May 25th, 2012
Wake Forest University is a Baptist school. It was built by North Carolina baptist preachers to serve a baptist populace and is affiliated with the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. Though primarily secular today, it’s baptist heritage is no small part of its culture.
Which is why this article published by the Associated Baptist Press by Bill Leonard, the James and Marilyn Dunn Professor of Church History and Baptist Studies at the School of Divinity, Wake Forest University, makes this the baptist response that was desperately needed. That, and the fact that Leonard pulls no punches.
But tonight I am ashamed, because I heard a Baptist pastor say things so abhorrent to the gospel of Jesus that I could not keep conscience with my Baptist forebears and remain silent. In what appears to be a May 13 sermon, Charles Worley declared: “Build a great, big, large fence — 150 or 100 mile long — put all the lesbians in there,” Then he continues: “Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified so they can’t get out. Feed them, and you know what, in a few years, they’ll die out. Do you know why? They can’t reproduce!”
I’ve listened to those statements multiple times, each time hoping that I’m not hearing what I think I’m hearing. But I am.
That a person who serves a congregation calling itself Baptist would utilize such brutal words is not simply an affront to the men and women he wishes death upon, but to all who “name the name of Christ.” So dastardly are those words and the sentiment behind them that those of us who value the Baptist tradition must demand repentance of this fallen Christian brother.
Amen! Preach it!
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Andrew
May 25th, 2012
There’s a part of me that wants to tell people to quit being cowards. Stop hiding behind what they claim is their religion and have the balls to say what they feel instead of putting words in God’s mouth. Who cares what your religion tells you about how I live my life. I don’t live in Vatican City or Tehran, so your religious tenants don’t matter a whit when it comes to public policy.
I challenge these morons to just once talk about this issue without using the words “God” “sin” or “Bible”.
10 to 1, they can’t do it. Because that would require taking responsibility for their own words and ideas.
Cowards, traitors, and blasphemers. There was a time when those descriptors could get a different sort of person put behind an electrified fence and left to rot.
Someone’s lucky we don’t live in that world anymore, and they’d best be very careful before hoping we return, because when society goes there, sooner or later, everyone takes a turn behind the fence.
Charles
May 27th, 2012
A lone voice amongst the Baptist community. I would like to hear a lot more outrage from other Christians about what this pastor said last weekend.
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