Posted on 07/30/2012 4:16:00 PM PDT by Morgana
A rally will be held Monday night in Crystal Springs, Mississippi after a black couple wasn’t allowed to get married at their church because of their race.
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The Wilsons were told they couldn’t wed at the town's First Baptist Church because it goes against tradition since a black couple had never been married there in its 129-year history.
Charles Wilson and his fiance, Te'Andrea, wanted to get married there, but church members got upset. The paster then asked the couple to take their wedding elsewhere.
"This had never been done here before, so it was setting a new precedent, and there were those who reacted to that," said Pastor Stan Weatherford.
"All we wanted to do in the eyes of God was to be man and wife in a church where we thought we felt loved,” said Charles Wilson.
Pastor Weatherford presided over the couple’s wedding at a nearby church. He says he wanted to avoid controversy and protect the couple.
(Excerpt) Read more at wjla.com ...
>>And the problem with this is?
Absolutely nothing. If someone does something or believes something that is different from your values, you should violently attack them, destroy them, and even kill them. That’s the way we do things in the New Progressive America.
“Absolutely nothing. If someone does something or believes something that is different from your values, you should violently attack them, destroy them, and even kill them. That’s the way we do things in the New Progressive America.”
Seems to me that has always been true, not just recently.
yes and no. Marriage is a Sacramental union between a man and a woman with God in the midst. A setting in this denomination’s building is not necessary so what the pastor did was good.
Fully agree!
forget about being racist — it’s not Christian. If both are members of this denomination, they have the right to get married there. I’m Catholic and I’ve seen tons of mixed-race or blacks or far-easterners or whites or south-asians etc. get married in the parishes I’ve been to — and they are equal before God.
you mean that this was the will of the congregation in that Baptist place?
Uh oh - this is the kind of thing the msm and libs, et al have been longing for.
NY Daily News reports that it was “a minority” of members who spoke out and forced the pastor to forbid the Wilsons to marry there by threatening to fire him. (Sounds familiar.)
surprisingly -- I disagree with you on this. A stereotype is about a group of individuals that may or may not be true. Most southerners (and all that I've met) would be disgusted by this congregation's actions. No one should castigate all southerners or all whites or all Americans for the actions of these folks
On reading your post and re-reading my own, I realize I said the wrong thing. Instead of saying "some stereotypes are true" what I should have said is sometimes some stereotypes are true.
perhaps. I wonder what was the truth behind this story. It seems too outrageous to be true — perhaps there is something we’re not being told about here
Cronos, I'd very much like to believe there's more to this story. But . . . I was born, grew up, and live down here (the Upper South in my case), and as much as it pains me to admit it, I would not be one bit surprised if this weren't true exactly as it's written. There are some people to whom "race mixing" is the supreme societal taboo, and though their numbers may have diminished somewhat they have not disappeared, and probably never will. Those who said this attitude would die with the older generation, I'm afraid, were wrong. I don't get it; I don't understand it; I don't know where it comes from. It certainly doesn't come from the Bible (much as liberals may like to believe that to be so). It's just an (apparently) ineradicable aspect of American culture. The only reason it doesn't upset me like it used to whenever I hear such prejudices from someone is that I'm older now and I understand that some problems will never be solved (short of the Redemption, may it come soon).
I despise the "official" Black leadership, and my feelings toward the great mass of grassroots Blacks who follow them, I'm afraid, isn't very charitable. But however much I may scream about it, I'm honest enough to admit that once upon a time American Blacks were nothing but rednecks with a tan, and the hatred of their "co-religionists," "fellow countrymen," and "fellow Southerners" was unleashed upon them to such an extent that they will never forget and very probably never forgive. They'll certainly never trust us again.
An entire population of native-born (been here since 1619), Southern English speaking Protestants (who were originally Republican) have become a hostile alien force wishing our destruction in great part due to this traditional, yet absolutely groundless, hatred.
You reap what you sow. I'm convinced that we're being punished, and most justly.
That doesn't, of course, change the fact that one day the same G-d will punish Blacks just as long and just as hard for their sellout to radical leftism.
The Rev. Stan Weatherford is a gutless coward if he allowed the membership to force his hand here. He should have told off the members who complained to him in the first place and placed the right choice over the whims of a few peckerwoods.
I don,t know that this pastor is paid by the church or not but if he is he is a servant of the people who pays him and not the servant of god.
There Many kinds of church assemblies calling themselves "Baptists," with all kinds of organizational rules, doctrines, constitutions, etc. that set them apart from each other. There is only one single thing upon which they all agree, which is that water baptism is by immersion of the whole person.
However, there are some other characteristics upon which most assemblies are in agreement. These are known as Baptist "distinctives," each of which can be represented by the letters B, A, P, T, I, S, T.
Of these, you will find that one T represents "Two Offices"; that is, church polity is that one person is the Elder. He (Scripturally only a man) is also the Bishop, and is also titled "Pastor."
The other office is "Deacon," and there may be as many deacons as needed and as defined by the church constitution.
So, in most cases, your statement is not quite right. In a Baptist church, the pastor (shepherd) is considered to be both the ruling elder and the teaching elder, as well as the spiritual elder.
Deacons usually tend to the finances, support of needy members, the physical plant, and visitation.
Generally, upon vacancy of the pastor/relder/bishop's office, the calling of a pastor is determined by the vote of the congregation. Once elected by the congregation, the pastor assumes total (and usually unquestioned) responsibility for the church and its conduct. Scripturally, the pastor does not serve at the will of the deacon. Rather, the deacons serve at the rule and direction of the pastor. This is not always the case, but is generally true.
Another distinctive worthy of note here is represented by the letter "A" -- a Baptist church is Autonomous -- its next higher authority is The Lord Jesus Christ Himself. While some Baptist churches may form an association of like-minded congregations, for the benefit of sharing resources and missionary efforts. But no church governs another church, and there is no overarching parachurch organization that rules over the autonomous local churches.
This paradigm of church conduct is generally not well understood by those whose only experience is with denominational ecclesiastic structure, and thus they form opinions of how Baptists operate, by incorrectly applying the model of their own organizational principles to the Baptists, whose doctrines and methods are individualistic and different.
To fairly figure out why the First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs denied this couple's request, and comment on it, one needs a lot more information than given by the reporter in the news article.
With all due respect, you did not say the same thing I said. You used less words to give an incorrect description of Baptist church polity. You said:
Most Baptist don’t have Elders, have Deacons. The pastor is still in charge.
Baptists do have Elders, and each church that has a Pastor has one, and "Elder" is his office in the church.
While I wrote in some detail, it was not to offend your intelligence. I was writing mostly for others, whom you also intended to inform or correct, and they will have otherwise come away with a wrong impression. Perhaps you also knew all this, but you did not indicate so.
With a respectful and felicitous spirit --
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