Which part bothers you the most?
By now many of you have certainly head about the Reverend Chan Chandler who reportedly told his small congregation at East Waynesville Baptist church that if they voted for Kerry they needed to leave the church. Now Rev. Chandler has resigned from the church and has, expectedly, a slightly different take on what actually happened.Yahoo! news story here--
Did you read the whole thing? Please do. There are so many parts of this that make me upset, but I am curious what part is the most upsetting.
I'm troubled by what Chandler supposedly said for sure and I'm bothered that this situation in a church got to the point where people felt the only action left was to leave. But here is the one line that really did it for me:
"I'm not going to serve with the ungodly," an angry Misty Turner declared.
Did you catch it? The whole debate and issue was supposed to be about the politics of certain candidates, but now according to Ms. Turner, those people who didn't want to be kicked out of the church for voting for John Kerry are "the ungodly". Are we now a nation of the two party system of the Godly Elephants and Ungodly Donkeys? What about the millions of people of faith who voted for Kerry and do tend to vote Democrat? Should they be countering now by claiming that the other side is actually the "ungodly"?
And most of all, shouldn't the leaders of these parties and bodies of believers step up and say something about the proper tone and respect and dignity that we should show each other and the magnitude and proper place to use terms like "ungodly"?
posted by gurufrisbee @ 1:59 PM
