Rev. Mike alerted me to this church website with a rather unusual header. It’s been picked up by DashHouse and Jordon Cooper as well.
It’s a United Church of Christ in Pennsylvania. Hey, they can put any header on their website they want to. I suspect they have to use the good graces of church members and volunteers etc. to even have a web presence.
What I found funny is the bible verse they’ve used. Also what I unfortunately found funny is the way their URL reads, which almost looks intentional.
Unfortunately, my first thought was this is a parody site, which is patently unfair to the good folk at St. James if this is indeed their web presence.
A few commenters are making fun of what they are calling ‘biblical illiteracy.’
I think writing the church and asking them why they chose that verse might be more reasonable than laughing or derision.Â
It took awhile to find an email contact, but I’ll give it a shot.:^)
Update: connexions has a good post up - Between Two Worlds readers could have checked to see what the circumstances were for St. James before hitting send under a post labelled biblical illiteracy.Â
Looks to me like the hacker was biblically literate enough to spark the chatter, eh?
Rev. Chuck Currie is doing damage control on a few blogs  - according to information he has received, the church website was hacked and St. James will be put up a statement on the damage later today.
Update: Rev. James Roth of St. James Church in Pennsylvannia took the time to respond to my email and I commend him for his grace.
The church moved quickly to deal with a website hack, and I apologize to the congregation of St. James for publically laughing at their embarrassment in this post.
Oh my…
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The problem is solved.
Looks like an innocent mistake on the part of a web designer. Churches often use volunteers for this kind of work, of course, and sometimes things don’t work out well.
So it has. Thanks Rev. Currie.;^)
I understand that the church will be offering a statement soon on their website explaining that someone hacked into their system and put up that piece of scripture.
I’m sorry the St. James page was hacked, and I apologize for laughing. May God be with them. I hope someone with top notch web and server skills can step forward and give them a hand so their webpage isn’t harmed again.
Thanks for taking time to help us understand what happened.
I don’t know if you have to be biblically literate to spark a firestorm. One way or another, either someone was being mischevious or biblically illliterate. Those are the only two options I can come up with.
Nevertheless, it’s good to see the mistake corrected, and to see that there seems to be more to the story.
I got a response to my query from Rev. James Roth who is with St. James church in Limerick a few minutes ago. I forgot the east coast was dealing with a blizzard.
He has shown a heck of a lot more grace and patience about this hack and the firestorm than most of us deserve.:^(
Has anyone informed the church about another hacked page under the Workshops link? Apparently they are running a yoga and reiki healing workshop. Surely not?
I don’t know Cleopas – did you look at their site meter? This is a church in Limerick Penn that got hit with a blog swarm because of a hack.
If you are surely concerned, all I can suggest you do is extend the staff the courtesy of notifying them.
Clarification time:
1. There was no hack of the site. (I’d love to know where this rumor originated from.)
2. This was not a publicity stunt.
3. The quote used was from a Biblical quotation search engine and was taken out of context.
4. The webmaster (me) should have checked the full text of the quote before publishing.
5. AS SOON as we were told about the mistake we corrected it immediately.
This was nothing more than the case of a quote of text that was unfortunately missed in it’s full context by everyone who visited the site until recently.
As for the yoga and reiki workshops…those are real (old events but real). If you want to know more about how they fit into the church I suggest you contact the pastor.
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Hi Art:
Thank you for your comment, it looks like you’ve had a very busy day. Your clarification is appreciated, I trust your concerns have been answered to your satisfaction.
There is a chronology of communication to BDBO in a post above.
I have been spectacularly unsuccessful in communicating with US churches, I appreciate Rev. Roth and yourself getting back to me, your promptness and your honesty. That is a first. I think it will be the last – from now on I think it wise to stay away from church websites and US churches – it’s really not worth it.
I was not impressed with some of the chatter and conclusions I saw on blogs and I played blog police. That was really stupid of me, my intent is irrelevent to the circumstances you have found yourself in.
The communication in the post above is in order, the links as I found them in order, help yourself.