Looks like now they got rid of all the durn libruhls and homersexuals, Souther Baptists have a new target- each other:
After purging liberals from their ranks, Southern Baptist conservatives who won control of their denomination are taking aim at each other.
The Rev. Wade Burleson, a Baptist leader from Oklahoma, says fellow conservatives who crusaded to elect only leaders who believe the Bible is literally true are carrying their campaign too far, targeting Southern Baptists who disagree with them on other issues.
These leaders, he wrote on his blog, are “following the same battle plan conservatives used to defeat liberalism,” and have started a “war” for the future of the SBC.
Mr. Burleson’s postings may have cost him a leadership role in the denomination. Trustees of the Southern Baptist international missionary agency took the first step this month toward ousting him from their board, accusing him of “broken trust” for writing about a meeting on his Web site.
What started the purge? You won’t believe it:
Mr. Burleson first rankled the board over an obscure policy change: Trustees of the International Mission Board voted in November to bar future missionaries from using a “private prayer language,” or speaking in tongues in private. Previously, missionaries were discouraged from speaking in tongues publicly, but their private prayer was not monitored.
I wonder what their thoughts on snake-handling are, and whether this will be the cause for another purge.
(h/t The Carpetbagger)
Paul Wartenberg
This is what happens with any organization obsessed with making themselves ‘more pure’, ‘more righteous’, etc. If they keep this up, expect the Southern Baptists to devolve into a small 2 member church on the outskirts of Corpus Christi…with both members filing lawsuits to get rid of the other as they fight over the right to eat the last danish pastry in the kitchen…
zzyzx
This is great news. Liberalism has been plagued for years with people who look at someone who agrees with them on 80-85% of the issues, and thinks of them as an enemy because of the rest of it. That’s (IMO) a large reason why the Republicans are taking over. Between talk radio, NRO (RINOs anyone), and now this, there’s signs that the Republican big tent is crumbling. Works for me.
charliedontsurf10
Gee, I don’t know who to root for. Falwell or Robertson? Can’t they both lose?
ppGaz
Only in a world where irony has been made extinct, could a guy say that people who “believe the Bible is literally true” could go “too far.”
Welcome to Bizarroland.
Oh wait …. people as nutty as this are running the fucking country now!
Ooops! I guess the joke is on us.
Zifnab
Communing with Jesus is allowed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Sundays, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays restricted between the hours of 9 and 12. Faith Healings will be limited to a bi-weekly basis. Channeling the Virgin Mary will not occur before 8am on a weekday. And while permitted, it is considered bad form to espouse divine prophecy after Labor Day. Otherwise, general religious hoaxery is encouraged 24/7.
Jcricket
This stuff is great. I sincerely hope the right-wing factions of the Republican party do something like this. Eliminate people like Snowe, Collins, Chafee and Specter from the Republican party. Stop speaking in “code language” and admit that the Republican party stands for making abortion 100% illegal, followed by making contraception illegal to purchase. Also, making it OK to discriminate against gays, women, and minority religions. Make Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh and John Gibson the official spokes-people.
And then watch Republicans shrink to permanent 20-25% minority status.
All the “tax cuts”, lies about “fiscal responsibility”, and war hawkishness are really just marketing designed to keep Libertarians and moderates voting Republican. Once those people realize the Republican party is really the Christian version of the Taliban, they’ll bolt (much like the reasonable Southern Baptists will bolt, leaving Southern Baptists a hollow shell of a church).
ppGaz
Jcricket has it about right. From the get-go, the political advance of the “christian” right has been about stealth, about saying one thing and being and doing another, and about not revealing who they really are and what they really intend.
I invite any skeptics to go back and look at the videos of the 2000 presidential debates, when the two major candidates were talking about Social Security.
Candidate A spoke early, and often, to the point of being annoying, about honoring the Social Security Trust Fund.
Candidate B just dodged the issue. It was hard then to figure out why. Four years later, it became clear why he had avoided the issue: His intent was to trash the existing Social Security system and replace it with government-funded “investments.” His real vision was of a Trust Fund that was nothing but “paper stuffed into filing cabinets.”
