AN INDICTMENT

It’s all over the news.

It seems to be all over the world as well as our nation.

Gay hate.

Bills to discriminate against them,

I have been fooled.  I have been wrong.

I have been a Southern Baptist all my life.  In every church there were

The racists, The bigoted.  But I thought as a denomination we were going the right way.

1850 was a long time ago when we split with the American Baptist to form our own convention and denomination

Over slavery We struggled.  I thought we wanted to change,  to follow Christ’s way.  The way of redemption.  Everything

Considered sin was not condoned, but redemption, I thought, was the way we sought to deal with all sin.

I was wrong.  I worked so hard at what I believed that when racism raised its ugly head in an experience of

My family, I got through it believing it was , or trying to believe it was an aberration.  I was wrong and I was stupid.

My friends glossed it over with, “Well, that’s the way it is in our county”.  The policeman, said, ‘Oh that’s the way it

Is” and drove off without a word or investigation.  Everyone acted as though this horrible incident to my family did not happen.

It is still 1850 for Southern Baptists even if they did elect an African American as the denomination's President.

I heard no comments from our leadership on the murders of young men in Florida.

One said to me, “They(African American men) are not made murderers, they are born murderers.” Voter nullification is back.  Jim Crow lives.

Now voice after voice is being raised against gays.  In the pulpits of American the hate campaign is on.

Not only as a Christian, but as an American it is inconceivable to me that people think it is right to

deny freedom and the rights of the constitution to ANYONE FOR ANY REASON.

We have responsibility to speak to what is right and wrong to our convictions.  But that we think

that is also the right to physically deny, hurt, kill, or discriminate in God’s name is evil to a degree that

It is hard to put the right adjectives with it.

It is Religion, but it is not of Jesus.

It is Baptist, but it is not of Jesus.

We are not trying to build the kingdom of God, But the cultural kingdom of man. 

We do not follow the “Way” and “Truth” which is Jesus, we follow the Tribal god of the old testament that loves only us and approves the murder of those not like us.

I dare any of you to read the words of Jesus in Mark or Luke and justify what is going on with all this hatred and persecution.

I call upon you to turn from this or we will go the way of other world religions and nations.

THE BROKEN CHURCH

I went down to the sacred store
Where I'd heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn't play

And in the streets, the children screamed
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken

And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died
Don McLean,  "AMERICAN PIE

" The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised," 
Jesus of Nazareth,  Luke 4:18

Almost without exception scholars of every shape, color and stripe use these words of Jesus to explain His mission according to His own words.  Almost without exception those same scholars use these words of Jesus to explain the work and attitude of the Church and Christians.  They  have said, that with Jesus' ascension He left the Church to be His presence and do His work until the end of time.  IF this is true then any honest assessment of the Church today is that..... THE CHURCH IS BROKEN.

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me"  Over and over again the New Testament writers exorted the believers to be filled with the Spirit.  The fullness of the Spirit was how the Christian received the power, the love, the strength and the will to be like Christ.  Do you remember that Christians received that name by their enemies at Antioch.  The word Christian means, "little Christs"  Copy cats of Jesus.  A citizen of Rome wrote a friend about Christians saying that they must indeed be fools, but that they loved each other "and their enemies".

What is the Church like?  How does it mirror Christ and His life? A Christian told me the other day that she could tolerate those who were not like her.  She was insulted when I told her that her statement of tolerance was really a statement of intolerance and bigotry.  Jesus did not tolerate, he accepted and appreciated.  Today the Church battle is not just with the "unlike" and different folks.  It is against each other. If there are what one Church considers unbiblical practices by another, they will destroy in the name of truth and righteousness.  Love our enemies?   We cannot even love one another. Do good to then which spitefully use us?  I dont' think so, we are headed to court and I will be driving your new car if my lawsuit is won. If one desires your cloak, give him your coat also.  Hey buddy, get a job and you can buy your own.  Too many damn people want something for nothing.

"To preach the Gospel to the poor"  We are reminded over and over that the word, gospel, means "good news".  At the birth of Christ, angels sang to the poor shepherds, "good tidings (good news) to all the earth.

  Everyone supposedly has a good word from God.  Things were going to be different.  Good News....the Savior has come.  Good News.....mankind is loved and forgiven.  God News, God feels compassion for us as a father feels for His children  Did not Jesus go to the poorest, to the disenfranchised?   Did He not go to the lame, the children, the dirty, and to the insane?  He hugged the lepers.  He forgave the adulterous.  He sat and ate with sinners.  Is this the Church? .  Today the Church reaches out to those that are like us, to the influential, and to the powerful.  Today there is not good news coning from the churches.  There is no room in the pews for the poor.  There is no good news to the destitute and old. We celebrate power, money, influence, and the beautiful. THE CHURCH IS BROKEN

 "Liberty, binding the brokenness?' " Lifting the fallen, forgive the guilty?" " Setting captives free?" What is the reality?

