“Maybe we should learn about race from children” brought back memories of when we became part of a fully integrated Baptist congregation in Killeen in 1970. Replying to her mother’s question about how she liked her African-American Sunday school teacher, our 5-year-old daughter responded, “She has the prettiest hands.” Unfortunately, 15 years later, we were asked to leave our Baptist church in Alabama after my wife gave directions to the church to a black Army chaplain.
On a related issue, the only secular news item I read from the Southern Baptist Convention meeting concerned contempt expressed for those born with a different sexual orientation. Jesus didn’t have much to say about the issue. Maybe he was more concerned about things Christians might care about—oppression of the poor, the death penalty, obsession with guns, overcrowded prisons, access to health care for all, equal justice for all and hypocrisy among religious leaders.
Words have consequences as we saw during the South Carolina massacre. Will the words spoken in our households and churches have an effect on the bullying of children in schools who may have been born homosexual or have homosexual adoptive parents? Will people die because of our words? Will our words keep people from believing our Christian message? Will the action of the Supreme Court affect my marriage of 51-plus years to the same woman?
Other than serving as a political hot button during the 2016 presidential race, exactly how will the ruling affect the nation?
Carl Hess
Ozark, Ala.
Jesus wouldn’t pack heat?
Yes, Jesus, meek and mild, wouldn’t pack heat. He also wouldn’t drive with a whip the money changers from the temple, call people white-washed tombs, kill 2,000 swine that were a major economic provider in the area of Gadara, tell people to eat his flesh and drink his blood and make most disciples leave him, have a disciple who cut off a man’s ear, rebuke and kill a fig tree for not bearing fruit, tell rich people lots of luck getting into the kingdom and hang out with tax collectors, prostitutes and be making wine.
But there he is. Glad he is that kind of Savior.
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Wonder if the carpenter had an ax? A knife?
Please do not be simple-minded in bringing our Lord into a complex situation and use his name to defend an obviously preconceived position.
Earl Powell
Bedford
Moore wrong about Confederate flag
I would like to disagree with the notion Russell Moore espouses that the Confederate flag cannot coexist with the cross without one setting the other one on fire.
It seems like some have forgotten that the S in SBC stands for Southern. If they find that offensive, then by all means find yourself a church that is in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. The liberals and Southern haters are using the Confederate flag as a smoke screen to attack and destroy anything viewed as pro-Southern.
Most of the brave men that fought and died under that banner were poor God-fearing farmers, unlike the portrayals that the controlled Hollywood media types would have you to believe.
You are known by your enemies as well as your friends. If you ally yourself with the dark forces that seek to ethnically cleanse, then you are joining forces with a foe that holds in disdain everything that the SBC holds sacred.
Timothy V. Hatley
Chase City, Va.
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