My Kind of Church

So, Glenn Beck wants people to leave their churches if the church preaches a message of "social justice. Well, for once, I am glad to say that I agree with Beck. Instead of attending a church preaching "social justice" I want to attend a church that preaches the message of the Bible.

To that end I will only attend a church where "no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything the owned was held in common(Acts 4:32)." Any church I attend will also follow only the Bible and not "social justice" because "there was not a needy person among them for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles feet, and it was distributed to each as they had need(Acts 4:34-35)."

That is my kind of church and I expect to see Glenn Beck sitting beside me in the pew on Sunday.

Mardis Gras and the Preacher

A friend of mine from the same young minister's group where Liturgygeek and I met recently became the pastor of a Baptist Church in New Orleans and experienced his first Mardi Gras. He wrote a column and the Times-Picayune published it.

I am taking this Lent off because dealing with a winter that has seen 50 inches of snow is penance enough.

The Backbencher Institute of Christian History, Lesson 1

New York Time columnist Ross Douthat used the occasion of Pope Benedict's invitation to conservative Anglicans to join the Catholic Church to wish for a new crusade against Islam. Douthat's take is that "What's being interpreted, for now, as an intra-Christian Skirmish may eventually be remembered as the first step toward a united Anglican-Catholic front-not against liberalism or atheism, but against Christianity's most enduring and impressive foe.

Actually, Christianity's most enduring and impressive foe is western imperialism. Western imperialism, either by brute force or through a subtle co-opting of the Church, has often come close to defeating Christianity. However, there has always been a group of Christians(sometimes small and sometimes opposed by the hierarchy of their church) who have continued to fight western imperialism. They have been do so since literaly day one and may they continue to do so.

Abuse of Pulpit

My dad told me about this article in my old hometown paper.  First Baptist Church of Jacksonville used a police detective who also serves on the church security detail to investigate Thomas Rich who blogs at fbcjaxwatchdog.blogspot.com.  The detective also investigated two other blogs that are critical of other churches but not FBC Jacksonville.  The detective discovered the identity of the blogger who previously was anonymous and even though discovered no crime turned the identity over to church authorities.  Armed with this information FBC issued a trespass order and effectively kicked Mr. Rich out of the church.

FBC is the most prominent church in Jacksonville and it appears that they used that prominence to try to silence a dissident voice.  The detective claimed he turned over the information to FBC authorities for their own "internal action."  If internal action was required, and thus it was never a criminal matter, why was the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office even involved?  It looks like the church misused its position and that the JSO was a willing accomplice in an internal church dispute.  A dispute which should not be the business of the JSO or any other government agency.  It is an abuse of the prominence of a major pulpit to use a criminal investigation as a means of silencing criticism in a church, and an abuse of the power of a police detective to engage in this type of investigation. 

The Southern Baptist Convention is a denomination that is increasingly following an authoritarian model of leadership.  The blogs mentioned in this article and a blog run by a man named Wade Burleson have become thorns in the side of the SBC leadership.  I don't agree with them at all theologically but I support their efforts to bring light and transparency to the actions of SBC leadership.  Though I have recently become more closely associated with the UCC, I was born, raised, and educated as a Baptist.  One of the things I learned from my Baptist life is that God is way more often on the side of the dissidents and not on the side of totalitarian preachers.