Personally, I do not understand the mindset where one deliberately closes one's thoughts and intellect to anything that challenges the writings of ignorant and totally uneducated "Bronze Age nomadic herders" to quote my blogger friend Bob Felton at Civil Commotion. Worse yet, these same ignorant by choice individuals lash out and attack those with differing beliefs and perspectives. Gays, of course, receive their most hateful venom. I increasingly view these individuals and their power and control maddened pastors and bishops as suffering from a form of mental illness - a form of pathological paranoia that makes them feel driven to destroy anything and anyone that jeopardizes their flimsy house of cards religious belief constructs. Constructs that cannot withstand objective facts, scientific knowledge and logic and reason. But once in a while it seems one of these "godly Christians" states what many believe but fear to speak out loud and it presses some to take a good look in the mirror and recognize hate and bigotry. A column in the Associated Baptist Press by a Baptist pastor is once such example where the adulation of ignorance, bigotry and unconcealed hate results in the opening of eyes of others. The trigger for this epiphany? Pastor Charles Worley's sermon seeking to imprison gays behind electrified fences and allow us to die. Here are highlights from the column by Bill Leonard, Professor of Church History and Baptist Studies at the School of Divinity, Wake Forest University:
Tonight I am ashamed to be a Baptist. Born into Baptist “cradle role” in the First Baptist Church of Decatur, Texas, and baptized on profession of faith in that congregation when I was 8 years old, I’ve been a born-again Baptist for over five decades.
Tonight I watched excerpts from a sermon preached by Charles Worley, pastor of Providence Road Baptist Church, an Independent Baptist congregation in Maiden, N.C., the state where my family and I live.
Pastor Worley said things that are repugnant in any Christian pulpit, that shame the name Baptist and undercut the gospel itself. Although I’ve sometime been embarrassed to be a Baptist, until now I’ve never really been ashamed.
I remain haunted by the courage of those early Baptists who, for reasons I cannot fully comprehend, looked beyond their historical context to the vision of a believers’ church, uncoerced faith, freedom of conscience and transformation through Christ.
But tonight I am ashamed, because I heard a Baptist pastor say things so abhorrent to the gospel of Jesus that I could not keep conscience with my Baptist forebears and remain silent. In what appears to be a May 13 sermon, Charles Worley declared: "Build a great, big, large fence -- 150 or 100 mile long -- put all the lesbians in there," Then he continues: "Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified so they can't get out. Feed them, and you know what, in a few years, they'll die out. Do you know why? They can't reproduce!"
I’ve listened to those statements multiple times, each time hoping that I’m not hearing what I think I’m hearing. But I am.
That a person who serves a congregation calling itself Baptist would utilize such brutal words is not simply an affront to the men and women he wishes death upon, but to all who “name the name of Christ.” So dastardly are those words and the sentiment behind them that those of us who value the Baptist tradition must demand repentance of this fallen Christian brother.
Tonight I’m disgusted with and praying for Pastor Worley, clinging to Paul’s words to Corinth offered in contrast to “another gospel” he found rampant there: “We recommend ourselves by the innocence of our behavior, our grasp of truth, our patience and kindliness; by gifts of the Holy Spirit, by sincere love, by declaring the truth, by the power of God” (2 Cor. 6:6-7). Tonight I am ashamed to be a Baptist.
What is unfortunate is that Leonard fails to see that throughout its history the message of the Christian Church - certainly that of the Roman Catholic Church - has been more in line with Worley's statements than a message of love, acceptance and compassion for all. One need only think of the Crusades, the driving of the Moors from Spain, the Inquisition, the conquest of the Americas and the deliberate extermination of the "heathens" and even the "Christ killer" label applied to Jews that helped set the mindset for the Holocaust. Blind allegiance to the writings of often ignorant authors and succumbing to a feeling of self-righteous and being better than others usually has had deadly consequences. Worley is merely the latest incarnation of what Christians have done and said towards others for 2000 years.
1 comment:
Michael, for your own well being, not to mention for a sense of fairness, it would be great if you could bring yourself to acknowledge that Bill Leonard may not have covered all the bases you would have him cover, but he did in fact raise a public voice against a fellow Baptist pastor whom he feels crossed the line.
It is ok to be negative. It is ok to criticize, but it is better to also acknowledge and appreciate the good things in and around our lives, even when some of those good things come from our enemies.
I left the Baptist Church because I couldn't take their view of God. Thank God for guys like Bill Leonard who have chosen to stay in the Baptist Church and fight bigotry and hate from the inside. The better part of valor may be his.
Jack Scott
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