In the January 2000 issue of Baptists Today, I had an article published on the Alabama Baptist State Convention’s (ABSC) role in the defeat of the lottery last fall. Key to that article was a quote by Wayne Flynt from an Atlanta Constitution editorial by Cynthia Tucker, where Flynt said: “The religious groups are outraged by private sins; but they don’t seem as concerned about social sins, like a third of the kids in Alabama’s public schools being poor.”
In that story, I had an interview with Lenora Pate who mobilized the Baptist Woman’s Missionary Union to defeat the lottery. She believes the state’s Baptists are just as passionate for school reform. They have a chance to confirm Ms. Pate’s hopes with a matter soon coming before the state legislature.
April 27-29 in Montgomery, Pacers, a program for rural services and research — check out their Web site at www.pacers.org — will lobby the state legislature for funding in a three-day celebration. Pacers, up to this point privately funded by the Annenberg Foundation, is a program already on the ground running with much success across the state.
Pacers is endorsed by the staff of the Collinsville Baptist Church, Collinsville, for their magnificent work through the schools and in the Hispanic community.
Keynote speaker for the April 27 celebration will be my Baptist hero Will D. Campbell. He is also the hero of Marshall Frady, John Chancellor, Tom Brokaw and Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam.
I encourage the leadership of the ABSC to follow their better lights and kickoff the 21st century with an endorsement of Pacers.
Stephen M. Fox
Collinsville, Ala.
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