Religion: Tuning Out

Can God hear a Jew's prayers?

Last June in St. Louis, well-organized conservatives at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention elected a stem-winding preacher named Bailey Smith, 41, as president of the nation's biggest Protestant group (13.4 million members). Smith, who trained at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and is a pastor at the First Southern Baptist Church in Del City, Okla., managed to keep a low profile until a big August political rally in Dallas, organized by the rising Protestant right. Reporters flocked to a press conference where Ronald Reagan was holding forth in favor of biblical creationism, and so most of them missed Smith's address to 5,000 in the main arena. Said Smith: "It's interesting to me at great political battles how you have a Protestant to pray and a Catholic to pray, and then you have a Jew to pray. With all due respect to those dear people, my friend, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew. For how in the world can God hear the prayer of a man who says that Jesus Christ is not the true Messiah? It is blasphemous."

Sensing more anti-Semitism than due respect, "those dear people" decided Smith's words should not go unnoticed. Last week the American Jewish Committee sent transcripts around the country. Smith persists in his opinion, but many S.B.C. members are embarrassed over their leader's theology. Said Jimmy Allen, head of the radio-TV commission and a former S.B.C. president, Smith's statement "doesn't represent the position of most Southern Baptists. God listens to the needs of every person who calls on him."