My point is this: Do you think this little prick would have been elected if he had revealed his true agenda in those debates in 2000? Why did Gore keep beating that drum? Because he wanted to draw out the dishonest little piece of shit and get him to say what he really thought.
If the GOP had put up a candidate who just walked up to the microphone and said, I intend to run on a platform of bashing gays, advancing radical christianity, eliminating Social Security, finishing my daddy’s war with Iraq, creating a corporate-friendly banking atmosphere that crushes the rights of the middle class, setting up another corporate-friendly Medicare scheme that makes insurance companies rich but snarls up an already tangled elderly prescription situation even more, putting my friends and cronies in all the important jobs around Washington, pandering to the extreme right wing of my party on one hand while giving away the store to corporate contributors with the other, presiding over a one-party government that raises pork barrel spending to new and heretofore unimagined heights, winking at graft and corruption, using every avenue of political trickery to besmirch anyone who opposes anything I want to do, operating at the outer fringes of legality and extending the already lopsided executive power even further, gutting the agencies that look out for occupational safety and evironmental protections …..
Well, they didn’t, but that’s what you got.
Mac Buckets
I lived in a majority SBC town, and if there’s one thing they like more than being holier-than-thou, it’s the drama of revealing who exactly they are holier than. “I saw a beer can in Cletus’s truck bed!” “I heard Raylene went dancing last weekend!” The remaining Baptists can’t live without the drama, so now they’re turning on themselves.
My thoughts on the Baptists: Look, it’s hard enough to get thinking people to believe that Jesus turned water into wine. It’s totally impossible to get thinking people to believe that He took the time and effort to turn water into grape juice.
Mac Buckets
Fortunately for the GOP, enough of the idiot Kool-Aiders on the left will keep comparing Republicans to the Taliban, which will be enough stop the majority from voting for the Wacky Donks. Keep up the good work!
Demento
The key words, in my opinion are,”. . . but their private prayer was not monitored.” Now they want it monitored. That says it all, folks.
ppGaz
How proud you must be, MacFukkets, to be a member of such a worthy and noble group as the Defenders of the GOP, in these times.
What did you do when the crazy people were destroying the country, GrandpaMac?
Why, I made fun of their opponents, child. Made fun of their opponents. Those were good times!
Nat
Only in a world where irony has been made extinct, could a guy say that people who “believe the Bible is literally true” could go “too far.”
In all seriousness, the conflict here highlights the difference between “evangelicals” and “fundamentalists”. Those of us who are secularists tend to blend these together, and I didn’t realize there was a difference until recently. It may seem trivial to us but it makes a huge difference to the way they conduct their religious practices.
I’m actually still not entirely sure what the preicse difference is, and they’re not mutally exclusive. At any rate, the majority of both do believe in the literal truth of the Bible, but there is a major break over interpretation and personal relationship with God. The evangelicals include the Pentecostals and Charismatics, AKA the “holy rollers”, who believe in a sort of direct communion with God (e.g. speaking in tongues). My impression is that the “born-agains” largely fall into this category (but most evangelicals are not born-agains!). The fundamentalists, on the other hand, are the “strict constructionists” of Biblical theology. Many sects have both branches; I knew some Charismatic Episcopalians (very nice folks) but the church also contains strict fundamentalist and liberal wings. Pat Robertson and Oral Roberts are evangelicals, Falwell is a fundamentalist. Because of their shared political leanings it is easy (but incorrect) to lump them into the same theological category. (Oh, and neither group thinks highly of the Catholic church.)
This is written from an atheist’s point of view, so I’d be interested to know if I got it right. Wikipedia as always has a great deal more detail.
Mac Buckets
PpgTedRall is at it again. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! If you’re scared, buy a dog.
Otto Man
You know, I never agree with Mac, but that comment was well played.
What’s always amazed me about the Baptists is that for 300 years they were the most adamant about maintaining the separation of church and state. But when the SBC power struggles started in the early 1980s they did a complete reversal on something that had been a core principle since the colonial days of Roger Williams. It’s been all downhill for them since, and turning on each other is just the latest stage.
