Imagine the reaction
The Layman Online, September 21, 1999
Imagine the reaction if a man with a gun walked into a Jewish gathering and started shooting. Imagine the reaction if buildings owned and frequented by blacks caught fire under questionable circumstances. Imagine the reaction if a young man were beaten and left to die because he was gay.
Now imagine the reaction if a man with a gun were to walk into a church and kill teens who were praying in the sanctuary. Imagine the reaction if two students stalked a high school, executing classmates who confessed their faith in God. Imagine the reaction if another high school student opened fire on students leaving a classroom prayer meeting.
Obviously, little imagination is required for the first three incidents. When Matthew Shepard died, mainline Christians rose up to denounce his killing as resulting from the organized hatred of gays. When black churches burned, the National Council of Churches deemed even flaws in electrical wiring the result of a nationwide racist conspiracy. When shots were fired in a Jewish community center in Los Angeles, a hatred of Jews, an attitude allegedly nourished by Christian anti-Semitism, was quickly identified as the culprit.
Common factors
But what about the killings of Christian high school students in Paducah, Denver, and, most recently, on September 15 in Fort Worth? According to one news report, the shooter at the Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth entered the building “shouting derogatory comments about the Baptist faith.” Yet the United States Attorney General is reluctant to classify the shootings as a “hate crime.”
According to the Associated Press, Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches (NCC), said after the Fort Worth shootings, “The common factor in each of these incidents is semi-automatic weapons.” The NCC reaped a windfall profit by leveraging a handful of fires into a nationwide pandemic of racial hatred and setting up a fund that aided both the churches and its own beleaguered coffers. Yet the commonality of teenage Christians at prayer seemed to escape its chief executive.
Moreover, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has been strangely silent. Yes, a nearby Presbyterian pastor provided pastoral care, and Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick quickly conveyed denominational condolences. But the rest of Presbyterian officialdom, usually so eager to ascend public podiums to condemn hate-based activities, has shown remarkable restraint concerning the shootings of Christians in Paducah, Denver and the city that hosted its General Assembly a few months ago.
I’ve been trying to imagine why there have been no expressions of outrage.
Imagine a group of Christians
Imagine a group of Christians who declare that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God and that its moral teachings express God’s intentions for his people’s behavior. Imagine a group of Christians who, 150 years after their founding, issue a formal apology for supporting, condoning, or ignoring racism for much of its history. Imagine a group of Christians who act on their belief that it is not simply appropriate but imperative to proclaim the good news of the gospel to all races and religions, even to the Jews.
Again, it doesn’t take much imagination to realize that the group of Christians described above are Southern Baptists, who were also the victims of the September 15 killing spree.
And that, perhaps, explains the lack of perceptible outrage shown by the Attorney General, the NCC and the Presbyterian Church. After all, it’s not as if those who died in Fort Worth were killed because they were Jewish, black or gay.
They were just conservative Christians.