Baptist Convention faces make or break issues
cial penalties. Precedents involving Roman Catholic churches and Boy Scots of America have witnessed bankruptcy procedures. May I remind our readers that in these cases, where millions of dollars are involved, the attorneys take one third of the money plus expenses.
As we speak, the Boy Scouts of America have folded and walked into the twilight zone. The devil and the attorneys are laughing their way into their bank vaults.
If I were to mention that within the church, there are some irredeemable Dalilah’s and Jezebels who are known to have seduced Godly messengers (as the Baptists saints are called) and then turned turncoat and threatened all manner of sanctions if some blackmail was not carried out, women’s liberation fighters would run me out of town.
The devil wants to hold the congregation liable for paying compensation to the victim. A church with 100 worshippers can be saddled with a liability of $1 million in compensation fees.
Already the devil is breathing fire and brimstone. He is accusing the messengers of not being forthcoming with cases of abuse. The reputation of the churches involved, the ruinous fees to be paid, 40 years after the foul deeds were allegedly committed, does not concern the devil.
Oh, I forgot one more item. The devil has cleverly weaved into the story of sexual abuse, a clause that the victim must be believed. President Joseph Biden was a champion of such a clause, until just before his inauguration, a woman who once worked for him claimed pain and suffering. Biden retorted that he never touched the woman’s breasts.
Digging up the race issue Whether out of stupidity or mere ignorance, Baylor University Seminary commissioned a study of slavery at its campus in Texas. Please reader, we plead with you not to laugh. The great missionary father, the Reverend Dr RC Buckner, whose name is imprinted in the Buckner International Mission for Child and Elderly Care came to Paris City in Texas to scout for a college of theology. Carrying his bags was a slave.
Judge R E B Baylor, after whom the leading Baptist University was named, was a wicked slave trader and holder. These facts are not new. In 1845, the Southern Baptists wanted to send missionaries to Africa, to save benighted souls there, an issue which caused their expulsion from the General Convention. The Convention ruled that a missionary cannot save a benighted soul by enslaving that person for his own personal wealth.
Baylor has set aside a US$5 million fund to attract young black seminarians. I hope Zimbabwean Baptists associated with Sanyati Mission can apply for these scholarships.
Michael Chancellor, a Baptist pastor, after reading the gory details mentioned above, wrote that: “Sadly, I have struggled with the growing realisation that Southern Baptist Convention churches have not yet participated in a significant reckoning related to slavery and race.”
As I write, the Baptist messengers await a report on Critical Race Theory. CRT by Kimberle Cranshaw and other black thinkers say that whites in the US cannot be redeemed as racism is in their DNA. As far as I know, mainstream black Christians, who have suffered under grace, require only one condition, that white folks start treating blacks as brothers and sisters (Dr. Martin L. King).
Chancellor is totally dismayed. “Our whole denominational history is mired in human trafficking,” he concludes.
How the Baptist messengers will weather the storm in two weeks’ time, I have no idea.
Among his many roles, Professor Ken Mufuka holds the title of lay servant of the Methodist Church and has chaired the South Carolina United Methodist Conference Commission on Equitable Compensation (Pastor Standards). He begins a lecture tour in Kenya and will be in Zimbabwe July 1-30. Contact information: 77694 167