« Response to APOLOGIA at Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis | Main | Some Notes to Clifton Healy at This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis »
May 08, 2005
Blogging Meets Journalism: My Interview with a Deacon at East Waynesville Baptist Church
As the Baptist church fuss explodes outward into the national psyche and international press, I decided to do what every good regional journalist should do. Call the church members.
I've interviewed one of the deacons who left East Waynesville Baptist Church last Monday night, 2 May 2005. The deacon's name is Lewis R. Inman. He and his wife, along with seven other longtime members, left the church on Monday night because of an attempt by Rev. Chan Chandler and 40 others to have eleven members kicked out of the church. Two of the members stayed behind and have attested to the same testimony of the nine who left.
It was clear to me, as I talked with Lewis and his wife Sue, that Chandler went off the deep end. He alienated members who did not share his political views, telling those who were planning to vote for Kerry or any Democrat that they would go to hell. In October 2004 Chandler started his six-sermon series on politics which went right into election week. Inman and his wife claim that all the messages on politics focused on Kerry and why he was an evil man. Chandler was threatened by those who asked him to stop the politicizing at church. In fact, the "eleven" told Chandler that they would have to report him to the IRS if he did not stop. The church is part of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Then again on 1 May 2005, Chandler preached two political messages (one at morning worship, the other at night) and called a deacon's meeting for Monday night but invited the entire congregation to be there.
"Monday night was a lynching," said Lewis Inman. "He [Chandler] had forty people with him, twelve adults and the rest teenagers, and said they were going to vote us eleven out. In other words, if you had voted for John Kerry for President, you were going to be voted out of the church. And he only needed a two-thirds majority to do it. I guess he thought that 40 against 11 would do it. So nine of us stood up and left before they could vote. And the two that stayed can talk with you too about what was said."
Btw, I plan on talking with those two also. For now I'm talking with another member who was not part of the eleven but is (quietly) in agreement with the eleven. A morning of police escorts and cameras and journalists everywhere has made this church the emblem of what's wrong with right-wingism in America. More to come at the Daily Bailout and Chattanooga Pulse. Stay tuned. This is where blogging meets journalism.
Posted by wjbailes at May 8, 2005 06:18 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://chattablogs.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/20839
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Blogging Meets Journalism: My Interview with a Deacon at East Waynesville Baptist Church:
Comments
John, great work! This mass-excommunication is a tragic but logical end to the kind of religious right pulpit politicism that characterizes the militantly exclusive climate of so many southern areas (including where I grew up). Glad someone like you is sinking your teeth into it.
Posted by: Tyler Grisham at May 8, 2005 06:52 PM
Good stuff, John. Did you happen to tape your interview? I'd like to have heard more of the source itself.
Posted by: joe at May 8, 2005 09:01 PM
I need a clarification, John:
Is "right-wingism" just flat-out wrong in and of itself, or is this situation simply hurting/reflecting badly on "right-wingism," with "right-wingism" being an otherwise OK thing?
Posted by: Bill at May 8, 2005 09:11 PM
Thanks for that question, Bill. Most people moderate to liberal read "right-wingism" as negative (connotatively).
Posted by: Bailes at May 9, 2005 02:27 AM
...what i thought you'd say. :)
Posted by: Bill at May 9, 2005 02:51 AM
But, you see, Joe, when you add emotion ON TOP of a statemtn like "most people," you don't NEED to have data for people to believe you. :)
Posted by: Bill at May 9, 2005 09:24 AM
Joe~the authoritarian bit makes sense although I do see more about right-wingism these days than I did, say, in the 1990s. But then Bush and the GOP are in power. So is the term employed more when a group sympathetic to the right or left is in power?
Bill~you're just a wit. Enough said.
Posted by: Bailes at May 9, 2005 07:52 PM