CLC gives $10,000 for coalition phone database
- Apr 9, 2008 - comment
JEFFERSON CITY—The Christian Life Commission (CLC) of the Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) showed its support for Cures Without Cloning (CWC) March 6 by allocating $10,000 for a phone database system.
CLC Chairman Phil Gloyer called it “a good investment in a very long struggle…for life in Missouri.” The MBC Executive Board previously authorized $200,000 to go toward the effort to help pass a proposed constitutional amendment on preventing human cloning, meaning there is now $190,000 in the escrowed account.
Jaci Winship, executive director of Missourians Against Human Cloning (MAHC), briefed commissioners on the status of the current bid to get on the ballot in November. Ballot summary language has been rewritten by a circuit court judge and is about to be heard in the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District. A ruling could be issued in late March.
Time is of the essence. The CWC campaign must secure about 150,000 valid signatures from six of nine congressional districts by May 4 in order to make it on the 2008 ballot. Winship said she and other campaign leaders are in prayer as to when the petition drive will be launched. One option would be to wait until 2010.
Gloyer, a layman from Forest Park Baptist in Joplin, said he would communicate closely with CWC and quickly send out a press release through official Missouri Baptist channels after the judges rule in late March or early April to inform Missouri Baptists about the status of the petition drive.
“We’re waiting with Cures Without Cloning and everyone else in the state to hear about the appellate court decision, but in the meantime the work of the petition drive continues,” Gloyer said. “It’s a war. It’s not just an isolated battle. I think that it’s important that we, as a Convention, and as a Christian Life Commission, come alongside our friends to help them do their job of collecting information and being able to build the network of Christians around the state that will be able to come out and get the job done in whatever time frame we have to work on it.”
The Friendly Phones database costs $30,000, Winship said. The plan is to pay for it by a pair of $10,000 donations apiece by Missouri Baptists and Missouri Catholics, along with $10,000 by CWC. It is symbolic of the level of kingdom cooperation that is taking place within a movement that hopes to close the door on constitutionally protected human cloning in Missouri that was opened in 2006 by the passage of Amendment 2.
Commissioners also voted to partner with MBC Interim Executive Director David Tolliver in allocating $1,000 in MBC funds toward the defeat of two pro-gambling propositions on the April 8 ballot that could lead to the placing of a riverboat casino in Jefferson City.
Commissioners were willing to carve out $500 from their own budget to give toward the cause, but Tolliver, noting that the CLC budget is tight and that a casino in Jefferson City would impact all Missouri Baptists, proposed that the MBC as a whole double that amount. The $1,000 was secured from existing funds, the check was authorized March 6, and the money was directed to Citizens Supporting Integrity, the group opposing the casino, during the work week of March 10-14.
Tolliver and Gloyer both indicated that the $1,000 is a good investment in that all Missouri Baptists ought to have an interest in what goes on in the capital city.
“This is the environment that every Missourian is sending their elected representative to come and stay for a good part of the year away form their family, away from their wives, husbands and children, and the last thing that they need is to be seduced by a riverboat gambling operation,” Gloyer said.
Gloyer said he would like to generate more hits on the www.moclc.org website by expanding the number of links on it and upgrading various resources to yield a more current picture of moral issues.
“It’s a good website,” he said. “There’s a lot of information on there. It’s just a lot of it is outdated.”
There were only five commissioners present for the meeting.
The next meeting is June 19.
This article is reprinted from the March 25, 2008, issue of The Pathway, the newspaper of the Missouri Baptist Convention.
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