Civil Commotion

The problems surfacing in the Southern Baptist Convention over the mistreatment of women directly stem from an unbliblical and harmful view of “spiritual authority.” In the Southern Baptist Convention, pastors see themselves like the priests of the Old Testament: 1. Uniquely holy, 2. Distinctly authoritative, and 3. Unequivocally in charge.

Wade Burleson

Need I add that these are the elements of a cult? I’ll add that the problem Burleson identifies is not uniquely Southern Baptist; it inheres in a commonplace reading of the Bible.

Whew — I’m glad we can put that to rest.

Apparently, a 7-foot tall, hand-carved, wooden statue of Jesus will soon be in the dumpster behind Red Bank Baptist Church in Lexington, South Carolina, because it’s too Catholic-looking for that Godly congregation.

A Baptist church in South Carolina plans to remove a hand-carved statue of Jesus Christ because some congregants believe it’s too “Catholic” for their place of worship.

The hand-carved, 7-foot (2-meter) statue and accompanying reliefs depicting scenes from Christ’s life have been displayed outside Red Bank Baptist Church in Lexington for a decade.

The artist has declined to participate in the removal or take it back, and so the statue will be destroyed.

Well … ho-hum.

If the congregants are feeling ambitious, I can suggest a few more eyesores they might want to consign to the landfill.

The garish hands that decorate Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma, for instance.

And, there remains the problem of the embarrassing stained glass images of Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. For what it’s worth, I’m prepared to write a $100 donation check right now if they’d like to replace those images with either FBC JaxWatchdog or the Wartburg Watch ladies.

A good précis of D’Souza’s crime may be found here:

On January 24, 2014, D’Souza was arraigned in a Manhattan federal court on charges of making $20,000 in illegal campaign contributions to the New York Senate campaign of Wendy Long, and for causing false statements to be made to the Federal Election Commission.

In May 2014, D’Souza pleaded guilty to one felony count of making illegal contributions in the names of others. In September 2014, the court sentenced D’Souza to five years probation, eight months in a halfway house (referred to as a “community confinement center”) and a $30,000 fine.

The account goes on to say that Alan Dershowitz believes D’Souza was treated unfairly. Until recently — he has become an ardent Trump defender — I’ve thought well of Dershowitz, so take that for what it’s worth.

D’Souza undoubtedly issued the tweet below in response to Parkland students’ reaction to the Florida legislature’s refusal to take-up gun control following the mass-shooting in their school and, so far as I’m concerned, it ought to put him on the outskirts of decent society forever.

Trump’s intentions here, surely, are to …

• Remind everybody that he considers himself aggrieved by the investigation into his campaign’s now-documented cooperation with Russia, and ..

• To remind the sleazy characters around him that he has the power of the pardon.

There is no immediate remedy but to unseat every Republican next November.

“I clearly remember the air of fear around him.” This has the ring of truth to me. The viciousness of the fight for the SBC is well-documented; the dismissal of Russell Dilday as president of Southwestern Seminary in 1994 is instructive:

The request that the 63-year-old president retire came as a surprise at the end of a contentious three-day board meeting, but it was apparently planned. Within minutes of the vote, the locks on his office were changed, Dr. Dilday said.

In a telephone interview from his home near the seminary’s 200-acre campus, Dr. Dilday said he was caught off guard because the board’s executive committee had given him a glowing appraisal one day earlier.

They smiled in his face while they were unsheathing the knife — and he was only one of dozens who were treated with similar shabbiness. Contemporary Southern Baptists like to traffic the half-truth that “nobody was fired” during the Resurgence, a literal truth intended to deceive; unsuspecting seminary faculty, and seminary presidents, were given no-nonsense notice that a failure to resign immediately would result in firing.