The Rev. Patrick Wooden has called noisy protests to oppose homosexuality, which he calls 'one of the greatest enemies of Christianity.'
Posted on 06/28/2004 7:24:41 AM PDT by NCjim
A Raleigh church is devoted to an anti-gay mission, but some question congregants' tactics
On a recent midweek afternoon, 75 church members marched into the office of state Senate leader Marc Basnight to show their support for a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage
Basnight wasn't there to greet them, but that didn't stop the group. Members passed out the senator's phone number and agreed to go home and start dialing.
"We need to bombard him and make him listen to us," said Elder William Cooper of Raleigh's Upper Room Church of God in Christ. "We want him to get tired of hearing from us."
The Upper Room Church of God in Christ is at the forefront of the battle against homosexuality. Church members have turned out at city, county and state forums to loudly -- some would say rudely -- oppose what their pastor has called "one of the greatest enemies of Christianity."
At a Wake school board hearing in October, they booed anyone who disagreed with the board's abstinence-only policy. At a Raleigh City Council meeting in April, they cheered when homosexuality was described as "evil."
Church members were glad the school board backed away from teaching tolerance for homosexuality. They weren't so pleased when the City Council voted to allow one of its commissions to add a sexual orientation nondiscrimination clause to its mission statement.
Church members, led by the Rev. Patrick Wooden, aren't discouraged by defeats. They're emboldened by them. They make no apologies for their tactics.
"If we're labeled as being fanatical Christians, we embrace it," Wooden said. His church has one of Raleigh's largest black congregations, with about 3,000 members. "We're not afraid of labels. We will speak the truth in love and make our positions known as a Christian church."
Many people find the church's approach distasteful, if not offensive. When the Rev. Julie Denny-Hughes got up at a school hearing to speak in defense of a broader sex education curriculum, members of the Upper Room stomped noisily.
"I believe they have every right to hold fast to their religious beliefs," said Denny-Hughes of Raleigh's Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. "But they don't have the right to shut down open, democratic public debate. That's wrong -- really wrong."
For all its agitation, it's not clear if the church is having much effect. Raleigh City Council member Janet Cowell said most elected officials have already formed opinions about homosexuality and are not likely to be swayed by a church group -- no matter how vocal.
"People are pretty entrenched in their viewpoints," said Cowell, who voted to extend the non-discrimination clause to gays and lesbians. "I don't think anybody changed their vote either way."
Opposition to homosexuality has become a rallying cry in some black churches where ministers regularly denounce it with the fervor they might have reserved for drug abuse or the benefits of a good education. In these churches, homosexuality is a sin, but one that can be forgiven once a person accepts Jesus as savior.
But some black pastors say they worry about any church with an exclusive focus on homosexuality.
"All this does is create a place where men who are gay are in hiding," said the Rev. Carl Kenney, pastor of Compassion Ministries of Durham. "I don't think that's a healthy place to be."
The hiding is of concern to some because it suggests that one cause of widespread AIDS is black men secretly engaging in sex with other men and then infecting their girlfriends or wives.
The African-American community suffers disproportionately from AIDS. Although African-Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, they accounted for more than half of the new HIV diagnoses reported in 2002 -- 21,000 out of a total of 42,000 new cases.
Black women are 23 times more likely to be infected than white women, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the majority of black women who contract HIV or AIDS are not intravenous drug users or people with multiple sex partners. They are heterosexual, often married women, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study.
The phenomenon is a target of much of the Upper Room's wrath.
"I cannot stand by and say nothing while this wicked phenomenon takes place," Wooden said.
Wooden has made it clear he will not tolerate gays or lesbians in the church choir or, for that matter, in any church leadership position.
Four years ago, the church started a private Christian school after he became concerned that the public schools were tolerating gays and lesbians.
A native of Rockingham, Wooden, 42, is a broad-shouldered man with an easy smile. He attended Fayetteville State University, and does not hold a seminary degree. He has led the Upper Room for 17 years. The congregation is part of the mostly black Church of God in Christ, a rapidly growing denomination that numbers 8 million U.S. members, according to its Web site.
At a recent church luncheon devoted to homosexuality, about 200 participants were handed booklets printed by the church titled, "Disarming and Defeating the Homosexual Theology." Wooden told the group it was time to "get our hands dirty."
"We have to block the use of euphemisms when we talk about homosexuals," he said. "They are not gay. We've got to use terms like 'deviant' and 'abomination.' "
Members of Wooden's church not only back their leader, but are willing to sacrifice working hours to go to public hearings -- often in the middle of the day. One church member who runs a home day care brought a client's 2-year-old daughter to the legislature recently.
"My business stops when it comes to this issue here," Dee Dee Moreno said.
Others said their conviction that their faith is under assault brought them.
"It's just a passion for Christ," said Brenda Bowden, a church member who works in the inspections and permits office at Cary Town Hall and managed to get a two-hour lunch break. "We're defending our beliefs."
The media "questions" the right of public assembly ONLY when employed for conservative causes.
We need o do this all over the country.
Read later.
smite To inflict a heavy blow on, with or as if with the hand, a tool, or a weapon.
To drive or strike (a weapon, for example) forcefully onto or into something else.
To attack, damage, or destroy by or as if by blows.
To afflict: The population was smitten by the plague.
To afflict retributively; chasten or chastise.
To affect sharply with great feeling: He was smitten by deep remorse.
v. intr. To deal a blow with or as if with the hand or a hand-held weapon.
The usage of SMITE seems positively un-Christian, except in the possible sense of "to chastise." I doubt my Jewish brother Yonat Shimron intended that narrow definition, and so he smears certain thoroughgoing Christians with a term of physical violence. To know conservative Christians, one immediately recognizes that they "Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner."
But has he address kerry's 100% rating from homosexual rights groups?
In the end, it is about time.
Wow, what a surprise. Does any lawmaker ever work?
Smite is the right word. God has the ability to do this.
I wish more African-American pastors would act like Rev. Wooden. If more African-Americans held the RATS to be more accountable, the Left wouldn't be so loony.
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