Otto Man
I’d also like to point out that this post is #6616, which is dangerously close to being the Blogpost of the Beast.
You’ll be hearing from the SBC soon, John.
Zifnab
The true reality stems from the old adage – power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Whenever you have a “Christian” in office, he’s just as heavy handed as his secularist counterpart, he’s just heavy handed in the name of God. When the Baptist Fundamentalists seized power in ’94, they ran with it the same way every man or group of men do when they’ve got too much power and not enough self-control.
But if you believe the 1980s was some sort of dawning age of political activism, you haven’t been paying attention the past 300 years. You think Puritians off the Mayflower suddenly got all cushy with every non-Puritian to join them, when this was their New World? Or that Manifest Destiny and the missionary work that exterminated so many Native Americans in the mid-1800s was secular in nature? Certainly you won’t tell me the KKK back in the 40s and 50s, that laid claim to numerous political offices throughout the South, was somehow divorced from the churches. Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Mormon, Unitarian, Catholic, Jewish, you name it. They’ve all got their eyes on the prize.
ppGaz
Like I said.
MB: I made fun of their opponents, child. That was my contribution. Making fun of their opponents.
ppGaz
Possibly the most original point of the day.
Doug
This story surprises me not at all. If need be, they’ll be sniping at each other over who wears the holiest clothes or whatever they can think of to give their particular faction more power.
As long as we’re picking on Baptists:
Why don’t Baptists fuck standing up? They’re afraid that someone will see them and think they’re dancing.
Digital Amish
We had a solution to just such a dilemma back in late 60’s/early 70’s. It concluded with God sorting ’em out.
SeesThroughIt
How do we know they’re not praying to Al Qaida, huh? Those prayers must be monitored–especially if they insist on praying in that funny-sounding language!
Seriously, go, Southern Baptists. It’s about time you started eating yourselves instead of fucking it up for the rest of us.
BadTux
The early Baptists rejected all central religious authority. They believed in a personal relationship between the individual and Jesus. They believed in individual independent congregations of believers who pursued a personal relationship with Jesus through song and communion with fellow seekers. And yes, they did believe that government had no role in religion. For this heresy they were expelled from many of the early English colonies, virtually all of which had an official religion that was supported by the colonial government.
How this charismatic decentralized movement turned into the regimented intolerant centrally-controlled Southern Baptist religion of today, where those who don’t believe what some central body says is expelled from the church or at least any position of leadership within, is a topic for another posting, and one that I’m really not interested enough to make right now. Suffice it to say that slavery was the big issue that created the Southern Baptist variation of the Baptist faith. Remember that, and many other things suddenly go “click!”.
Especially when you realize that the Southern Baptist faith is a relative new-comer as the majority faith in the South, only becoming such in the post-Civil-War era. Prior to that, while the Baptists were the largest single faith in the South, it was only by a plurality — Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians were the faiths that most Southerns belonged to (your social class was highly correlated with your religion, Methodists and Baptists, for example, were white trash hillbillies and small farmers, Presbyterians were the merchants and townspeople, and Episcopalians were the elite plantation owners). The events of 1860-1875 (the latter year being the year that the South won the American Civil War and re-imposed slavery under another name upon blacks in the South) had a profound effect upon the young Southern Baptist Convention that continues to affect the church all the way to the current day.
– BT
lemberg
You have to be very careful about painting with too broad a brush. I was born and raised in Oxford, NC. My town has a sad history in terms of race relations: namely the murder of a black man and the subsequent aquittal of his killer by a white jury, followed by intense riots and fires. (another interesting example: Black GIs from Fort Butner gathering in protest of the beating of a fellow black soldier having a 50 cal trained on them from inside the courthouse. It was appearntly procured for just such a purpose. Many soldiers hid behind the confederate monument which, at that time, stood in the middle of the street in front of the courthouse. {It now stands beside the library} In fact, there was a recent book about the era, “Blood Done Sign My Name” (aside: it is a very interesting book). The Baptist Church is the tallest building in town, and many of the “important” people in town attend. Nonetheless, they broke from the Southern Baptists (over the issue of female preachers, I believe).
