Posted on 05/08/2014 7:56:29 PM PDT by wonkowasright
A former youth pastor has been charged with sex crimes involving young men at an Arkansas church. ... Berkley, 34, was arrested at a cemetery in Covington, Tennessee, Monday afternoon after finishing a funeral service.
Police in Harrison say the investigation into the former pastor began March 28, while he was a pastor at Shiloh Baptist. They interviewed more than a dozen male victims—all between the ages of 14 and 18—through mid-April.
One victim said he went to Berkley’s house believing it was a Bible study. While there, he was allowed to drink and smoke marijuana and a hookah.
Several victims said the pastor used to walk around naked, and he had sexual contact with them on more than one occasion. ... An employee at Shiloh Baptist also reported that at least $4,400 is missing. ... Berkley was senior pastor at Victory Baptist Church in Henning, Tennessee, 2 1/2 years ago. He was reportedly asked to leave the church, but no one at the church has said why.
(Excerpt) Read more at charismanews.com ...
I’ll put my money on the majority of true Baptist churches (not the Westboro off shoots) being more biblical in their teachings and governance than any other denominations (Methodists, Catholic, ECLA etc...).
You have failed to post ANY corroborating evidence of your blanket condemnation of all Southern Baptist churches and all you can do is call me names? Don't imagine you will find your input is given much credence.
I see you think you are the Grand Inquisitor. I no longer try to educate the ignorant. If you just read what appears on FR you would know some of it. But, of course, you are full of opinions and, It appears, don’t read much. I doubt, for example, that you have attended many SBC Annual Meetings, or if you did, you weren’t paying attention, for example, when they shoved through a resolution supporting amnesty by holding the meeting in Phoenix and bullying the messengers from the podium to support it upon pain of being called racist. Richard Land, our very own member of the Council on Foreign Relations, has bleated loudly that it wasn’t “amnesty”, but his protestations are worth about what Boehner’s are on this subject.
You are supporting a Convention that is becoming CBF-lite as it inches toward embracing “diversity” (using recycled D party slogans), amnesty, etc.
You are what Lenin called a “useful idiot”. Page, Moore, Ranier, Stetzer, and the rest of the gang are counting on people like you.
By the way, yes I do criticize both Protestants and Catholics based on issues. What do you do? Have you just put on a jersey for a team and cheer it on?
My "jersey" is for the home team of Jesus Christ and I cheer on with the angels over every soul that comes to repentance and faith in Christ. No church ever saved anyone - it is faith alone in Christ alone by the grace of God alone to the glory of God alone. I am grateful that I learned the truth through a Southern Baptist church and that forty-five years later, they are still doctrinally straight. I don't doubt you have some personal beef with the SBC. No human institution is perfect nor do its members escape being wrong from time to time, but what irks me the most about your crass personal insults and blanket condemnation of all Southern Baptist churches is that you BEGAN your tirade based not upon the subject of this thread - child sex abuse within a non-Catholic Christian church - but the mistaken idea that the SBC has no process for screening out child abusers - though that was shown to NOT be the case. You claimed:
The SBC leadership is completely corrupt. Even Don Wildmon at the AFA is calling the SBC out for its surrender on cultural issues. So, even though this scandal doesn’t touch the SBC, the SBC is a scandal all by itself - it is covertly becoming nothing more than CBF-lite. So much for the “Conservative Resurgence”.
Perhaps you need some "education" of your own.
Your first paragraph confirms my first point. You have a reading comprehension problem that I’m not going to try to correct. I have consistently commented on the SBC leadership, not the churches. By the way, I said nothing about whether the SBC has or doesn’t have a process for screening employees in individuals churches. The fact is that they don’t have that responsibility and shouldn’t because the churches are independent. At the annual meetings there are, however, always vendors of background checking services trying to get the attention of pastors. That doesn’t make the SBC responsible for what happens in the individual churches, and it is just about as far as the Convention should go, other than exhorting member churches to exercise care. If you were familiar with the CBF, you would have understood what I was criticizing regarding movement in the wrong direction on cultural issues. And, no, I won’t give you a link to tell you what the CBF is.
As for remedying the rest of your ignorance by supplying you with links to information that you should already be aware of if you are going to have a responsible opinion on the subject, I’m not bothering. You aren’t alone, though, I don’t provide links to people who become indignant when I tell them that nobody is really paying SS taxes into a true trust fund. When someone lacks even a minimal knowledge base on a topic, the onus is on him to inform himself. You might learn something.
The CBF (Cooperative Baptist Fellowship), I'm sure has its own statement of faith and whether or not it agrees with the Southern Baptist Convention and affiliated SB churches, isn't really the point. You condemned the SBC, called it a scandal, and then gave NOTHING but your own opinions instead of cold hard facts to back it up (your onus, not mine). These "cultural issues" you seem to insist are going in the "wrong direction" also lack examples. If I were a betting woman, I'd say you are a know-it-all who delights in patronizing others instead of sharing knowledge - which IS why these forums exist. I'm not impressed.
I share knowledge, but I don’t teach kindergarten. I gave you some facts, which you ignore, but, as I said, I am not going to bother with someone who has belligerently held opinions and lacks even a modest grasp of the subject. Nevertheless, here is something you can look up. The SBC is NOT “made up” of Baptist churches across the country. If it were, it would be more like a denomination, which it isn’t. The SBC began as a cooperative program with a statement of faith that now has some additional programs. Being an “SBC church” involves little more than sending money to the cooperative program.
You evidently don’t even know what the CBF is. That means you have no clue about the Conservative Resurgence or who Paige Patterson, Paul Pressler, and others who have been central to SBC life are or what they did. Moreover, you probably don’t know who any of the new leaders I mentioned are....yet, you have opinions and expect others to educate you when you obviously haven’t taken the time to equip yourself with the basics. I’m not a “know it all”, but I am a “know something”, and I don’t opine unless I have done the work to be in that position.
Cute graphic ;-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.