President Bush heralded Southern Baptists as champions of the faith in his remarks delivered June 11 via satellite to messengers gathered for the 2002 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The president’s address contained references to his personal faith in God and his commitment to preserving the traditional family and social issues important to evangelicals.
“We believe in fostering a culture of life, and that marriage and family are sacred institutions that should be preserved and strengthened,” Bush told messengers as they interrupted his speech with applause. “We believe that a life is a creation, not a commodity, and that our children are gifts to be loved and protected, not products to be designed and manufactured by human cloning.”
“I want to thank all of you for your good works,” he said. “You’re believers, and you’re patriots, faithful followers of God and good citizens of America. And one day, I believe that it will be said of you, ‘Well done, good and faithful servants.’”
Bush also said Baptists have had an “extraordinary influence in American history,” noting the convention’s role as a “champion of religious tolerance and freedom.”
“What I found interesting is the Baptist form of church government was a model of democracy even before the founding of America,” he said. “And Baptists understood the deep truth of what Martin Luther King Jr. said: ‘The church is not the master or the servant of the state but rather the conscience of the state.’
“Since the earliest days of our republic, Baptists have been guardians of the separation of church and state, preserving the integrity of both,” Bush said. “Yet, you have never believed in separating religious faith from political life
“We all know that men and women can be good without faith,” he said. “And we also know that faith is an incredibly important source of goodness in our country.
“True faith is never isolated from the rest of life, and faith without works is dead,” he added. “Our democratic government is one way to promote social justice and the common good, which is why the SBC has become a powerful voice for some of the great issues of our time.”
Bush said that faith:
Z“teaches us to respect those with whom we disagree. It teaches us to tolerate one another and the proper way to treat human beings created in the divine image is with civility.
Z“teaches us that God has a special concern for the poor, and that faith proves itself through actions and sacrifice, through acts of kindness and caring for those in need.” (BP)
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