Brody's Scribbles...'In This Year Of Our Lord- 2010 B. C.' - Baptist Leaders Cut Ties To Georgia Church With Female Pastor

ABCNews Photo Of Mimi and Graham Walker Courtesy  Of The Walker Family

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Apr 1 | Let me preface this column by stating that the above headline is no April Fools Day joke. Rather sadly, its altogether true. Hard to imagine that in this so called age of enlightenment, Neanderthals cloaked as Christians roam the face of the United States eager to smack down any hint of progressive modern thought and of course acceptance. Hmm, on further reflection, maybe I should add tolerance to that list as well.

Yup Dorthy, you're no longer in Kansas girlfriend, of course as Kansas is also home to the Westboro Baptist Church, maybe I should find another cliche? LGBT folk everywhere already pay the price for the hatred, the disdain, and the petty bigotry of the Christiban and now so can women apparently, or at least professional women especially preachers.

ABCNews correspondent Sarah Netter is reporting that the Georgia Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention were going to would recommend "defellowshipping" an Atlanta, Georgia,  Baptist church if one of its two senior pastors didn't either step down or step aside in favour of the male minister. 

"I know this is hurting people, so I'm saddened," the Rev. Mimi Walker said. "I'm not so much offended but saddened for the path they're taking."

Walker and her husband, the Rev. Graham Walker, co-pastors of the Druid Hills Baptist Church for two years, were told in late January that the Georgia Baptist Convention would recommend "defellowshipping" the Walkers' church unless Mimi Walker stepped down or the church admitted that her husband was more senior than she.

Wow! She's actually married folks! Oh and she's NOT GAY! 

Netter continues in her report with:

"The couple, backed by their congregation of about 100 active members, refused.

The Georgia Baptist Convention "wouldn't do it if they didn't think it was helping their cause somehow," Walker said.

That cause, she said, is following a conservative set of regulations, adopted by the national Southern Baptist Convention in 2000, that include doing away with women in leadership positions.

Defellowshipping means the Georgia Baptist Convention would no longer accept the church's donations for mission work and that the church would no longer be welcome to use GBC resources for things like Sunday School materials and ministry conferences.

"Our first indication was in December they had just done the same to First Baptist Church of Decatur," she said. A local newspaper reporter, she said, told them GBC officials were saying "we would be next.""

The Rev. Julie Pennington-Russell, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Decatur, Ga., said the Southern Baptist Convention's policy toward women in leadership positions "hobbles the effectiveness and vitality of the church." Her church was defellowshipped by the convention last year over the same issue. 

"A lot of unrepeatable time and energy went into the creation and adoption of this policy," she wrote in an e-mail. "It just seems so peripheral and small-visioned compared to the life-affirming work that God is doing in every corner of the world"

Leaders from the Georgia Baptist Convention, one of 42 state conventions under the Southern Baptist Convention, are saying little about the recommendation, made formally two weeks ago. The GBC has 3,600 affiliated churches in Georgia with an estimated 1.2 million parishioners. There are about 42,000 churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

"The GBC has never been opposed to women serving in ministry positions other than pastor," convention executive director J. Robert White said in an e-mailed statement. "We are keeping faith with the Baptist Faith and Message with regard to women serving as pastor."

GBC spokesman Eddy Oliver told ABCNews that he was unsure how leaders were made aware of Mimi Walker's position at Druid Hills.

"We don't keep track of every single pastor," Oliver said. 

Roger "Sing" Oldham, spokesman for the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention wrote in an e-mail to ABCNews that,

"I would think the majority of Southern Baptists view the ordination of woman as a modern cultural innovation that is at odds with both scripture and Christian history and would affirm this action by the Georgia Baptist Convention."

The rest of the article is here. [ ABCNews ]

Here's the thing folks, I catch alot of flack from some of my church going friends about what they perceive as a penchant on my part to 'bash' the hell out of Christians. They point to what seems like a neverending series of articles on Uganda, the Pope, the Gay Marriage battles, and the like, in which I report or in some instances make comments about what I have termed the "Christiban" movement in the United States, and elsewhere around the globe.

My defence is simple enough, after-all, if one looks at the truth in the stories I report on, maybe individual Christians are decent folk, but the so called Christian institutions are blatantly & inherently hateful, and as well wanting to roll the clock back in terms of human rights. Maybe it'd be easier if instead of being Christians, they all would simply convert to Islam as both religions seem to share a zeal for persecution of LGBT folk, and want to have women treated as second class citizens.