Posted on 07/26/2006 6:47:38 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
NASHVILLE - Citing a "gathering threat to our membership," the Southern Baptist Convention Sunday launched pre-emptive strikes on rival Assembly of God mega-churches in the South, leaving charred ruins where church signs and marquees once stood. Hours later, the SBC issued a statement justifying the unilateral action.
"Hostilities will escalate unless we get inspectors in there to see which of our members were stolen away by this flaky Pentecostal nonsense," says one SBC official.
The SBC chose to attack on Sunday evening at 6:30 p.m. because most churches are completely empty at that time and they wanted to minimize casualties, they said. They targeted only church signs, sending a "warning shot across the bow."
A/G officials claimed the strikes had hit Sunday school wings, not church signs, and had injured "dozens of innocent and elderly." The TBN network showed 24-hour footage of young, bandaged Missionettes and Royal Rangers lying in hospital beds ? images the SBC called "trumped up and inflammatory."
By Monday morning, hundreds of A/G adherents had gathered around decimated church signs for candlelight vigils and "tongues" rallies to show support for their churches.
"I'm outraged they would try something like this," said Martha Ennis, 41, who then began to prophesy over the reporter, giving him "words from God."
The SBC says they tried to work through the National Association of Evangelicals to bring sanctions against the A/G for "aggressive membership recruitment," but that secret deliberations ended inconclusively, and the SBC decided to act alone.
Wary of scaring away new members with the attacks, the SBC is simultaneously revving up a "shucks and aww" advertising campaign to portray a "warm, welcoming" atmosphere to counteract the impression that the SBC has become doctrinally rigid, intolerant and culturally out of touch. The ads, set to run in major newspapers beginning Thursday, show smiling, overweight Caucasian families walking into Southern Baptist churches. The SBC hopes to attract more smiling, overweight Caucasian families.
Already in some cities, A/G insurgent forces have begun counter-attacking SBC churches, scrawling "healing'z 4 today," "pharisee loverz" and other slogans Baptists find outrageous.
Welllllllllllllllllll!
La-T-Da!
Sniff Sniff.
[dabbing daintily with a virgin white hanky].
Just remember to wail and whine in symphonic chorus, now!
Agreed.
Not called "full gospel" for nothing.
In that study, 34 percent of Baptists were found to be overweight, 33 percent of agnostics, and 21 percent of Catholics. The researches did not find any correlation of BMI to frequency of church attendance, however.
Please note that this 2006 thread mentions a then-upcoming "shucks and aww advertising campaign" conducted by the Southern Baptists. Could this campaign have been the reason for the high BMI numbers among Baptists in 2012?
"The ads, set to run in major newspapers beginning Thursday, show smiling, overweight Caucasian families walking into Southern Baptist churches. The SBC hopes to attract more smiling, overweight Caucasian families."
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