What is wrong with this picture?
This has been taken from another blog, which picked it up from a site which has since taken it down.
This Southern Baptist church in Kentucky has taken things to the point where…
Yes. That is Jesus Christ on the cross, looking superimposed on the US flag because of the screen placement.
You can read about this at Bartholemew’s notes on religion and follow it back to the blog posting the original thread.
I have never heard of a church being used as a recruitment centre.
Sign ‘em up to shoot them one night, sign them up to evangelize the next.
It is so schizophrenic and sick…
This is how Southern Baptists honour the military? Honour Jesus Christ?
This church is in Kentucky. Is this condoned and sanctioned by church leadership?
Does this church have any, and I mean any idea of how this looks to the rest of the world? And to other believers?
The site Bartholomew found this is here.
Can my US friends comment on this?
Update: The Church site is back up. It says they are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Does that mean the Kentucky SBC is an overseer?
Published 3 years, 8 months ago
Search
Subscribe 
You are currently browsing the Bene Diction Blogs On weblog archives.
Related Entries
For blog design, Wordpress or MovableType coding or blog consulting, see cre8d design.
My guess is, nothing was meant by it whatsoever. Again, that’s only a guess. The alternative is a cold thought to ponder.
Shades of “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!”
Precisely Ian.
The world is not at war.
The US is, and since when did churches hold services like this where religion is obviously the recruiting tool?
The church site is down, I’d like to believe it is because state leadership has their allegiences in perspective, but I’m not optimistic.
I saw that on Relapsed Catholic and I thought it was weird and disturbing. (And, as you know, I love my country and respect the military.) I seriously doubt if anything like this is officially sanctioned by the military…it probably involves some people acting on their own — handing out pamplets and stuff. If they are still active duty, they may get in trouble if this gets seen by the wrong (or actually right) people.
If you have time read the whole thing. The first blogger has a condensed and longer version for different bandwidths.
I don’t know how humvees, helicopters and active duty personnel are okay.
Susan, you are working with the military. Is this legal? Are churches allowed to do this?
I’m trying to get the facts and understand.
I really want to know if my US friends see this as I or relapsed catholic etc., see it.
If this is a hoax, I’ll post that loud and clear. Meantime I’ll dig.
I may be telling you something you already know. (I wasn’t clear from your post whether you knew this or not.) The Southern Baptist Convention is a loose association of churches. Each individual church is a stand alone entity, so there really aren’t leaders to reprimand a church, and no church would be obligated to listen if there were. So individual Southern Baptist churches will vary widely.
I don’t know how common something like this would be. My guess is that it wouldn’t be all that common, but that it wouldn’t be unheard of, either.
I absolutely do not understand how this can be condoned by any church leadership.
I can’t believe this would be considered even remotely okay or common.
I’m writing the SBC in Kentucky and asking.
Are you saying this is an independent Baptist church that is accountable to no one?
Rebecca, reading the full posts, what do you think?
Bene,
I did read the whole thing last night.
Susan, you are working with the military. Is this legal? Are churches allowed to do this?
While I do work for the Navy, at my current command I only work with civilians. I used to work at a mostly military command. I can’t say for sure, but I think something like this would be frowned upon. I think it would be considered improper. That’s why I think this is some folks acting on their own.
I also concur with what Rebecca said…it seems like something this church did on it’s own, not something endorsed by the SBC.
Nevertheless, things like this are…not helpful.
Thanks Susan.
I’ve written the church to ask. If I don’t get a response I’ll write the main Kentucky SBC site.
I know you love your country, and I know you support your military. I know you love Jesus Christ.
We honour our military in a church service, but that is secondary to loyalty to God.
‘Not helpful’ is a prudent choice of words.
I do hope this isn’t as it seems and is an isolated and independent event.:^(
You’re welcome, Bene.
*We honour our military in a church service, but that is secondary to loyalty to God.*
Absolutely, which is why the whole thing rubbed me the wrong way. It seems like a form of idolatry.
“Are you saying this is an independent Baptist church that is accountable to no one?”
Yes, each Southern Baptist church is independent. At least, that’s what I think I know about them. I suppose I’ll find out when you get your answer from them.
“Rebecca, reading the full posts, what do you think?”
I’m against even having a country’s flag in the sanctuary….
That should tell you what I think of that particular spectacle.
I’ll be quite surprised if I get a response to be honest.
I wrote the church first, I think that’s reasonable.
I don’t know what to think about it, but this differs little from churches holding election rallies for only *one* party.
You can say I’m used to it!
Since I’m more of a pacifist by nature, I find it highly disturbing. It means that the church supports the cause of one party - whether some believers agree or not … I don’t know what to say except that some belivers may feel pressurised to walk the line and support the war because Jesus is thrown in the mix.
I grew up Southern Baptist and was educated in a fine seminary, run by the Southern Baptist Convention. I left them about a decade ago. All the wonderful professors were fired and the seminaries have gone in the toilet.
Historically, Baptists have been passionate supporters of the idea of separation of church and state. We come from a persecuted people, so the idea of using the state to push a religious agenda is anathema to us.
To have a baptist church so closely wed itself to a political entity, be it democrat, republican, or any particular country, is an unthinkable evil to traditional and historic baptists.
About 25 years ago, Southern Baptists were taken over by a group we might label as “the religious right.” Jerry Falwell, long a harsh critic of Southern Baptists, is now a Southern Baptist himself. Here is a direct quote from Jerry Falwell at a recent event CELEBRATING THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE TAKEOVER. (yes, the celebrated it!)
