So apparently a bunch of fundamentalist pastors went to Washington D.C. this week and did this:
One participant was so excited that he wrote this:
These fundamentalist pastors did this and this and hung out with this guy.
Then they stood outside the Capitol and did this:
And while standing there they sang this and this (sideways!).
Unfortunately, because the media is SO BIASED they received absolutely no coverage for all these historic things they did, prompting one participant to write this:
History was made but the world marches on unchanged. What a tragedy.
chicagotribune.com: “Jack Schaap, the former pastor of a 15,000-member northwest Indiana megachurch, was sentenced today to 12 years in prison for engaging in sex with a troubled underage girl who sought him out for counseling.”
Post Tribune: “Prosecutors had asked for 10 years, but Judge Rudy Lozano noted federal sentencing guidelines called for at least 168 months, and he didn’t want to go that much below the guidelines. Lozano noted that Schaap plead guilty, but considering the government’s case against him, he almost had to. He mentioned that Schaap fired an employee who went to his wife with information about his affair with a teen girl. Schaap also asked a tech employee of the church if the photos and texts could be erased. The employee told him they could not, then went to church deacons and the FBI with the images and texts.”
For the record, I do not wish for Jack Schaap to be raped in prison. I don’t wish that on anybody. I do hope that justice is served and that it drives this arrogant, selfish man to repentance.
And let us all take heed to ourselves lest we likewise be tempted to lust and avarice.
Who sinned? This man? His parents? Our legislators? Society as a whole?
It would seem that the need to establish guilt in the wake of a tragedy is part of our basic human programming. Our media outlets opine with varying degrees of accuracy about exactly happened and why. Our politicians make statements and promise reforms. Our friends and neighbors light up Facebook with pictures and captions about what they think happened and how it (oddly enough) proves their position right on this issue or that. Meanwhile, fundamentalists inevitably blame everybody who isn’t one of their own.
The truth is, however, that the reasons are rarely as simple in their cause to effect as we or the fundamentalists would like to believe because disaster on an epic scale does not happen from a single point of failure. As much as some people would like to believe that “God being removed” from schools (as if such a thing were possible to an omnipotent and omnipresent deity) it’s impossible to prove. The rain falls on the just and unjust. Seemingly random acts of violence and disaster do as well.
Perhaps those who claim to be of Christ should ask themselves what he would do and say. I rather imagine that he would be binding up the wounds of the living, weeping at the graves of the departed, and in this season when we celebrate his birth he would be giving to those who mourn the hope of his Incarnation and Resurrection to life eternal.
These things we ought to do. Agendas and blame can wait.
Bryan Smith of Chicago magazine has penned an exposé of First Baptist Church of Hammond’s long history of harboring abusers that ran in this Sunday’s Chicago Magazine. Although I’m not cited in the article, I did speak with Bryan before he wrote this about the background of fundamentalism and the culture of institutions like FBC Hammond. I would love to see someone expand on this and realize that Hyles-Anderson and FBC Hammond are only one of any number of large churches and schools from the same basic background that use the same methods to control and manipulate their people.
It’s always interesting to me to see people from the outside world try to make sense of large fundamentalist institutions. Their confusion as to how and why these institutions continue to exist is almost palpable. But I think that’s why people continue to meet on forums and blogs like SFL.
We get it. Others do not.
A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.
