Baptist preachers bahaving badly

[arcticpenguin]

t seems it's not just the Catholic priests who are causing trouble:

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/w...p-regional-wire

The Rev. Daris Dixon-Clark, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Ithaca, is scheduled to appear in Town of Ithaca Court on May 14 on charges of third-degree sexual abuse, forcible touching and endangering the welfare of a child, all misdemeanors.

and here's the kicker:

Dixon-Clark was appointed interim minister at the Ithaca church in 1995 when the former pastor, The Rev. William Johnson Jr., was released from his duties after he was found guilty of statutory rape of a 13-year-old member of the congregation.




I am cross-posting this from Banter because it got no response there.
http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=19206

[Dancing David]

Who said that catholics had the market on sin...

Peace
dancing David

[Yahzi]

But see, these are articles about individual priests doing bad things. They aren't attacks against the instituitional values of the Baptist church. I had a story on a bank-robbing pastor, and then of course there is whatever Fred Phelps did this week, but these stories seem more ancedotal than illustrative of a systemic problem.

Admittedly the various Protestant churches don't have quite the level of organization or even doctrine that the Catholics do, so it's not quite a level playing field.

Jehovah's Witnesses would be good fodder for stories that illustrate their doctrinal wickedness, but who would read them? We already disrespect them as a mindless cult (along with Scientology, etc.). My point is that the Catholic church belongs in the same bin with them, rather than in a special bin of its own making. I'd say that the Protestants belonged there too, except that the Prostestant church usually doesn't wield that kind of power over its members - Methodists can always just move to a Baptist church, and vice versa. I think Protestant doctrine is moderated a great deal by the competition: if you get too extreme, there is an easy way for your people to leave.

Maybe not for Fundies.

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by Yahzi
I think Protestant doctrine is moderated a great deal by the competition: if you get too extreme, there is an easy way for your people to leave.
Sure, by drinking the Kool-Aid.

[Hazelip]

Sorry, I don't see the correlation beyond that of a man of the cloth being a bad man and diddling children.

I don't see the Baptist church covering it up like the Catholic church has for years. I don't see the Baptist church (or is actually some kind of council?) shuffling preachers from parish to parish just shoving the problem onto a new congregation like the Catholic church did.

Just a bad man doing wrong.

[arcticpenguin]

Originally posted by Hazelip
Sorry, I don't see the correlation beyond that of a man of the cloth being a bad man and diddling children.

I don't see the Baptist church covering it up like the Catholic church has for years. I don't see the Baptist church (or is actually some kind of council?) shuffling preachers from parish to parish just shoving the problem onto a new congregation like the Catholic church did.

Just a bad man doing wrong.
Two bad men in succession.

[ceo_esq]

Originally posted by Yahzi
I'd say that the Protestants belonged there too, except that the Prostestant church usually doesn't wield that kind of power over its members - Methodists can always just move to a Baptist church, and vice versa. I think Protestant doctrine is moderated a great deal by the competition: if you get too extreme, there is an easy way for your people to leave.
I'm not sure this doesn't apply equally to the Catholics, though. Catholics can always just move to some other Christian denomination (in fact, that's how we came to have other Christian denominations in the first place). And the major source of converts for Protestant denominations worldwide is Catholic populations - such as in Latin America, where Protestant faiths are making major inroads. I imagine the reverse is true as well (i.e. the Catholics recruiting most of their converts from Protestantism).

[Zombified]

The difference, I think, between some Protestant churches and the Catholic Church is the degree to which the global organization is responsible for overseeing individual churches. In the recent cases involving the Catholic Church, that oversight failed to a terrible degree. In other branches, there's less oversight to start with.

I don't think anybody really believed abusive priests (ministers) was purely a Catholic problem, except for a few Protestant bigots. However, that these problems also occur in Protestant churches might suggest that celibacy isn't the problem some people think it is. (I always thought that was a red herring, even though I'm not Catholic and don't see the point.)

[kittynh]

The Catholic priest problem here in New England, wasn't the priests. It was the cover up and moving around of priests who were admittedly guilty of child abuse. People arent so much mad at the priests as mad at the church that would allow a child abuser to work with children after the fact was brought to their attention. Many parents decided to "let the matter drop" once assured by the church that the priest was in counselling and would never again work with children. Then the priest was moved to another parish, and nothing changed except the abuse continued.