I don’t even know what the point to that rambling nonsense is (UNC finally won convincingly and thus I’m distracted).
I think it was supposed to have something to do with not assumeing pure evil in everyone. Take from it what you will.
The Other Steve
How are they different from the Taliban?
Kazinski
Comparing Republicans/Christians to the Taliban is absurd. I’m an athesist but I’m not worried about committed Christians being in a position of authority. There is just no example in the modern era of Christian dominated governments being any threat to non-believers other than some relatively harmless blue laws. Sure there are some historical examples of some pretty bloody Christian regimes like the Spanish Inquisistion, but that was happening at about the same time as Tamerlane was stacking 70.000 skulls into a tower in Persia, and the Aztecs were fighting wars just to get enough victims for sacrafices. So it was more a function of the era than the religion. When you stop to consider that the only rigorously atheistic regiemes in world history were also responsible for some of the greatest carnage (USSR, Maoist China, and the Kymer Rouge), I don’t find much utility in voting only for my fellow atheists because they are supposedly more rational than fundementalist Christians.
Otto Man
Well, let’s share the love with Alabama:
Why do people in Alabama have sex doggy-style? That way, they can both watch wrestling.
Sojourner
Interesting.
So you don’t have a problem with the anti-evolution position being pushed in many states that results in the dumbing down of science education.
Or the anti-gay laws that discriminate against law-abiding citizens.
Or a foreign policy that withholds funds from clinics in other countries that discuss abortion as an option for their patients, resulting in no money for women’s health care.
Or a president who believes that God told him to invade Iraq, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
Or the intrusion of the state government into the personal lives of a family with severely incapacitated family member.
Or the selection of SC justices who will likely overturn abortion rights in this country.
Nah. Christian fundamentalist beliefs being imposed on this country are totally harmless and don’t affect anyone.
nyrev
You’re kidding, right? I have some homework for you. Google “The Black Hundred”, “Pogromnacht” and “Jedwabne Pogrom.” It’s only been about 60 years since occasional government-condoned violence against non-believers was the norm in countries with Christian-dominated governments. For Christian v. The Wrong Kind of Christian violence, I suggest reading up on The Troubles in Ireland.
There’s a reason why the US isn’t supposed to have a national religion and it’s not because of those commie activist judges. It’s because the people who founded this country wanted a haven from oppression, and government-sponsored religion, whatever the religion, leads to the oppression of those who don’t practice it.
BadTux
If radical Christians attained full power in America, here is what they would do:
1. Bible study every morning in every school in the land.
2. Biblical law. Adultery would be punished by stoning. Divorce would be outlawed. Women would be property of their fathers or husbands, as ordained by the Bible.
3. Outlawing teaching of modern biology on the grounds that it contradicts the Bible.
4. Forced dress codes so that girls and women are required to wear to-the-ankle long dresses and would be arrested for wearing pants.
5. No sports for girls in schools. It’s un-ladylike, and wearing shorts in PE class promotes lesbianism.
6. Outlawing of most women’s sports as obscene, since they require showing flesh, and showing flesh gives men unsavory thoughts.
7. All girls required to take home economics classes and prohibited from taking shop classes because a woman’s place is in the home and a man’s place is in the workforce.
7. Girls prohibited from taking advanced academic courses because it will just make them unhappy in their God-ordained role as a mother and home-maker.
Etc. etc. etc.
These notions are not secret. They are part of a movement called “Christian Reconstructionism” that intends to impose Biblical law in America, and every statement I made above has either been made by one of the leaders of this movement, or I have personally witnessed it said by a member of one of the radical Christian religions that are a member of the movement. If you do not belong to a denomination that has beliefs like this, congratulations. Most Muslims don’t belong to a denomination that has the radical beliefs of the Taliban either. But if these TaliChristians got into power, I have no doubt that they would commit just as much evil in America as the Taliban did in Afghanistan.
Luckily, while the Busheviks pander to the TaliChristians, they aren’t crazy — they aren’t about to try to impose the TaliChristian agenda upon America. But if the TaliChristians themselves ever somehow seize power instead of trying to work through the political process to gain power… as I said, I have no doubt that they would be as evil as the Taliban in the end.
