Ten years ago, my friend Amy Butler was the pastor of the
Baptist church down the street from my home.
In DC, the Baptist brand has been dinked pretty badly by its association
with right wing American politics, so Amy's church adopted a tagline: A Different
Kind of Baptist. A decade later, a lot
of United Methodists are sensing a need for such a tagline to distance their
congregations from an unending food-right over human sexuality as our
denominational nightmare unfolds in slow-mo.
Then, last week, two and one half pages (not column inches, but full
pages) of USA Today were devoted to the total breakdown of the Roman Catholic
Church in Guam in protecting pedophile priests, reminding us of the similar
sagas that have been unearthed in all corners of America in the Catholic
Church. And now, post Charlottesville,
we are left with two bastions of support within President Trump's political
base, who will not budge even after unending moral failures of the current
administration: the two groups being neo-Nazis and evangelical Christian
pastors. One of the latter (a
not-so-different kind of Baptist?) let us all know last week that it is
perfectly and divinely justified to rain down nuclear bombs on North Korea.
