Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Missing The Message Completely

It takes a special kind of tone deaf ignorance to choose to give your first speech as Governor of Alabama from the King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery on MLK Day and then proclaim that non-Christians are not your brothers and sisters, but that's exactly what newly minted Republican Gov. Robert Bentley did yesterday.

"There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit," Bentley said.

''But if you have been adopted in God's family like I have, and like you have if you're a Christian and if you're saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister."

Bentley stopped just short of calling for non-Christians to accept Jesus Christ.

''Now I will have to say that, if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters," he said. "So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

Asked by The Birmingham News afterwords if his words where meant to insult other faiths, Bentley said, ''We're not trying to insult anybody." 

Well, you did.   Dr. King's message wasn't just for Christians any more than it was just for African-Americans.  It was about tolerance of all peoples, all creeds, all races.  To get up at the pulpit and use the occasion to divide Christians from non-Christians as the Governor is idiotic in any capacity, but to do it in that church on that day is about as staggeringly ignorant as it comes.

You sir do not understand Dr. King's message or his sacrifice in the least.  Educate yourself.

2 comments:

Jimmi the Grey said...

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Chris Taus said...

Sure, he was in his church, speaking to fellow followers. He's also the governor. When you have a job title like that, your public words, no matter how unofficial, carry some weight. He may not have violated any laws with what he said, but people should certainly be alarmed by it.

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