Southern Baptists Are Destroying Virginia
Next year Virginia will celebrate the 400th anniversary of having the first permanent English settlement in America. We essentially had a head start on the other 50 states, but how is it that over time we have lost that lead - and failed to participate in the technological and cultural growth of the nation?
Was it our early dependence on tobacco and slavery? We did have almost a monopoly on one of the world’s richest estuaries. Was it for a lack of leadership? We did produce Washington, and Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Patrick Henry.
No, in my mind it was a pervasive and insidious conservatism, that while masquerading as pious Protestantism, was in its underbelly a hypocritical and soul sucking cultural norm. It was a counter to progress and innovation, it was unrewarding of creativity, and many of Virginia’s best and brightest left for more open-minded geography. And those individuals and industries that looked for new geography – would overlook the bland and uninviting Virginia landscape.
Protestants, more precisely Baptists, even more precisely Southern Baptists, in recent years have assumed a growing political power and a blatant disrespect for the bright line between religion and state. And their church leaders are working actively to push, for the first time in our state’s history, a constitutional amendment to our Bill of Rights, to inscribe discrimination into this most fundamental of documents.
This effort is based in ignorance, homophobia, political chicanery, and the insistence that the religious values of some be imposed on all.
One would wonder, after so many decades of attending Baptist Sunday School, that these Baptists would fail to learn even the most basic of Christian values. And perhaps that is why they never graduate – to practice the values of unconditional and non-judgmental love in the communities in which they live.
Other Christians have different interpretations of the Bible – and a growing number see that loving, committed, monogamous gay relationships can, in 2006, be accepted and included fully into the life of the Christian family, community, and church.
Perhaps someone should explain to Southern Baptists that an inerrant reading of scripture would imply that God never gave us a mind – and the ability we have to read scripture in context with our reason.
Was it our early dependence on tobacco and slavery? We did have almost a monopoly on one of the world’s richest estuaries. Was it for a lack of leadership? We did produce Washington, and Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Patrick Henry.
No, in my mind it was a pervasive and insidious conservatism, that while masquerading as pious Protestantism, was in its underbelly a hypocritical and soul sucking cultural norm. It was a counter to progress and innovation, it was unrewarding of creativity, and many of Virginia’s best and brightest left for more open-minded geography. And those individuals and industries that looked for new geography – would overlook the bland and uninviting Virginia landscape.
Protestants, more precisely Baptists, even more precisely Southern Baptists, in recent years have assumed a growing political power and a blatant disrespect for the bright line between religion and state. And their church leaders are working actively to push, for the first time in our state’s history, a constitutional amendment to our Bill of Rights, to inscribe discrimination into this most fundamental of documents.
This effort is based in ignorance, homophobia, political chicanery, and the insistence that the religious values of some be imposed on all.
One would wonder, after so many decades of attending Baptist Sunday School, that these Baptists would fail to learn even the most basic of Christian values. And perhaps that is why they never graduate – to practice the values of unconditional and non-judgmental love in the communities in which they live.
Other Christians have different interpretations of the Bible – and a growing number see that loving, committed, monogamous gay relationships can, in 2006, be accepted and included fully into the life of the Christian family, community, and church.
Perhaps someone should explain to Southern Baptists that an inerrant reading of scripture would imply that God never gave us a mind – and the ability we have to read scripture in context with our reason.
Comments
First, I am against this amendment. Someone the other day had a good quote up on RVABlogs from a conservative judge explaining the importance of legislating things like this. Not sticking them in our Constitution.
Anyway, do you have any proof/anecdotal stories for companies or people leaving Virginia because of the perceived "strict moral guidelines" we have here? We were talking about this on my website the other day and someone suggested a similar thing but no one knew any specific instances. Thoughts?