“I wasn’t there when you guys hijacked it, but I came on board soon after.”
Read it and weep. But then realize that we can’t be responsible for perversions of our faith. I had to move on. They are no longer my people.
Having lived through the takeover, the scene pictured here is particularly painful and horrific to me. The people in the church are probably fairly innocent and ignorant. Many Southern Baptist leaders like their people to be kept ignorant nowadays.
And yes, Baptist churches are completely autonomous. There is no action that a higher ecclesial authority can take because there is no higher authority for Baptists than the local church. The local association or state convention could toss them out of fellowship, but that doesn’t mean anything.
Christianity is a beautiful and sacred spiritual path of grace and renewal. Because it is a goodness, the ugliness that comes from its perversion is particularly ugly, is it not?
peace,
Just a thought. Instead of outrage, we should practice grace. I think we should pray for this church and even individual Christians that in their hearts and in their lives, they hear Jesus’ words: the greatest commandment of all is to love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And the second is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.
You have a point Andy, but there has to be a place for outrage too, doesn’t there?
Things like this pose Christians a challenge, both in terms of the proper relationship between church and state and the accountability that Christians have to one another. Church governance, in other words. Churches with a congregational polity, like those which belong to the SBC, need to find ways of listening to others. Congregational autonomy shouldn’t mean that there is no accountability at all.
(And those of us who belong to episcopal or connexional churches shouldn’t be smug. We’ve got problems of our own!)
Patriotic expression in the context of worship is grossly inappropriate. The church is so much bigger and more important than a nation.
I think people just get their passions mixed up. They can’t see past their own little world. Not an excuse, just a reason.
Blog on.
I have long despaired having flags in a sanctuary; they align, however subtly, national interests/will with God’s Kingdom, the latter being suborinate to the former. No doubt this is a service (not worship even if it was held during a scheduled worship time) honoring U.S. military. But to have military personal standing in front of a picture of the crucified Christ conveys the near-blasphemous message that a soldiers’ death on the battlefield is on par with Jesus’ “ultiamte” sacrafice. Indeed, and should any pastor attempt to remove national colors from the worship space, he or she would be denounced as unchristian and unpatriotic, and summarily run out on a rail.
Andy:
That is precisely why I have asked my friends from the US to comment. As a Canadian I don’t want to go off half-cocked here.
Frequently in different parts of the world were there is conflict people take sanctuary in a church.
n] area around the altar of a church for the clergy and choir; often enclosed by a lattice or railing
[n] a shelter from danger or hardship
[n] a consecrated place where sacred objects are kept
And frequently they are killed anyway. That does not lessen the meaning or importance of sanctuary or the outrage of their deaths. Some priests, nuns and ministers lay down their lives providing that sanctuary.
The comments at the original blog vary from political scorn, to condemnation, to approval and what’s the big deal, to indifference and fevered patriotism.
My request for information from this church is polite. The comments indicate this event took place as the original observer says. Yes, we can pray for the church leadership and the church community and act always in love.
If we are desensitized to this kind of gathering condoned and occurring in churches anywhere in the world in the name of Jesus Christ, then God have mercy on us.
I’ll count myself as one of your friends in the U.S. And someone who is not only deeply uncomfortable with the mixture of patriotism and religion, but lots closer to it in Ohio than you good folks in Canada. Here in Franklin County, where Columbus is located, we are in the absolute dead-center of the so-called “Culture Wars” of the U.S. Franklin went for Kerry in the 2004 election by a verry narrow margin; the first county victory for a Democratic candidate ever. Blue county, red state, red country. Or, as Mr. Obama says, “it’s really a purple country.”
All of this being apropos to this post because you’ll find lots of folks in the US for whom a picture of Jesus on the cross superimposed on a flag and used in conjunction with military recruiting and sloganeering is, essentially, blasphemy. Inappropriate doesn’t even begin to do the scenes and descriptions of the evening’s events justice. The idea that God supports war… any war… is fantastically anti-scriptural. I’m not sure what part of “pray for your enemies” translates into gutting them with a bayonet, but I haven’t been able to stretch my interpretation of scripture quite that far.
It is, obviously, a complicated issue. Are there times when force needs to be used to rescue innocent people from oppressors? The political, rational humanist side of my brain steps up and answers, “Hell, yes!” And if you follow that path to its logical conclusion, you end up at a place where religious support of a war you believe to be just isn’t such a bad idea.
The problem is, for us Christians, that Jesus never said it was OK. He was the ultimate example of an innocent who was oppressed. Should someone have rescued Him from the cross?
Many will say that we simply can’t build national, political policy based on the example of Christ. Well, first of all, it’s never been tried. Mercy as foreign policy… it appeals to me. I think it might work. But if it is the case that we simply can not comingle our faith with our political system, then we should separate them completely, and, therefore, get the soldiers out of the church.
You have a choice; either Christ is in charge of your politics and your world, or he isn’t. You can’t put Him on a screen and sing patriotic songs and pray for him to protect your kids when they’re at war, and not pray for Him to protect the enemey’s kids, too. So either step up to the plate and have a Christ-centered foreign policy that acknowledges Him as Prince of Peace — not Prince of Pain — or get Him out of the Church and stop confusing the Son with Uncle Sam.