-Badtux the Bible Belt Penguin
CaseyL
People are what they are, and some of ’em have a morbid need to not only divide the world into “Us” and “Them,” but to actively demonize and punish the “Them.” Certain theologies, philosophies and ideologies have a special attraction for that kind of psychology – but the people attracted to them would be that way, believe that way, and want to exclude/punish, no matter which club they joined.
Thing is, that urge to purge is never satisfied, because it’s a pathological need rather than a real response to a real threat. Once the compulsive purgers get rid of the easily-identifiable “Other,” they start on the less-easily identifiable, until they’re dividing their dwindling numbers by eye color or height or numbers of siblings… or, as in John’s example, by whether and when to speak in tongues.
(This, BTW, was proven in a horrible and traumatic experiment done about 20-30 years ago in a high school, when a teacher divided the class into an “Us” and “Them,” based on arbitrary and trivial factors, like eye color. A pogram-ish atmosphere developed in no time at all.)
The urge to purge exists independently of religion, but religion does provide a really powerful ‘sponsor’: God. There’s nothing quite like convincing an entire congregation, or society, that God demands they purify themselves by driving out (or killing) whoever doesn’t “fit.” That’s why I have to laugh when people talk about ‘God’s unchanging law.’ God changes his mind, and his laws, all the damn time.
Kazinski
nyrev:
I’m not saying Christians are perfect, I’m just saying they are no worse than other goverments at the same time of other denominations. The Nazi’s weren’t a Christian government, in fact they were anti-Christian, so you can’t blame the Nazi horrors on “Christians”, Tsarist Russia was Christian, but I wouldn’t call it a theocracy, and despite the fact there were anti semitic pograms, fact is they were just plain brutal to everyone.
BadTux,
That sounds suspiciously like the current state of afairs in Saudi Arabia, not any “Christian” nation.
Like I said I’m an atheist myself, so other people’s religion doesn’t matter to me one way or another. Where I live in Seattle we are being oppressed here by secular blue noses who are shutting down strip clubs, outlawing smoking, restricting sales of alcohol in some neighborhoods all in the name of progressive values.
Maybe sometime in the far future some Christian sect with a restictive theology is going to amass enough power, and the will to start imposing their beliefs on the rest of country. But I don’t see any hints of it, I’m far more concerned about leftist killjoys restricting my first, second and twentyfirst amendment rights.
BadTux
Kazinski, when I lived in Shreveport, Lousiana — a very conservative city, 98% Baptist, whose white population voted 95% for Bush in the last Presidential election — people in neighborhoods there tried to get strip clubs and bars shut down too. It seems you picked an issue that conservatives and liberals both agree with. As a Libertarian, of course, I think that busy-bodies of all persuasions — whether liberal or conservative — should butt out of other people’s business. If I want to run a bar on my property, that’s between me and my customers, and not anybody else’s business. If my bar decreases property values in the area, let’em sue me for damages to compensate them for their losses under common law, but it should be none of the government’s business otherwise. But it appears that both conservatives and liberals disagree with me.
As a Libertarian who spent most of the Clinton years fighting off attempts by the Clintonistas to cripple the Internet with spy chips and etc. (remember the Clipper Chip? I was part of the group that defeated that effort by the Clintonistas to bug every electronic device in America) you have my sympathy in dealing with the anti-smoking nazis. That said, I find it hard to believe that you see no difference between the anti-smoking fanatics and the radical Christian Reconstructionists who believe that adultery should be punished by stoning (as called for in the Bible) and that divorce should be outlawed. Both are a blight upon America, but only one has an agenda that calls for killing people.
– BT
W.B. Reeves
This is a popular misconception.
While it’s true the Nazi movement contained strong anti-Christian elements, Hitler himself went to his grave proclaiming himself to be a Catholic. The Vatican’s concordat with the Nazis in the thirties indicated that the Papacy did not see Nazism as irreconcilable with the Church either. Even such celebrated Christian resisters as Niemoeller and the martyred Bonhoffer were not, in the beginning, unsupportive of the so-called German National Revolution. It was only when they belatedly realized that the independence of the clergy was targeted for destruction that these two moved into opposition. The Christian Churches, apart from pacifist or free will sects, were not shut down. Rather, they were exploited for transmitting the propaganda of the Nazi state.
