I guess this column writing thing can be dangerous, after all. It's not often that I get to do what I'm about to do. I'm about to defend remarks I don't actually believe in.
Here's the story as found on the Associated Press via Yahoo.com: A newspaper column lampooning Southern Baptists, calling the group "the crazy old paranoid uncle of evangelical Christians," is causing quite a stir in a Kentucky city and put a pastor's job in jeopardy. The column was written by Angela Thomas, the wife of Bill Thomas, an assistant pastor at the First Baptist Church in Madisonville. Her column was done in response to the Southern Baptist Convention's opposition to a new Boy Scouts of America policy that welcomes gay members.
"Sexuality doesn't come up and isn't relative to typical scouting activities but now, thanks to Southern Baptists, the parents of little innocent scouts everywhere are having to have The Talk," she wrote June 19 in The Madisonville Messenger. She writes a weekly humor column for the community paper, which publishes daily. In the weeks since, the status of Bill Thomas' job with the church has become unclear. The First Baptist pastor said he had accepted Thomas' resignation, but Thomas' wrote in a letter obtained by the newspaper he had not quit.
The column said Southern Baptists have become "raging Shiite Baptists" after drifting "to the right" for the past four decades. "Santa and the Easter bunny are simply the devil in disguise and cable television and the Internet are his playground. The Boy Scouts are his evil minions," she wrote.
The Southern Baptist Convention believes in marriage between a man and a woman and condemns homosexuality as a sin.
I'm not dealing with what she wrote today. Satire is a tough write, and trying to make it funny I would assume is even harder. But, heck, she might be right, for all I know. In fact, I have more problems with the AP writer's sentence that the SBC believes... I think the better description is scripture teaches .... which is the truth as near as I can read. It isn't up to any denomination to "believe" that or not, I believe. But again, that's another argument.
My complaint is how we're reaching a place in this country where one cannot disagree without punishment or vile statements or whatever. One's words are worth a firing these days. How on earth have we reached this stage?
Ironically, I think, it's because the right was so adamant about stopping the left from protesting that when the pendulum began to swing (and my goodness it has), the right was shut up or at the least made to seem dumber than a badly made brick.
When "church" people complain and fight and bicker and fuss about all the wrong things, all the external trappings of religion, all they (we) do is turn off the other side. When we do, they turn us off. Do we really, really think that's what Jesus had in mind?
Yesterday I read about the movie that is being made from Orson Scott Card's book Ender's Game. It has prompted an online protest ahead of its release in November. Why? Card is an active vocal proponent of marriage only between a man and a woman.
What's good for the good is goose for the gander. Conversely, what is bad...
I'm trying to say that there are things in this country I disagree with, politically, religiously, theologically, sportingly (made that word up, I think), and I have every right to say them without fear of being persecuted. AND so do you. I understand this country is becoming increasingly in favor of same-sex marriage. But if I disagree with that, I challenge anyone to say I am dumb (my wife is an exclusion there for she really knows I am).
I believe (for what it is worth), that everyone has the right to say what they feel, live what they feel, do what they feel. I believe God gave us that right long before this nation worked on the idea of freedom. AND I have the right to disagree.
Unless the Shiites in government discover my real identity (Easter Bunny).
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