This is bad – as in damning for leadership of the SBC Jacksonville Church. Not only did the leadership in Jacksonville SBC Baptist Church go after the watch-blogger identify (filing papers using the term criminal incident, asking for information such as names, social insurance numbers etc) they went after two other SBC blogs.
Neither one is involved with the Jackson church., one isn’t even in Florida, she signs her name and is trying to get her sexual abuser and SBC leader who has abused others behind bars. Wade Burleson:
“Local Jacksonville law enforcement officers, former Florida circuit court judges, and other members of FBC, all friends of the pastor, seemed to have used secular Florida authorities to unethically and possibly illegally obtain subpoenas to reveal the identity and other private information of the owners of the FBC Jacksonville Watchdog and New BBC Open Forum and Tiffany Croft’s blogs.”
This is leadership out of control and behavior goes to perversion of power that any one of us would find staggering, especially if we were at the receiving end.
A reporter who is attempting to write this story up received a suggestion by someone in The Jacksonville Police department that “the subpoenas were issued because there may be some kind of ongoing federal investigation into these blogs.” Wow.
The subpoenas are online, the comments smart and salient. As this story continues to take serious turns the mockers and scoffers of the watchblog are falling silent.
If any church member blogs about this blog, these events or the church, they are in trouble with leadership after their ‘whereas’ declaration and if these men are not stopped, could expect the same crushing treatment.
They could face the same misappropriation of power. The heavy handedness, collusion and seriousness of the steps this church has taken is sobering up scoffing Baptists.
It should sober all of us.
This pastor is now on record calling the blogger a “sociopath” in mainstream media. And yet his supporters heap scorn on the blogger for blogging anonymously, rather on the questionable dealings of the church leadership.