Imprison with traditions.  Condemn.  Destroy.  Shun.  The Bible is a hatchet.  The Church is a country club.  Bigotry.  Prejudice. Become the pawn of politicians.

broken hearts!
                broken lives!
                                  unrealized hopes!
                                                        no place for dreamers!
                                                                                       crushed under the heels of the hypocrites and haters!.
                                                                                   

                                    

                                                          What have we done?
                                                          Oh the blood, Oh the blood
                                                          The "witches" we have burned.
                                                          The people, the children, Oh God the children!
                                                          The murderous  apathy.
                                                          Without humility
                                                          Hatred behind the words of love.
                                                          Twisted truths, and outright lies.
                                                          The Bible Bloody! used to slay thousands
                                                          upon thousands.
                                                          Receiving mercy, but giving none
                                                          The birthright sold for a pot of beans and a bag of gold..
                                                          Betrayal of the humanity we were to serve.
                                                          Betrayal of that simple man of Galilee.
.
                                                          Could there be a hell hot enough for

                                                            THE BROKEN CHURCH?

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THE GOD FRAUD

I have been a Southern Baptist pastor for fifty years.  During that time I have had to struggle with the way the issues of race and gender were handled.  Yet I sensed in many of our leaders an effort to right these wrongs.  Then in 1982 our Southern Baptist Convention was hi-jacked by the fundamentalists led by Jerry Falwell.  There was not only a move to the extreme right theologically but also politically.  I witnessed our churches and pastors rewrite our own Baptist History.   More and more we became churches of exclusion.  The gains made in race relations and gender equality slid backward rather quickly. Once more the most segregated place on the planet was and is Sunday at a Southern Baptist Church.  Although the Convention elected an African American as the President of the SBC the comments of local pastors is disquieting. Women in some counties are not allowed to speak from the pulpit, wear dress slacks or hold any position of authority. Foreign missionaries were expected to sign statements about women and ordination and the inerrant  Scriptures. These are Old Testament Churches not New Testament followers of Christ.   Some sought to purge our seminaries of "liberal" professors. The war was on with the "liberals", not just to win, but to destroy. More and more of our leaders were engaged in the politics of our nation wanting to insist our standard and Biblical morality become law of the land. The blatant lies concerning the President are outrageous. Any issue that could be, would be twisted and used for the convenience of conservative politicians. For instance, the lie that God has been removed from our public schools.  This lie has raised the fundamentals a lot of money.  The truth is that any student can pray almost anytime.  Pray while walking to class. Pray before eating lunch.  Pray while taking an exam.  Although prayer without study may be problematic.  What cannot be done is for a teacher or administrator lead in a required prayer.  Students who are not christian are not to be made to listen to the prayer of a teacher or anyone else. I personally know teachers who quietly pray for  students and their safety.  Nothing wrong with that is there?  People are not allowed in our schools to coerce students to receive any religious literature or listen to religious prayers or sermons,  unless EVERY RELIGIOUS group is allowed the same right.  If I hand out my material as a Baptist, the church of Satan has the right to hand out theirs. If parents want to have their children indoctrinated in a particular religion they should send their child(ren) to that kind of religious institution. You may consider praying with your children at home and teaching them your values.  Public schools are to educate our children not to teach religion.  That is the task of the parent and church of the parent's choice.  This SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE was espoused by and fought for by Baptist with our founding fathers.    Baptist, because of their persecution by the fundamentalists of pre-constitution America saw the great need for this high, and wide wall of separation of Church and State.  Seeing the history of Church controlled states and the rivers of blood from the Inquisitions and persecutions, the founding fathers agreed.  Separation of Church and State was a gift brought to our nation in the blood and persecution of early Baptist.  (See Baptist History and Heritage website)   We that were persecuted are now persecuting others that do not believe as we do.  THIS COUNTRY WAS NOT FOUNDED ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.  The Separatist that escaped the persecution of the Church of England came here and set up their own religious persecution.  Baptist broke from them, (see life of Roger Williams)  and were the ones to call for Religious liberty FOR ALL.  Now we are betraying that heritage.  The fundamentalists and vast majority of "conservative" churches in America are the apostate churches of this age.  They are the Pharisees of this generation and white washed sepulchers.   They have fallen from the gospel of grace and redemption and have joined unholy political alliances for power and money.  They believe that they have the right to vote on others who were born in this United States under the same constitution as they are not entitled to the same rights and laws.  These folks think they have the right to vote on matters of whom people marry or if some should not be allowed to vote.  Can you imagine that a person living in this great, free country actually think they should vote on someone's idea of love and the pursuit of happiness? Now these moralist believe that they have a right to define pursuit of happiness. The god of these people is a fraud or He does not exist.  He is made of their image.  He has been formed from their hatred and prejudices,  and self righteousness.  As a poet wrote, "Don't worry about what they do on Sunday, they will be all right on Monday, Sunday is just a little game they love to play".
     Now let me be clear.  It is your right to be a bigoted, self righteous, homophobic, woman hater and a deacon or elder of that kind of church.  Your church has the right to deny anyone the right of membership based on any criteria you wish to adopt.  Like a pastor in my county said to a black couple who entered his church "Your kind have a church just a mile down the road, you need to go there, you are out of place here"  But!! You do not have the right to demand that the public schools teach your bigotry and religion to my children or any other children who attend that school. You do not have the right to demand that I believe like you and pass laws that force me to live as you.  Remember I am just offended by you as you are by me, so the constitution gave us both the freedom of speech and of religion.  I know you think you are right.  So does the witch doctors the members of the occult, the Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus. I have the right of free speech to testify of my belief.  Everyone has the right to say no to me and to God, without consequences from me, you or the Government.  They do not have the right to persecute you and your children and you do not have the right to persecute them or their children.  I do not think I ask much of you.  Just honor my rights as I honor yours and let us both live by the Constitution of the United States of America.