As most of you are now aware, Charles L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church recently put forward a proposal that all gay people should be rounded up and imprisoned behind an electric fence. In the light of this bold suggestion, I would like to offer a counter-proposal that I think will work equally well to keep Chucky happy and gay-free while not being quite so Nazi-like. Thus I would like to introduce:
The Prophet Province
My proposal is that every fundamentalist preacher be relocated to a 50,000 square mile area of the Sonoran Desert. This location will then be designate The Prophet Province and high walls will be built around it to keep out all worldly and evil influences from the general population of the Sodom and Gomorrah that is the remainder of the United States. There in those sanctified confines the fundamentalist preachers of the world will finally be able to spend their time doing what they do best: being the holiest people around.
With such a large area and a relatively small number of fundamentalist pastors, it should be a fairly simple matter to keep the preachers from being located too close together. For a true prophet experience each one should be allowed to think that they are the only ones left in the entire world who are still holding the truth faith. Also, when these would-be prophets encounter each other their failed attempts to call down fire and she-bears on each other often result in the sort of embarrassment that would better be avoided. Let each one think that they are the only voice crying in the wilderness and all will be well.
As an added bonus, given that these are all men of god, there will be no need to provide food for their sustenance. Research indicates that ravens will show up a minimum of four times a day with enough casseroles and carbohydrates to sustain even the most voracious desire for “fellowship.” In addition to eating the pastor’s days can be spent in much the same fashion as they are today, writing their own biographies, condemning everything that moves and thanking God that they are not like other men.
I implore that modest proposal should be implemented as quickly as is feasible. For once it is done life will immediately improve for scores of women, children, gays, minorities, and pretty much everyone else. And the pastors likewise can live out their days of Elijah in perfect peace.
I don’t know who the disturbed individual may have been who sent these letters but not only is what they did illegal but it’s really unhelpful too. There’s nothing like handing people the persecution card wrapped up in a pretty bow and then giving them free publicity and public sympathy.
Unless they’ve been living under a rock, it’s unlikely that anyone in current or former fundamentalist circles has not heard of the expulsion of Christopher Peterman from Bob Jones University mere weeks before he was to graduate. Although his list of alleged crimes ranges from the inane to the obscure to the downright confusing, there is a deeper story here that is worth considering.
To fully appreciate the significance of this action it’s necessary to retrace the steps of a horrifying story that is all too familiar to many of us. It begins when a man named Ernie Willis raped a young girl named Tina Anderson. The pastor of Tina’s church at the time was Chuck Phelps, a man who by his own testimony not only failed to vigorously pursue justice for Tina but also required her to give a confession of her alleged sin before the church and then aided in removing her from the state and apparently out of the reach of local authorities.
Yet with the fact of his actions revealed both on national television and in a court of law, Chuck Phelps remained a person in good standing with several fundamentalist organizations such as The Wilds and Bob Jones University. Bob Jones not only continued to call him a friend of the college but after the conviction of Ernie Willis then went on to proactively show their support for him by placing him back on one of their own boards. This past December, a few alumni, students, and other concerned individuals attempted an on-campus protest in an institutional environment where protesting is almost unheard of. As may be expected in such an authoritarian environment, very few students joined in to the calls for BJU to “Do Right.” One student agitator, however, stuck to his guns and decided to take the risk. That man is now ex-student Christopher Peterman.
At that time, with the news cameras rolling and the social media spotlight shining on them, Bob Jones University took no disciplinary action against the protesting students. But they did take note of them. They always take note of those who do not come to heel and fit the “spirit” of the University and they wait their chance to exact revenge for this perceived disloyalty. Because Bob Jones University is not interested in justice, or freedom, or right, they are interested only in defending their own no matter what the cost in human misery.
So the when they had managed to gather together enough petty charges against this student, they summarily expelled him, mere weeks before he would have graduated. For those of us who have attended similar institutions this is hardly a new tale and hardly unexpected. The campus purges of “undesirables” who are considered unworthy to graduate are a commonly accepted fact. At my own alma mater we referred to this rash of sudden dismissals that would occur right after the spring deadline to withdraw as “spring cleaning.” First they take your money. Then they show you the door and tell you that you are no longer welcome here.
