Think of it as Habitat for Humanity meets Freedom of Religion.

--morris meyer (morris@surfworks.com)

US-TX-6th 2004 Democratic Congressional Candidate

Get some backbone, and fight back. Organize, be vocal, get shrill!

i live in texas, a large baptist community.  it is time we all started speaking out against the hate being created.  after having heard cheney tell me i was part of other faith, and then going to my baptist private school and watching a 5th and 6th grade choir program of children preaching to me about going to hell, then coming home to read about nc church, broke my heart.

today i added my fourth bumpersticker to my car

our town is united against hate

and i proudly parked my car in the christian schools parking lot.  my 7 year old read the new bumpersticker and told me, no one here can have a problem with this sticker.  everyone has to agree with it.  that is what christians stand for.

i agree

WTVD, Durham - They've covered it on the web site here: http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/news/050605_APstate_churchpolitics.html
But it's all too brief.
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/aboutus/wtvd_abc11contacts.html
Assignment Desk - 1-800-672-9883
Raleigh newsroom: (919) 899-3600

If it can become a real news story in NC, maybe it can become more regional and bleed over into Virginia.  I see both as potential blue states within four years.  But that's aside from the point of getting the story out there.  

There are enough Democrats and moderates in NC to recognize how disgusting this is.  Then, if we can get some airtime out of this story, we need to find other similar stories from all over the country which indicate a pattern of religious intolerance which has been brought on by right-wing radio and hate speech.  (The same way they inspired at least 2 people to visit gun stores and go "rescue" Terri Schiavo, or kill her husband.)  They've played to simple minds and pitted faith against facts, and those are not mutually exclusive.

I personally wonder what inspired the good "Reverend" to make this move.  Who encouraged him?  Limbaugh?  Bill Frist?  Can we attach a visible public figure to the story and add even more media interest?

On Olberman a member of the church was saying that any new members would have to sign a loyalty oath to accept the Reverend's political views and follow them.  

as for freeing the churches, my father was a southern baptist preacher during the 60s down in south central NC, aka klan country.  not a friendly place for a pastor who openly preached the gospel of equality before god.  they didn't just run him out of church.  they burned a cross in his yard.  and peers of his stationed at churches across the southeast saw much worse.

its sad what happened there in waynesville, but take solace that it ain't nearly as bad as used to be.

back then the war, literally it turned out, in the churches (especially the SBC) was for control of the seminaries.  liberals in the SBC relinquished each and everyone of those seminaries by the early 80s.  we're now seeing the bitter fruits of our losses.

you want to free the church?  start by freeing the seminaries. how you go about that is a long question.  but i would imagine the first thing to do is to have a presence at the seminaries.  engage them with people who are willing to listen and to talk in a respectful manner.  have those troops come back and report what they heard.  retool.  and do again.

won't be easy.  but its never easy reversing course.  to get that accomplished, you gotta recruit, train, and send missionaries into the lion's den.  yep, i'm serious, evangelize the seminaries of the SBC with the good news of individual liberty.

How about holding a series of town hall meetings across the state. Every county and major municipality? Invite leaders of the local political parties; invite local constitutional experts; invite legal experts on the relationship between church and state and the non-profit, tax exempt status of churches; invite experts on the history (current and past) of religious involvement in politics and political involvement in churches; make it truly ecumenical and invite all local clergy.

Put it all out on the table and have this discussion from one end of the state to the other.

Have individual committee members write letters to editors TO LOCAL PAPERS.Flood the papers with mail. Formally protest - similar to what moveon.org just did at Courthouses around the country -only sign people up to read the Constitution out loud or from famous Supreme Court cases which upheld separation of church and state.

Get pictures and press releases into the news papers on events such as this immediately.

Control the debate about this: show how UnAmerican that pastor is.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/6/185426/3860

I've also posted it on my own diary
http://religiousleft.blogspot.com/

and a group diary I am part of
http://www.thevillagegate.org/

This one is just nuts. I hope you go after Mr. Chan Chandler with all you've got. The guy needs to lose his tax exempt status and be made a poster boy for what will happen to the American Taliban if they try to impose their brand of theocracy from their pulpits.

  By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 6, 2005

Filed at 8:02 p.m. ET

WAYNESVILLE, N.C. (AP) -- A pastor of a small Baptist church led an effort to kick out church members because they didn't support President Bush, members said.

and...

North Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Meek sharply criticized the pastor Friday, saying Chandler jeopardized his church's tax-free status by openly supporting a candidate for president.

''If these reports are true, this minister is not only acting extremely inappropriately by injecting partisan politics into a house of worship, but he is also potentially breaking the law,'' Meek said.

http://kevin22262.forclark.com/story/2005/5/6/195523/1589

Progressive Blue

I just posted the Olbermann Interview with the member of East Waynesville Baptist Church.  The video can be found here.

The original story can be found here.

The follow up to the story by WLOS can be found here.

Come on over and visit DEMBloggers

Evangelical pastors are a significant reason why we have problems in the South.  They control a lot of the votes down here.

In the South, evangelical pastors are notorious for sending hidden political messages in their sermons, like "vote for the candidate who is against abortion"  Technically, they are not breaking the law, but this is highly unethical.

A lot of Democrats must go out of their way to hide their political affiliation at their church.  The peer pressure within their church is intense.

In general, at polling places, fellow churchgoers who serve as election officials have been known to try to apply pressure on their fellow parishoners.  In the process, election laws have been broken.

Democratic pastors must aggressively hide their own political beliefs.

It is time to take on the churches for the immorality of these, and the many other similar offenses, publically and aggressively.  Their bullying has gone on long enough.

And I hope that the "ousted" churchgoers stand up and take this bastard on!  Show this pastor that he is NOT God!

Relentless media campaigns and public protests are a plus.  We must take on the disease of church intimidation, not just the symptoms.

This won't bring down the Republican Party, but this pastor seriously shot the GOP in the foot outside the Bible Belt. This reinforces the belief that the Republicans are in the thrall of the most fundamentalist and nutcase elements of Christianity in America.

And while this might play to rave reviews in many of the old Scot-Irish patches of Dixie...the rest of the US is mortified by this. Most Jews aren't worried about getting kicked out their temple...but other faiths in the US generally have leaders which are more conservative than their flock. (Perhaps LDS is the exception). So the NC Dems can start a campaign to recognize those churches that welcome people of both faiths and to give those pastors airtime...but our party should not overreach and attempt to make this OUR issue.

"Judge not that you may be Judged" covers many matters, but the idea sure is relevant here.

But another question needs to be asked....

Does Brother Bush accept votes when part of the price is to exclude folk from Jesus's message?

I think that question can be asked all over the country.  We need to force Brother Bush to denounce this sort of coercion.  

Either they sever ties with this minister and/or this congregation (which is clearly what they should do), or they can state publicly that, AS A MATTER OF DOCTRINE, the Baptist faith is Republican.

If they don't jettison this pastor pronto, it's a national story.

So that said, this is something which greatly angers me. It is awful that this minister made such a craven move to eliminate dissenting political thought, trumping the excommunication card for all the wrong reasons.

Now churches can still excommunicate individuals, it's just not practiced much anymore in American Protestant churches. This has more to do with the nature of American Protestantism. I imagine overseas you may see more of this practice, but it is a viable action churches can take. The rub is there has to be an honest-to-God reason for the practice, and I think one's political identity doesn't meet the bar (repeated unapologetic adultery by a church leader, perhaps, but this ... I don't think so).

My caution on this matter to Jerry Meek and others is that any furor surrounding this is something this minister probably desires. He probably craves the notion of his church being persecuted by 'the secular liberals.' Those who must speak out against this action are those who are Christian - Republican and Democrat. I have plenty of Republicans at my church who would be horrified at this situation (and I'll be sure to let them know). For a non-Christian - liberal or conservative - to begin decrying this action is merely playing into the hands of this minister. But a Christian front, from all parts of the political spectrum, is needed.

It's Paul rebuking Peter as the former did in the Book of Acts.

How much you wanna bet they did????

My feedback to you is here:
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/004328.php

Please take a minute to read it.

Thanks.

in other words, make this one of our "public examples".  republicans have lots of these, little anecdotes that 'prove' their point about trial lawyers, academic freedom, etc.  we need some too, because in this case, we're right.  the idea is just as much about publicizing what this church is doing, as it is about turning the event into a political gold mine which we can use in the future.  just imagine this conversation taking place, a year or two hence:

democrat: the thing about Senator Frist is, he's a hard-right figure who wants to force us all to worship the same religion.

republican waiting to be converted: what are you talking about?  that's crazy.

democrat: remember what happened with that church in north carolina a couple years ago?

rw2bc: hmm, good point...

that's the goal.