MERIDIAN - "Though all hell assail me, I shall not be moved; Jesus will not fail me, I shall not be moved; Just like a tree that's planted by the waters, I shall not be moved."
In an era of poll-driven politics, a little conviction - as characterized by the hymn that reverberated at summer revivals of my childhood - is refreshing.
Is there a point, though, where principle yields to naivete and becomes detrimental to a cause?
Put another way, is there such a thing as being principled to a fault?
The Mississippi Baptist Convention seems determined to find out.
The state's largest Christian denomination waged a spirited battle against letting Gulf Coast casinos, decimated by Hurricane Katrina, rebuild on the beach - a move advocated by Gov. Haley Barbour as part of his broader strategy of jump-starting the coastal economy.
Gaming foes - led by the Southern Baptists - lost the battle during a special session of the state Legislature, which voted narrowly to let Harrison and Hancock county casinos build up to 800 feet on shore.
But will conservative Christians lose the bigger war, which is the expansion of legalized gambling in Mississippi beyond the handful of counties where it now exists?
Time will tell, but two components of the anti-gambling lobby's strategy seem ill-advised.
First was the decision during the recent special session to oppose an amendment - offered by state Sen. Charlie Ross, R-Brandon, and blessed by Barbour - that would have virtually ensured that state-sanctioned gambling never extend beyond Harrison, Hancock, Adams, Warren, Washington, Coahoma and Tunica counties.
Under Ross' amendment, any other county wishing to get into the gaming business would have had to get the permission of both the Legislature and Mississippi voters in the form of a statewide referendum. That's a significant change from current law, which allows any coastal or Mississippi River county to legalize gaming by local referendum.
Curiously, the Mississippi Baptist Convention and its political arm, the Christian Action Commission, helped shoot down the amendment.
Dr. Lee Yancey, a former youth pastor at Meridian's First Baptist Church who now works as a consultant for the Christian Action Commission, offered two, seemingly contradictory, explanations.
"The amendment in and of itself would have been good," he told me in a telephone interview last week. "But we weren't offered it alone. They (Barbour and other supporters of the onshore gaming bill) were looking for a compromise, and our position was that we couldn't compromise."
Later in the same conversation, Yancey questioned the merits of the amendment, suggesting a scenario in which the voters of, say, Jackson County voted against allowing gambling but voters elsewhere in the state approved it, overriding the wishes of Jackson County residents.
The guess here is that gaming foes miscalculated, thinking they could reject the Ross amendment but still defeat the onshore bill on final passage. They lost.
If Yancey has regrets, he's not acknowledging them.
"Sometimes it's better to lose a good fight than to win a compromise," he said. "I don't think that we are much worse off than we would be had we taken it. Current law still requires a county vote. That's better than the whole state deciding for one county."
Principled? Indeed.
Naive and shortsighted? If gambling one day expands in Mississippi, rejection of the Ross amendment will prove to be a golden opportunity missed.
Also questionable is the public criticism that the Mississippi Baptist Convention and American Family Association have heaped on conservative politicians like Barbour and state Rep. Greg Snowden, R-Meridian, who dared to support the onshore bill.
Snowden, a bedrock social conservative and Southern Baptist, was called out by Yancey in a subsequent letter to the editor. In a hint of political consequences for his former congregant at First Baptist, Yancey wrote, "Time will tell if their roll of the dice will provide them a windfall of votes or if they will crap out."
Baptist Record Editor William Perkins went a step further with a scathing critique of Barbour in last week's edition of the Mississippi Baptist Convention newspaper. Perkins' commentary, in a bit of political hyperbole, equates Barbour with former President Clinton as a world-class flip-flopper.
Snowden and Barbour deserve better from fellow conservatives.
Perkins and Yancey, if they hope to succeed in the political arena, will remember President Reagan's pronouncement that anyone who agreed with him a majority of the time was his friend, not his enemy.
