Month: May 2012

Exodus International speaks out against FRC’s award winner

Being all into American history lately, I have missed some things. Like the Family Research Council giving an award to a guy who loves to hear himself vilify those he claims to love. Well, actually I don’t know if he has claimed to love gays or not.

Exodus, sounding a prophetic tone, released this statement about the matter today:

Exodus International, the world’s largest Christian ministry helping individuals and families struggling with same sex attraction, denounced the Family Research Council’s choice of pastor Ron Baity to receive its highest pro-family honor, the 2012 Watchman Award.

Baity is on record saying, “gays act worse than maggots,” will make society “more filthy,” and God had an “urban renewal plan for Sodom and Gomorrah.” Baity also compares gay and lesbian people to murderers and says gay marriage is America’s “death warrant.” Baity is founding pastor of Winston-Salem’s Berean Baptist Church and head of the pro-marriage organization, Return America.

“It’s time conservative Christians who claim biblical principles such as loving their enemies and neighbors, and considering the welfare of others first, to speak swiftly and strongly against this type of action,” says Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International.

“For too long we’ve stayed silent and allowed our brothers and sisters to tip that hat toward angry and abusive rhetoric. It’s a terrible witness for Christ, and clear hypocrisy to a watching world.”

Exodus joins the Southern Baptist Convention in distancing itself from Baity along with pastors Sean Harris and Charles Worley from North Carolina. Chambers went to Tony Perkins first and expressed concern about this decision. Having received no response, Exodus felt compelled to release a statement.

When I do stuff like this, I get nasty emails, doubts about my Christianity and threats. I wonder what will happen with Exodus.  In any case, I think they are right in their assessment of the situation.

Museveni backs wife to take over as Uganda’s President

Yowari Museveni will apparently not provoke a Constitutional crisis and remain in office after age 75 but he is backing his wife as the NRM standard bearer when he retires. This according to the East African:

Apparently, First Lady Janet Kataaha Museveni has emerged as the preferred successor to the president, with the full backing of her husband, who is also chairman of the ruling National Resistance Movement.

Senior security sources told The EastAfrican that the president dropped the name of his wife, who is also Ruhaama MP and Minister for Karamoja Affairs, a few weeks ago while meeting top army generals, who form a critical power base of the regime, and whose support will be key to whoever succeeds the incumbent.

The source added that the generals did not expect this twist in the succession saga.

“There was a loud silence in the room. Army chiefs were all in disbelief [that he could name his wife for successor]. I don’t know how it will end because they [generals] have remained quiet, instead of coming out in support of Mzee’s choice,” said the source.

Janet Museveni has been rumored as more conservative than her husband and was named as being behind the anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda.

Another Baptist leader speaks out against NC gay concentration camp minister

Bill Leonard is James and Marilyn Dunn Professor of Church History and Baptist Studies at the School of Divinity, Wake Forest University. In a column yesterday, titled Baptist Shame, Leonard spoke out in condemnation against Charles Worley’s remarks about gay concentration camps.

He begins:

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.

Leonard draws a historical parallel:

In 1980, a Baptist evangelist declared on national television that, “God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew,” a remark that in many ways advanced this type of homiletical diatribe into the American public square.

E. Glenn Hinson, then my colleague at the Baptist seminary in Louisville and one of the most Christ-like human beings I have ever known, said of that statement, “Such is the stuff of which holocausts are made.”

Hinson’s statement sparked great controversy inside and outside the seminary. His words were true then, and perhaps even truer now. Such concentration-camp language is shameful, whether used in 1930s Europe or 2012 North Carolina.

I recommend the entire column.

This hurts my head.

Harping, harping, harping. It’s about the homosexuals…

Those who say the pastor should be ignored need to think through the thinking process of this woman who sits in the pew. Maybe this way of thinking is specific to Pastor Worley and this woman but I kind of doubt it.

I am glad for the Christian ministers who have spoken against this church recently. If I were in NC, I would be holding a sign outside of this church.

These guys need to write a follow up article on North Carolina.

Exodus Ready to End the Culture War

In a press release yesterday, Exodus International continued to articulate their new direction. In the release, a brief comment is made about Charles Worley, the NC preacher who called for gay concentration camps.

Alan Chambers, president of the 36-year-old Exodus International said, “As usual, the spotlight is shining on the furthest extremes currently engaged in a public fight. I believe it’s time for all of us to focus on the people beyond the political debate.”

While a minority of people such as North Carolina pastor Charles Worley represent the outdated and homophobic fringe of Christianity and should not be taken seriously, excellent churches like National Community Church in Washington, D.C. are drawing approximately 200 people each week to Ebenezer’s Coffee House. These individuals gather to thoughtfully discuss how the church can better care for people with same-sex attractions (SSA), those inside and outside of the church.