No doubt the headlines (such as they are) will be more concerned in the fact that a college student was punished for watching the television show Glee or not having a proper haircut. I find the focus on those details unfortunate, because beyond these imaginary infractions the real story here goes much deeper to a kind of institutional corruption that is so blatant and yet ignored by those who call themselves friends of the University. One wonders how many more rapes, how many more cover-ups, how many more countless wrongs must be inflicted by Bob Jones University before even the darkened souls of their fundamentalist supporters are too sickened to continue to be complicit in their commission.
I do not expect that this one student being expelled will bring about a sea change in the institutional policies of BJU. They have shown themselves to be all but immune to criticism and dismissive of correction. If there is any lesson to be learned here it is that current students should take care in squaring off against the behemoth that is the university. It is easy enough for those of us who no longer have skin in the game to encourage protest and outcry. It is quite another to put the time and money invested in your education on the line. While a student remains in their house the university has all the leverage and none can say unto them “what doest thou?”
I can, however, hope that perhaps a few potential students or pastors who have up until now been their allies will choose to spend their hard-earned money elsewhere. Perhaps even a few current students may decide that they cannot continue to consent to the present abuses of power by their silence and will choose a transfer to another school rather than live with the constant threat of being summarily expelled themselves for imaginary crimes. Perhaps if enough people vote with their feet, Bob Jones University will then at last be forced to grudgingly do right.
The course of true love never did run smooth — especially when the love affair is one between a fundamentalist church and their powerful and charismatic politician pastor. And therein hangs a tale…
What wasn’t clear until recently was exactly how Chuck planned to fund this new venture in the mountain states after retiring as the pastor of Crossroads Baptist Church. But some documents recently came to my notice which show that Chuck’s plan was to use a retirement fund from his old church in the amount of about $52,000 per year for thirty years, a total value of over 1.5 million dollars.
But beyond the fact that there was a retirement fund set up for Chuck, the remainder of the story breaks down into finger-pointing as two different perspectives on the purpose behind this retirement payout emerge. The new pastor of Crossroads Baptist and new board of trustees claim in a written statement that Chuck basically hoodwinked the church into an agreement that they never fully understood and that he left the church in a financial wreck as a result of his sudden and unexpected departure to Montana. In short, it’s alleged that he took the money and ran. Chuck for his part claims that his planned retirement was a completely above-board affair that the board of trustees insisted he take the money and he merely went along with what their wishes.
It is worth noting that according to the church’s income spreadsheet, Chuck was paid about three-quarters of a million dollars in the four years preceding his departure — including a $175,000 payment made in 2009 by the church to buy Montana property. Apparently, Chuck had been planning to leave for the mountains for quite some time before his actual announcement in August of 2010. It is also of some interest that the church alleges that over $118,000 of “administrative expenses” that Chuck spent in the last four years as pastor were so ill-documented that the church was forced to issue a 1099 to Chuck for those funds as income.
But beyond the many questions surrounding exactly what happened with the financial situation at Crossroads Baptist, there is a larger story here that is of much more interest to those of us who have been in fundamentalist churches led by charismatic and powerful men. The question that I ask myself as I read through Chuck’s eight pages of flaming retort to the charges leveled against him is “how does a man of God react to conflict?” Does he start out with telling them that if it were not for him they wouldn’t even have a church? Does he rant and rail? Does he launch personal attacks on the man whom he hand-picked to lead the church he left?
My own personal favorite excerpt from Chuck’s letter is the portion where he tells everyone that his wife never entered the church office except to “clean my bathroom or throw out trash.” Not content to leave it there he then insists that she wouldn’t even know what financial records “looked like.” It’s also fun to see him refer to the current pastor of Crossroads repeatedly as “Mr. Nichols” in a group where that is the gravest of disrespects to a pastor. Stay classy, Chuck.
Not to be outdone, Chuck’s son and son-in-law wrote their own twenty page response to Crossroads’s Baptist’s resolution wherein they call on God to judge those who oppose Chuck and then proceed with reams of self-justification. It is interesting that these very men who apparently were part of the board that insisted that Chuck must take these retirement funds from Crossroads also left Crossroads with Chuck to move to Montana. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions on that score.
It’s anyone’s guess as to which bits of spin from each side of this situation nearest reflects the truth of what happened. I certainly don’t know. But what we can say with some certainty based on Chuck’s response is that when you cross a powerful self-made leader in fundamentalism you can expect that a display of deep humility and humanity will not likely be the result. One wonders what Jesus would have done.
A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.
