"We look like Mississippi"
- North Carolina Governor
Beverly Pardue after passage of Amendment One.
At this time in Western Civilization, one small thought from one small mind is no longer... small: the internet has leveled the playing field in that access to small thoughts is extremely easy - and potentially dangerous. That is why the fact that although pastor Charles L. Worley - the pastor of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, North Carolina - sounds virtually illiterate, it does not lessen the impact of his sermon: there were "Amens" from his tiny congregation ... and probably "Amens" from other parts of North Carolina.
And his viral sermon
has finally hammered the last nails into the coffin of a North Carolina wanting
to become part of the 21st century.
The
barrage of anti-gay sermons delivered by North Carolina-based pastors to hit
the blogosphere continues with yet another disturbing rant caught on tape.
The pastor, identified on YouTube as
Charles L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, N.C.,
condemns President Obama's much-publicized endorsement of same-sex
marriage while calling for gays and lesbians to be put in an
electrified pen and ultimately killed off.
What is it with North Carolina and anti-gay sentiments? Amendment One and its passage has brought out rants from the pulpit never seen before: first there was Pastor Sean Harris who told his congregation to "crack the wrist" of a child who exhibited signs of effeminacy, Ron Baity, of Berean Baptist Church who said homosexuality should be criminalized and Tim Rabon, pastor at Raleigh's Beacon Baptist Church , who stated that gay marriage would lead to bestial marriage. Worley may only be carrying the hate to its obvious conclusion: the outright extermination of gays.
Perhaps the strongest proponent of genocide for homosexuals to
date, Worley has kicked off a firestorm on the internet. The video, however,
raises other questions: Was
it planned to incite as much rancor as possbile to invoke a lawsuit against a
preacher for "hate speech"? And occasional "Amens" from the
congregation do not dispel the thoughts that the church might be virtually
empty. A close look at the church's website reveals that Worley has been
planning to erect a larger church, but has failed in the past 15 years to do
so.
People will be painting a
portrait of Worley as an old time Bible-thumper in a podunk town: Maiden,
NC has a sparse population of 3300 - 80% white - with incomes hovering barely
above the poverty line. Perhaps the pastor thought that posting the video on
the church website would only be seen by his congregation of a few hundred, but
as of this writing, the video has garnered over 50,000 page views on YouTube,
with numbers growing exponentially and blasts from online newspapers, blogs and
various websites throughout the country. Tracking the results of the video will
be easy - headlines may feature Worley for days to come. He will be the Pastor
Steven Anderson of the
moment.
The word
"ignorant" will become the mantra in this scenario. It may be true,
but still...
WE
HATE YOU BUT WE LOVE YOU
But tracking the response from the Christian Right - or lack of it
- will be more entertaining: Worley may find out how many friends he never had
in the first place. Giving Pastor Worley the Terry Jones once-over of
"we're not like that" will be scattered amongst the outrage, but to
what extent and from whom remains to be seen.
And backpedaling is out of the question: due to the nature of
the diatribe, Pastor Worley cannot follow in the footsteps of people like
Dennis "Get Out!" Terry and state that he really "loves"
everybody. Such backpedaling would be impossible - and out of character for a
man who says: "We offer NO apologies in believing the King James Version
(KJV) of the Bible is the inerrant Word of God." And in some way,
Worley is like Terry Jones in that he obviously doesn't care if his words
result in gay bashings or killings: his words smacked of the kind of genocide
reserved for Jews in Hitler's Germany (except Hitler had more finesse in his rhetoric)...and
the "Amens" were disturbing.
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