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Sunday, August 5, 2012

The Devil Goes to Church


The Sunday edition of Dallas Morning News has a story titled Dallas minister puts assault of teen behind him, but others can’t. It's behind a pay wall so I can't link to it here. The piece is about one Chuck Adair,who went to prison for sexual assault on a 13 year old girl he met through the church where he was a minister. The preacher thinks it's okay because they fell in love and eloped so it's not real child abuse. The subtitle is that the hiring of the ex-con "forced Skillman Church of Christ members to re-examine their notions of redemption and forgiveness." Seems the good Christians at Skillman have hired the registered sex offender as - you guessed it - a minister. When anyone has the audacity to suggest that's not a good idea, the good reverend gets angry and self-righteous and reminds them that as a believer he is forgiven by God, and they should do likewise............... Speaking of wayward preachers, I'm almost finished reading Deadly Little Secrets: the Minister, His Mistress, and a Heartless Texas Murder, the new true crime book by Kathryn Casey. I have some familiarity with the case, since I defended Matt Baker, the preacher, for a time in the civil wrongful death case the parents of Kari Baker filed and the criminal case where he was convicted of murder. I didn't try the case because Baker retained Guy James Gray and Harold Danford before the trial. Through no fault of theirs (sometimes the evidence against a criminal defendant is so overwhelming that even Perry Mason couldn't get you off) he was convicted and sentenced to 60 years in the Big House. The book describes the testimony of Baker's girlfriend, the daughter of the choir director where Baker preached: after they had sex in the bed where Baker's wife and the mother of his children slept, he told her not to worry - that Jesus had already forgiven them. You can do anything and God will forgive you. I won't talk a lot about the evidence that came out in the trial - Ms. Casey does a superb job in her book. For purposes of this post, the relevant point is that there is no such thing as "the Baptist Church." Rather, there are thousands of independent churches that answer to no one, loosely affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. No one credentials "ministers," and no one keeps any records on them. If a congregation in, say Jasper, has a preacher who drinks whiskey, gambles, chases women, etc., they are not going to tell anyone because it's easier to give him a good recommendation than to have to fire him. It's kind of like the Roman Catholics - they take a pedophile priest in San Angelo and one in Brownsville and just switch them. I have a theory - a lot of sociopaths go into the ministry because it gratifies their need for control and exploitation of others, it reward superficial, counterfeit warmth and attention, and the believers are a ready made flock of sheep ready for the shearing. What else explains how long men like these were able to fool so many people: Dennis Rader, the BTK (Bind Torture Kill) serial killer who murdered entire families in Wichita, KS, while he was serving as the warden, which is the top lay member, of his Lutheran church Ted Haggard, president of the biggest evangelical organization in the nation, who campaigned against gay marriage by day and cruised homosexual bars at night and used meth and cocaine with his male prostitute companion. Jimmy Swaggart - cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis, fire and brimstone multi-millionaire Bible thumper, arrested for erratic driving, caught with hard core porn in the car with a hooker. Jim Baker - Ran the Trinity Broadcasting Network, lived with his tawdry wife Tammy Faye like they were royalty, while he ripped off his donors and came onto to young men and women - it didn't seem to matter which gender. Walker Railey, the minister of First Methodist in Dallas and a rising star, who strangled his wife so he could be free to marry his girlfriend with the ridiculous name Lucy Papillon. Finis Crutchfield, a Methodist bishop who died of AIDS he contracted from his nights cruising gay bars in Montrose. We should probably add Jerry Sandusky, since football is a religion for a lot of Americans. The alternative religions are no better. Chögyam Trungpa was a Tibetan lama who came to the US and started Shambhala International. He was an alcoholic and serial womanizer.In 1972 Trungpa identified Thomas F. Rich (an American with Buddhist name Ösel Tendzin) as his "dharma heir." He was a homosexual predator who infected several of his male acolytes with AIDS. And last but not least, the Roman Catholic Church, arguably the biggest organized crime organization in the world, run by a bunch of men who like to play dress up, who cover up for the pedophiles and child molesters in their ranks.

3 comments:

  1. Men have been "hiding" in the ministry and on church pews for centuries and will continue to do so, but there are MANY wonderful preachers and others serving in the ministry. Men and women in every town and city, including Kerrville, are on the "down-low". Most eventually get caught. I am sure you have heard the story from many years back about the "sting" down at the park that involved quite a few men. The fact is, they are all just human and have a sinful nature and we will all be judged accordingly for ALL sin. The church needs to get real about this issue so that people can get the serious help that they need in order to cease hiding in ministries and marriages that are destined to fail and to stop destroying many innocent parties in the process. Baker? Don't even get me started. I was shocked years back to see a large group of his supporters on a national program espousing his innocence.

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  2. Michael Berry ‏@MichaelBerrySho
    Homosexuals planning Starbucks Appreciation Day. Bwahahahahahaaha. Give it up, folks. Seriously. You're embarrassing yourself.

    Current tweet from hyper right-wing Michael Berry, the rabid, gay bashing radio host caught in a hit-and-run accident leaving a gay bar in the Montrose area. These fools don't realize there are surveillance cameras everywhere. What is it about the Montrose area that attracts all of these young married guys?

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  3. How dare you condemn someone that you don't even know, on the basis of a liberal biased, woman scorned article. Chuck Adair is a personal friend of mine, and in NO WAY does he condone his actions. He NEVER said that it was ok, because he thought he loved the girl. These comments came from a woman that he met while he was going into the prisons and preaching to men and women, and taking Celebrate Recovery to the inmates. She developed a crush on him, and when he refused her advances, she reacted by making these ludicrous accusations. The first time, she went to the church, and tried to get him fired. When they stood behind him, she in turn went to the media. In an effort to sell newspapers, they ran her story without even speaking with Mr. Adair, to get his side of the story. Later, after damage had been done, he was allowed a rebuttal by the Dallas Morning News, in which the reported who ran the first story offered an apology. You have your facts wrong, and you are just as bad as the scorned woman who brought up his past, and then added lies to show herself to be the victim. You have yourself stooped to the lowest level of the liberal biased media by stating what you call fact, when you don't know the whole story. How much do you actually care, tho? Will you print a retraction for your words? Will you apologize to those readers that you have alienated by making these kind of prejudicial statements? I wholly doubt that you will even give it a second thought. Should you want witnesses about the incident that you have published without knowing the whole story, or if you would like character references for Chuck Adair, I can and will provide them. I can even provide witnesses against the women who made these allegations in the first place. I am from the Hill Country, and I am truly ashamed that you would trash someone that you don't even know in an effort to bolster your ego in a blog post.

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