gave almost $2.5 million of the nearly $20 million given by Baptists to disaster relief efforts following Katrina.
At the beginning of the year, Southern Baptists gave $3 million within three weeks of the tsunami landfall. By the time Katrina struck, Southern Baptists had given more than $16 million to the tsunami relief efforts.
Because Alabama Baptists were on the front lines from the beginning of relief efforts in Southeast Asia, they were put in charge of the Southern Baptist rebuilding efforts in Thailand.
Tommy Puckett, director of disaster relief for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, coordinates that effort. The state will serve as the organizational hub for teams from across the United States sent to construct new homes amid the destruction in Phuket, Thailand. The project will take several years to complete, Puckett said.
Baptists didn’t let fatigue, both in giving and going, stop them when the Pakistan disaster hit either. Within days, relief efforts were underway by Hungarian Baptist Aid and Baptist World Aid. Southern Baptist volunteers from the United States arrived within two weeks and began work.
International Mission Board (IMB) workers in the region responded immediately, buying needed supplies and meeting medical needs. They distributed blankets and about 10 tons of food.
The Baptist groups initially gave about $200,000 to relief efforts.
Record giving by Baptists and other organizations topped news headlines, but the concept came naturally for Alabama Baptists.
In fact, Alabama Baptists reported several areas of record giving coming out of the previous year.
In 2004, Alabama churches shot past the total Cooperative Program (CP) base budget goal of $40,427,480 and hit a single-year high with $41,653,812, a total topping the year’s challenge goal of $41,427,480.
And in specific offerings that year Alabama Baptists continued the generous trend, surpassing every challenge goal for the first time.
The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering total of $10,944,510.48 was a single-year record, and when combined with the IMB designations from the general state CP total it set another record for IMB receipts from Alabama.
The same happened with the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering of $5,352,772 and CP designations to the North American Mission Board.
As Alabama Baptists anticipated passing their budgetary goal of $41.5 million set for 2005, they adopted a record CP base budget of $42,645,000 for 2006. The 2006 CP state causes budget is set at $500,000 and the CP challenge budget is $43,650,000.
On the world’s stage, Iraq continued to be on the minds of Americans as the military entered the third year of war and the death toll for U.S. soldiers topped 2,000.
The world also watched as Saddam Hussein’s trial began in his home country. A constitution was ratified and two nationwide elections also took place amid threats and continued acts of violence.
Confrontations and violence also erupted in other parts of the world as the voices of Islam struggled to express themselves.
In France, rioting began in early November after two teenagers of north African descent were accidentally electrocuted as they hid from police in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois. The issue escalated after a tear-gas bomb exploded in a mosque in the same northern suburb of Paris. The violence spread as urban youth set ablaze shops, businesses, schools and more than 1,000 cars each night and brought the attacks to Paris and eventually across the nation, extending west to the region of Normandy and south to Nice and Cannes.
In other parts of the world, news flowed throughout the year about Muslims cutting off the hands and heads of Christians as well as halting progress on church buildings under construction. But amid the violence came calls from some Islamic leaders to take a different direction through discussions rather than fatal attacks.
Another clash of worldviews emerged in the United States over right-to-die issues, gay rights and “intelligent design.”
The right-to-die issue catapulted into water-cooler discussions nationwide when Terri Schiavo, a brain-dead Florida woman, became the center of a highly publicized legal battle between her husband and parents. She was allowed to die March 31 when the courts refused to reinsert her feeding tube in spite of the objections of her parents and other individuals and groups.
Same-sex “marriage” remained in the news throughout 2005 as courts debated the issue. In Texas, however, voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional ban of same-sex “marriage,” and other states are expected to do so in 2006. Alabama will hold its election about banning gay unions in the state in June.
Homosexual issues also reached into America’s churches, causing clashes within denominations, including the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church and American Baptist Churches USA.
In classrooms, a debate about “intelligent design” reopened a simmering battle against evolution. The idea that the natural world is so complex that it must have been overseen by a creator, found a foothold in Kansas. But in November, a Pennsylvania school board that supported it was voted out of office.
In December, a federal judge ruled that it should not be taught as science in the public schools. The decision by U.S. District Judge John Jones III was the federal courts’ first foray into the raging controversy over teaching the theory as an alternative to evolution. Both sides agree the dispute is likely to continue well into 2006 and beyond.
The intelligent design issue also found its way to Alabama schools. Samford University announced a lecture on the topic set for February 2006.
But the bigger news coming out of Samford in 2005 was the announcement of President Thomas E. Corts’ retirement at the end of the 2005–2006 academic year. Andrew Westmoreland, president of Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., was nominated in early December as Corts’ successor. He will go before Samford’s board of trustees Jan. 10. If elected, he will begin his role June 1.
Two other top Baptist universities — Baylor (Waco, Texas) and Mercer (Macon, Ga.) — also selected new presidents. Baylor regents elected John Lilley of Nevada in November. Mercer elected Baylor interim president Bill Underwood. Baylor President Robert Sloan resigned in January 2005 under fire from alumni, regents and faculty after charting an aggressive and expensive path to elite-college status.
Other news about Baptist colleges and universities came with breaks from the state Baptist conventions that supported them.
In the Georgia Baptist Convention, Mercer was voted out over homosexuality and other issues, while Shorter College lost a long legal battle to elect its own trustees.
Belmont University and Georgetown College distanced themselves from Baptists in Tennessee and Kentucky, respectively.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) experienced a changing of the guard in 2005 as several top leaders announced retirements.
Jimmy Draper, president of LifeWay Christian Resources, will retire in February. Jim Henry, pastor of First Baptist Church, Orlando, Fla., and Jerry Vines, pastor of First Baptist Church, Jacksonville, Fla., both retired in 2005.
And, of course, the death of Adrian Rogers removed a major pillar of SBC life from the scene. Rogers, pastor of the 28,000-member Bellevue Baptist Church, Cordova, Tenn., and three-time SBC president, died in November.
Pope John Paul II also died in 2005 as did U.S. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and civil rights advocates and Alabama natives Rosa Lee Parks and Vivian Malone Jones.
Evangelist Billy Graham’s health continued to decline in 2005, leading him to hold his final crusade in July, held where his ministry was launched in 1957 — New York.
In other news:
- New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, severely damaged by Katrina, closed its New Orleans campus for a year and temporarily moved to Atlanta.
- The 100th anniversary of the Baptist World Alliance was held in Birmingham, England, in July.
- Baptist megachurch pastor Rick Warren continued to dominate best seller lists and TV talk shows while expanding his activism to include global poverty and AIDS.
(Wire services contributed)
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