Not good news for SBC race relations

[Dave Roberts]

Today, ABP reported on the refusal of a church to allow a black couple to marry in the church. It was stated to be on racial grounds. As much as Fred Luter's election is positive, this is an obvious negative.

[Matt Richard]

I remember a while back a story where a local association kicked a church out for calling a female pastor. I would hope similar action would be considered in this case, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Tom Parker]

Matt:

It sure will be interesting as to how the local association deals with this unchristian behavior on the part of this Church. It will also be interesting to see if the state and national associations choose to speak to this item. If the association chooses to do little to nothing it will speak loudly as to how local associations pick and choose which items to kick churches out.

[William Thornton]

Let's see...47000 or so churches...one autonomous church...

What is important is what happens next - will the association, state convention speak...?

[Mrs Haruo]

I guess being autonomous also means the freedom to act like the southern end of a north bound jackass, but that is just my personal opinion. Oh, that puddle in the street? I think God just spit someone nasty out.

[Haruo]

I'm trying to figure out what the "minority" in the congregation that wields such enormous and unpleasant power was about here. Do they believe it is the duty of "white" churches to ensure that their "nonwhite" congregants live in sin? I really don't get it. The most charitable notion I can come up with is "Uncle George and Edith were married in this sanctuary, and they would spin in their graves if they knew we let colored folks do likewise." If true, IMO George and Edith deserve all the dizziness they can acquire, if they haven't already been shown the error of their ways by our Lord himself. (But then of course I think similarly about gay marriages...)

[Tim Bonney]

I'm afraid a not infrequent example of autonomy of the local church translating into autonomy of some loud mouthed bullies who know that no one really can call them on their bigotry. Sure the association could kick them out or something. But whom does that really hurt?

If the pastor is smart he is circulating his resume. Once a congregation starts using "if you don't do it our way you'll be fired" as a way to control the pastor, you can no longer really be the pastor. You've just become a hired hand.

[Dave Roberts]

[Sandy]

I think what may be coming from Southern Baptists, individually and denominationally, may be reflected in this article and following comments:
http://sbcvoices.com/shameful-public-ra ... ciliation/

[Haruo]

How the guy can tell that story and then go on, with deteriorating quality of language, to make some of his own follow-up comments, is beyond me. But the part about the "Bull" deacon's exegesis of the invisible is priceless.

[Tom Parker]

Haruo:

Did you notice he got into his rambling comment the association got it into their by-laws the automatic disfellowshipping of any church that calls a woman as a Pastor.

It has to worry some in SB associations endlessly that at any time a fellow associational church is going to call a woman as a Pastor. I bet they can not sleep at night.

But the issue of racism, since it is not specifically addressed in the 2000 BF&M rulebook, they just do not know what to do

[Tim Bonney]

Well Tom, what can they actually do? They can disfellowship the church. Big deal, that just saves money in their mission budget. They can verbally denounce the church. Again, so what? There isn't actually anything that they can do that actually makes the church repent. It is the dark side of autonomy.

[Haruo]

What I saw was a bunch of people saying "out d a m n spot" to the offending church, while a few people took their defense of the local church's autonomy and tried to browbeat the blogger with it, as if holding a position in an organization made it a sin to speak out against patent evil. It would be easy to assume that those folks were closet racists or apologists for racism, but I'm not sure that's the case. It's not my culture.

[Haruo]

Oh, that's right, Shakespeare is not acceptable English... Thanks, whoever bowdlerized me. Actually, "the D word" is quite acceptable in serious discourse about ****ation and its alternatives. And writing "Out, condemn spot" is poor English.

[on further investigation] Turns out it is a nanny spellcheck program that won't let one post naughty vocables here unless you p u t s p a c e s b e t w e e n letters. I'll bet d amn works, though, or dam n...

[Mrs Haruo]

Heckfire and brimstone! This kind of lame brained racist nonsense makes me ****mned embarassed to admit I am a member of ANY Baptist church.

[Ed Pettibone]

[Tim Bonney]

[Tom Parker]

[Tim Bonney]

[Haruo]

[Tom Parker]

Haruo:

The funny thing about the 2000 BF&M was several thousand voted it in and yet the 47,000 SB churches can choose to follow or not follow certain items in it without fear of being kicked out but if a church violates certain things out you go.

From where I sit the 2000 BF&M is used as a control device but it just can never work the way "they" want it to.

[Tim Bonney]

[Tom Parker]

Tim:

You said:"If you want actual enforcable rules and church law you have go to another denomination."

I often wonder if a valid study was done, how many members of the SBC have left since 1979 over all of the political shenanigans that have taken place.

IMO there are still lots of people in the SBC who wish it was a much different place than it is.

[Tim Bonney]

[Tom Parker]

From a CNN site:"A spokesman for the Southern Baptist executive committee told CNN the group would defer to local and state organizations for comment.

"We're not a top down organization," said Roger Oldham. "We're a bottom up organization. The congregation is the governing body."

So is this saying the 2000 BF&M from the top of the SBC does not have to be followed at the associational level?