Whether one would describe Tsarist Russia as a Theocracy or not, under Tsarism the Church was an arm of the State and the Tsar’s authority was based on his status as Christian Emperor and leader of the faith. The model for this system was late Byzantine Orthodoxy in which God’s authority on earth was vested in the person of the Emperor rather than in a Pope (Bishop).
Refusing to recognize the culpability of historical Christianity for the crimes committed in its name by its proclaimed adherents is an expression of moral and spiritual blindness.
nyrev
Kazinski,
None of those governments were theocracies, but all of them were “Christian-dominated” (your term, not mine) and all of them played heavily on the pre-existing religious intolerance of the overwhelmingly Christian populace. My point (and that of the several other people who posted after you made the ridiculous claim that there was “just no example in the modern era of Christian dominated governments being any threat to non-believers” ) is that all countries that don’t separate Church from State have a healthy and modern history of oppressing the non-believers. And that goes for Catholic discrimination against Waldensians in Italy, Protestant discrimination against Catholics in Northern Ireland, and Christian oppression of Jews in most of Europe, as well as Muslim discrimination against everything else in Iran.
I’m very sorry that dastardly liberals are curtailing your right to blow carcinogenic waste into people’s faces. But unless there have been a lot of changes since September, there isn’t any shortage of bars, liquor stores and gentlemen’s clubs in the Seattle area. Personally, I think that the rightist killjoys that want to limit women’s access to medical care, teach our children that “God did it” is an acceptable scientific theory, and base eligability for employment and housing on what church one attends and how rigorously one adheres to its practices to be a greater threat to your Constitutional rights than the possibility that you may have to travel an extra couple of miles in order to see titties.
I didn’t like the Left’s attempts at censorship during the Clinton years any more than I like the Right’s attempts to legislate family values during the Bush Administration. But anyone who thinks that Tipper Gore represents a larger threat than Falwell and Robertson obviously has never traveled south of I-70.
Bob In Pacifica
W.B. Reeves, when chronicling church-state relationships under the Nazis let us also not forget the slaughter of the Orthodox Serbs by the Roman Catholic Croats during WWII was done under at the behest of their Nazi rulers (and let’s not forget the anhilation of Jews in the region). Many of the local Catholic priests were the core of the “ratlines,” the secret escape routes of Nazis to freedom outside Europe after WWII. This clash between Serb and Croat in WWII reemerged during the splintering of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, with the resulting ethnic cleansing by the three parties (Croat, Serb and the Bosnian Muslims led by fundamentalist Islamist Izetbegović, who fought with the Nazi Muslim Hanjar Division). Just another echo of WWII. Like Israel is an echo of WWII, with Jews displacing Palestinians after Jews themselves were displaced.
Religion seems to bring out the worst in people.
Kazinski
You guys just need to get a grip, any one who see’s Falwell and Roberson as a “larger threat”, must have a terrible self image. What self respecting man could look at those two and feel fear? Fear that you might laugh so hard that milk would come out your nose, maybe.
Jon H
That’s, like, clear evidence that “speaking in tongues” is a load of crap.
If it were caused by God, I wouldn’t think it would be something people could turn on or off depending on circumstances.
Sojourner
Absolutely! Screw the people who die because this administration discourages the use of condoms as part of an AIDS “prevention” program.
Barbar
“Get a grip” says the guy who’s terrified of Tipper Gore. OK.
W.B. Reeves
Since what is being discussed is a political threat rather than a personal, physical threat, your comment is both off topic and nonsensical.
Changing the subject when the facts don’t support you isn’t very convincing as a tactic.
W.B. Reeves
Bob in Pacifica,
Solid points. We would also do well to remember that the atrocities committed during the age of European Colonialism were often justified as advancing Christian Civilization. Likewise the destruction of the indigenous cultures of North America as well as the institution of slavery.