The hellish shootings in Atlanta have unleashed fierce debates combining questions about sex, sin, salvation, repentance, race and various combinations of all of those hot-button topics.
The debates center, of course, of statements by Robert Aaron Long — the suspect in the killing of eight people, including six Asian women — and his complicated and troubled history as a young member of Crabapple First Baptist Church in Milton, Ga., a Southern Baptist congregation.
Eventually, court testimony will provide hard facts about this case. At this point, all the evidence is that Long was raised as a conservative Christian, was active in his church youth group and that he abandoned his faith and then, quite literally, all hell broke loose in his personal and family life. Long has said that a “sex addiction” drove him to frequent massage parlors and his family, apparently, sent him to a Christian counseling center for treatment. His conservative Christian parents “threw him out of the house” the night before the shootings, according to reports in the Washington Post and elsewhere.
Like I said, on-the-record details will emerge. Right now, I want to raise a journalism question or two about coverage of the SBC congregation that is involved in this story. What do we know about this church and, well, how do we know what we know? One Post story notes the following, quoting a solid, factual source:
The evangelical congregation’s minister, the Rev. Jerry Dockery, is an energetic preacher who advocated for a socially conservative brand of Christianity that, as the church bylaws put it, views “adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, polygamy, pedophilia, pornography, or any attempt to change one’s sex, or disagreement with one’s biological sex” as “sinful and offensive to God.”
This isn’t shocking material, if you know anything about traditional forms of Christianity. It would be easy to find specific quotations from recent Catholic popes — including Pope Francis — condemning behaviors such as these, and more.
This congregation is also connected to several doctrinally conservative organizations or movements linked to SBC life, such as the Founders Ministries. All of this leads me to a specific sermon reference discussing the end of the world and Christian teachings about the second coming of Jesus Christ. Oh, and if you stop and think about it, this includes the church’s pastor — indirectly — offering a warning about Christians worshipping political leaders such as Donald Trump.
Say what?