Geplaatst:19 jun 2006 11:42 - Gewijzigd: 19 jun 2006 11:42

Rice: Human dignity is God’s endowment

GREENSBORO - In an address that was received like a campaign stump speech, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke this week to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Greensboro (North Carolina, USA), exhorting her listeners to support the United States in spreading freedom around the globe.

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After a standing ovation upon being introduced, Rice touched briefly on her faith background as the daughter and granddaughter of Presbyterian ministers.

She then thanked Southern Baptists for their faith motivated social work and disaster relief efforts. „Whenever tragedy brings people to their knees, Southern Baptists have been there to help people get back on their feet.”

Rice spent most of the remainder of her remarks casting a missionary like vision of the United States’ role on the world stage -- as a liberator and spreader of freedom and justice. „President Bush and I share your conviction that America can, and must, be a force for good in the world”, she said. „Human dignity is not the grant of governments. It is God’s endowment to all humanity.”

Some people throughout the world are denied that dignity regularly by poverty, by the lack of political and religious freedom and by human trafficking and other forms of subjugation, she said, and those situations are ultimately in America’s best interest to ameliorate. „These are tragedies, but they are also threats in the making”, Rice said.The United States has a keen interest in promoting religious freedom abroad, stopping oppression in places like Darfur, fighting AIDS and poverty and ending human trafficking worldwide, because oppression, poverty and suffering produce instability, she asserted. „If America does not serve great purposes, if we do not rally other nations to fight intolerance and to support peace and to defend freedom, then our world will drift towards tragedy”, she said.

„The strong will do what they please, the weak will suffer most of all. And inevitably -inevitably- sooner or later, the threats of the world will come to USA shores as they did on Sept 11, 2001, she said. America has both the moral authority and the ability to lead the world, Rice insisted. „Let us resolve to deal with the world as it is but never to accept that we are powerless to make it better than it is - not perfect, but better”, she said. „America will lead the cause of freedom in our world not because we think ourselves perfect. To the contrary, we cherish democracy and champion its ideals because we know we are not perfect.”

Rice, perhaps the world’s most powerful African American woman, was cheered enthusiastically by messengers to the SBC - a denomination founded in defense of slaveholders and still opposed to women in leadership roles in the church.

After her speech, SBC President Bobby Welch led the messengers in prayer for Rice. At the end of a final standing ovation, a group of messengers broke into a spontaneous chorus of ”God Bless America”. (Associated Baptist Press)