The Imperfect Community

MedeaNJ

No, Joke!

http://newsobserver.com/news/ncwire_news/story/2378881p-8756854c.html

I think it was on CNN late last week, but I was only skimming the website. This article confirms it.

Now of course some churches might have a set of values it wants to profess and a pastor may or may not suggest sticking with a political candidate (w/o mentioning a candidate's name of course). The simple premise one would say is exercise your right to vote. To dictate to a parishioner on who to vote for not only is immoral but it is un-American! Evil or Very Mad

But this guy kicking out church members for not supporting Bush? I'm sorry but that crosses over the line of the separation of Church and State. I then heard on a talk station that the next Sunday the offending Pastor tried to take back what he said. Other articles, mostly from the AP, Pastor Chandler called the whole thing a 'great misunderstanding' and would welcome the members back. Right he was with the church for three years and he kicked out a deacon and other members that were there for as long as 42 years!

Supposedly there was a church member who is a lawyer, told him of the potential consequences of such a breach, namely the loss of their tax-exempt status. DISCLAIMER: This was on a talk radio station, so consider it heresay.

Anyone else ever come across pastors who 'cross the line' in cases like this?

Sewingsiren

Shameful and odd. There once was a time in the mountains of NC when you would have been run out of town on a rail for not being a Roosevelt Democrat Wink

. What has happened?
Also I have never heard of a person being EX-Communicated
from a Baptist Church. I thought when a person was ask to leave the (Baptist) church it was called being "churched". Its kind of funny that the newspaper is using the Roman Catholic terminology.

MedeaNJ

DietCokeHead · Queen of Imperfection Joined: 29 Apr 2002 Posts: 3805

At the church my mom goes to, the priest spent a lot of time telling them how to vote before elections this year. And that the important issues were abortion, stem cell research, and everything else that Catholics are supposed to be against. That would be enough to make me never go back to that particular church!!

Petulant Pixie

Yeah, I was going to say, Annie, that quite a few folks in the catholic church were trying to get people ex-communicated for not voting for Bush. They sent out pamphlets saying that it is a catholics duty to vote, and that you HAVE TO vote for the candidate that is against abortion and euthanaisa. There were bishops who were rallying not only to have "abortion supporting" political candidates ex-communicated, but those who voted for them as well. And some of the pamphlets sent out (NOT endorsed by the vatican) really came close to saying that not only if you voted for an "abortion supporting" cadidate you could be ex-communicated, but if you didn't vote for the candidate who opposed abortion, you could be ex-communicated. It was terrible!

Scout

In the Baptist church I grew up in, we excommunicated these two mebers for having an affair (they were both married to other members.) The preacher talked all about the process that a church is supposed to go through before doing this. It involves a lot of private, member-to-member, followed by pastor-to-member, counsel before it comes to a vote or is even brought to the church's attention, because the person is supposed to have a chance to change. "Churching" someone is slang, and is mostly used in black churches in my neck of the woods. And it can mean just embarrasing someone in front of the church, not necessarily kicking them out.

This guy is just so wrong and obviously didn't think about the whole tax exempt thing before he opened his big fat mealy mouth.

MedeaNJ

prescott

Yep, because churches are bastions of freethinkers... don't know why anyone is surprised by this news story...

MedeaNJ

And as we say in NJ, BOOYA!! He's outta here!
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/10/church.politics.ap/index.html