Thank you for the excellent coverage of the New Baptist Covenant gathering. I enjoyed every accounting of the event and the positive focus it has offered we Baptists for the future.

Thank you for the good coverage you gave the New Baptist Covenant meeting in Atlanta. I read this week's (printed) issue (Feb. 16) from cover to cover. It was probably the most inspiring Baptist meeting I've ever been in and believe me, at my age, I've been in quite a few!

In response the New Baptist Covenant's headline theme of unity (Feb. 16. printed issue) among Baptists and Christians worldwide and the "Racism institutional" headline on page 10, I see one thing that would clearly help with unity - drop the stereotype titles! Every time I hear someone called Asian-American, Hispanic-American, African-American, Native-American or any other stereotypical name, I am offended. It is not enough to be known simply as an American, or even greater, a Christian, which literally means to be "Christ-like."

It's a sad day when any Baptist organization has, as their main speaker, a convicted perjurer and multi-adulterer, even if he is a former president. Then to have the audacity to say that the church needs to stay out of politics, when this was nothing more than a Democratic rally prior to the primary, was absurd. I, too, agree that our churches need to show more diversity, but Jesus never accepted someone living in sin without trying to change them first. One good thing did come from this though: Now that Clinton and Carter have formed this "new" alliance, I feel much better about identifying myself as a Southern Baptist. Diversity, at the cost of doctrine, is a formula for failure.