By William J. Murray
Chairman, Religious Freedom Coalition

Thousands of Southern Baptists, many of them retirees, have lost their life savings. Most of those affected live in Arizona, but many now live elsewhere.

A complete secular version of this story can be found at the Newsweek Magazine Internet site http://newsweek.com/nw-srv/printed/us/so/a47824-1999nov28.htm . My version of the events are simpler and a little more spiritual.

The Baptist Foundation of Arizona is associated with the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention. (Http://www.azsobaptist.org) For decades the Baptist Foundation was a good investment and made money for Baptists in Arizona. Then in the 1980s the Foundation went beyond managing retirement funds and church bond issues and invested heavily in the hot real estate markets. The Arizona real estate market collapsed and now the Baptist Foundation is $590 million in debt.

Many elderly had everything in the Baptist Foundation. Some had sold their homes and put the money in the Baptist Foundation to pay for retirement centers and medical care in old age. Those funds are no longer available to them.

I have contacted numerous Southern Baptist leaders about the situation in Arizona. Unfortunately I have received legalistic answers to my concerns such as, "Our type of church government does not hold us to the liabilities of a single church or state convention." No, the law does not, but the commandments of Jesus do.

Not all of this $590 million need be raised. In fact as much as 40 cents on the dollar can be retrieved in due time and the auditors may have some financial responsibility. This will take years, and some of those in need of long turn care simply don’t have years to wait.

Just a few million dollars set aside in a fund to care for urgent needs would be sufficient for now. Our denomination can easily raise many millions of dollars on any given Sunday for mission work. The Southern Baptist Convention of Arizona has in fact set up the Jerusalem Fund for this purpose but has so far received only about one hundred thousand dollars. This is not enough!

My ministry is currently sending a monthly amount to the Jerusalem Fund to help. Can you help now, at Christmas time, to meet the needs of our Baptist brothers and sisters?

The fund address is:

Jerusalem Fund
PMB 253
5025 N. Central Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85012-1520

For further information please call the Jerusalem Fund at (800) 750-6151