A Southern Baptist retreat center has told a United Church of Christ congregation they'll no longer be able to rent facilities at the center because the UCC "promotes homosexuality." United Church News has the story:
For the past 28 years, members of the UCC's United Church of Gainesville (Fla.) have gathered in great numbers for their annual spring retreat at the Lake Yale Baptist Assembly Ground.
"We had a wonderful retreat there on the last weekend in April this year," said the Rev. Sandy Reimer, co-pastor of Gainesville UCC. "Good programs, workshops, worship – we had 283 folks attend, which included 24 preschoolers up to adults in their 70s."
Then, during the first week of June, Reimer received a letter and a phone call from the Lake Yale Conference Center.
"Don Sawyer, the director of the conference center, called to tell me that we would no longer be welcome at Lake Yale for our retreats because we were 'promoting homosexuality.' "
"Their staff noticed several of our folks wearing ONA T-shirts," wrote Reimer in an early June email. "They told the director, then checked out our web site and confirmed that we were Open and Affirming."
Sawyer notified the governing board, whose policy states that any church or denomination that affirms gay people and/or gay marriage is not welcome on their property.
"We have been an Open and Affirming church for about two decades," Reimer said in the email. "We have about 750 members with a healthy mixture of gay and straight folks, families, children, elders, a real diversity of ages and lifestyles."
Click here for the full story.
It is a sad story, really. Early in the history of our nation Baptists faced discrimination and thus became early proponents of the separation of church and state. Tragically, Southern Baptists would later become intertwined with the institution of slavery and then with white supremacy. Southern Baptists would later help lead the charge against equal rights for women - all of this in the name of Holy Scripture. Today - just as they wrongly fought for slavery, against intergration and against equality for women in society and the church - they use the same theology to preach that gays and lesbians are of lesser worth by fighting agaist hate crimes laws, work place protections, and marriage equality. Again and again they are on the wrong side of history and pervert the Bible to terrible and unjust ends. Our churches should be welcoming of all of God's beloved creation - not ejecting those who might seem different. As an example of what the church should be like we have the ministry of Jesus to model from.