In the midst of the chaos and tired culture war mentality, Exodus International continues to serve a fast growing population of the Church that is ready to end the war and reach out in compassion to people who come to them for answers.

Then, as if to say, here is the new message, the release adds:

“Exodus is here to provide support to individuals with SSA who want to be faithful in their pursuit of living out a biblical sexual ethic,” said Chambers. “We encourage parents who desire to be faithful to their values to also love their gay or lesbian child unconditionally despite having differing worldviews. Finally we are here to help churches looking for ways to reach out to people in their congregations or across the divide to people in their communities.”

A few ministries have left Exodus over this approach.

Possibly, Exodus tries to do too much with this release (e.g., address Worley’s hate, communicate an end to the culture war, and describe their new direction). On the other hand, repeating the mission of Exodus as a support group for gays who want to follow traditional evangelical teaching is necessary for it to stick, both internally and externally.

Gentle readers (and the rest of you, too); what do you think of Exodus’ message, assuming they follow through?

 

Southern Baptist leader condemns North Carolina preacher who called for gay concentration camps

This is disgusting. By now, you may have seen it all over the media (e.g., here). Charles Worley, “pastor” of the Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, NC called for a concentration camp for gays and lesbians.

Worley said:

I figured a way out, a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers but I couldn’t get it past the Congress – build a great big large fence, 50 or a hundred mile long. Put all the lesbians in there, fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. And have that fence electrified so they can’t get out. And you know what? In a few years they will die out. You know why? They can’t reproduce. If a man ever has a young’un, praise God he will be the first.

I asked Bob Stith, National Strategist for Gender Issues at the Southern Baptist Convention, for his reaction and he said Worley’s words were “a vile outburst” and said,

I think it is important to say in the strongest terms how disgusting and unchristian his comments are.

He added that the church is not in the Southern Baptist Convention.

The church website is down, but the Google cache indicates that it is an independent Baptist Church which believes the King James Version of the Bible is inspired. The “KJV only” churches are almost always in the extreme right wing of the church world. This church is a part of something called “The Only Hope” network. The church is also on this list of fundamentalist Baptist churches and this website seems to support Worley.

 

Getting Jefferson Right in Salon today

Salon today posted my article on David Barton and a brief look at the falsehoods in Barton’s book, The Jefferson Lies.

One claim I haven’t spent much time on until lately is Barton’s claim that Thomas Jefferson could not emancipate his slaves due to restrictions in VA law. Barton says in The Jefferson Lies that Jefferson could not have emancipated his slaves and blamed Virginia law. As I point out in the article and we point out in the book, that is a false claim.

Thanks to John Fea at Messiah College for the comments and blog post I cited.

UK Guardian cites Getting Jefferson Right

One the UK’s leading news sources, The Guardian, has a mention of our eBook, Getting Jefferson Right in a column yesterday on Texas’ War on History.

Columnist Katherine Stewart wrote:

Barton recently came out with another piece of propaganda, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson. To their credit, a pair of professors who identify themselves as conservative Christians, Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter, have stepped forward to debunk Barton’s latest exercise in their book, Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims About Our Third President. But that hasn’t stopped Barton’s book from becoming a bestseller.

Got your copy yet?

What Did Thomas Jefferson Include in His Edited Gospels

Late last week, David Barton appeared on Bryan Fischer’s American Family Association radio program Focal Point. One topic of conversation was the contents of Thomas Jefferson extractions from the Gospels, aka known as the Jefferson Bible. More properly, the Jefferson Bible is considered to be the Life and Morals of Jesus which Jefferson put together sometime during or after 1820. The first time Jefferson cut and pasted portions of the Gospels was in 1804 when he did it at the White House in a few nights work.

On Fischer’s show, Barton said Jefferson included miracles of healing and feeding the multitude in the 1804 version. In his book, Barton claims that three miracles in Matthew 9 (the raising of Jairus daughter in Mt. 9:1; healing a bleeding woman in Mt. 9:18-26 and the healing two blind men in Mt. 9:27-34) were included by Jefferson in The Philosophy of Jesus. However, a review of Jefferson’s table of texts as found in Henry Randall’s 1858 biography of Jefferson and Dickinson Adams’ definitive work demonstrates that these texts were not included in either of Jefferson’s abridgments.

The fourth false text Barton uses is Matthew 11:4-6 which reads:

4Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: 5The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. 6And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.

Again, a review of the table of texts comes up empty for this passage. Jefferson did not include it in either his 1804 or his 1820 versions. Continue reading “What Did Thomas Jefferson Include in His Edited Gospels”