"[A] long haired hippie teaching in the pulpit is in direct contradiction to Scripture"

Since when does God have strict grooming standards?

So easy a caveman could do it!!

The belief that the world was created yesterday seems to hold great appeal to those born at that time.

• Gary Malone, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

Yes, reason has been a part of organized religion, ever since two nudists took dietary advice from a talking snake.

• Jon Stewart

I often have a few laughs at the expense of Christianity, if only because when I do so, it’s richly deserved. It’s one thing to be serious about your faith and endeavor to live it; I have no quarrel with that. It’s quite another to get caught up in all sorts of meaningless minutiae, lose sight of what’s important, and end up enslaved to all manner of truly, deeply stupid crap.

And that’s where John Wilkerson, pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, and chancellor of Hyles-Anderson College, enters our story. Pastor Wilkerson is a well-meaning sort…or at least thinks he is. He’s also among the most influential voices within the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement (IFB).

It turns out that IFB is Christianity’s version of the NFL: No Fun ‘Llowed. IFB is also pretty heavily anti-reality, and, as if to prove their anti-reality bona fides, Wilkerson’s church was to host the Creation Evidence Expo.

I’m guessing archaeologists and forensic anthropologists weren’t on the guest list.

By all accounts, as IFB events go, the Creation Evidence Expo went pretty well. No complaints. No problems. No streakers. Nothing that would have caused offense to anyone. At least insofar as any of the attendees would’ve noticed.

Several days after the event, though, Pastor Wilkerson made a video to apologize to those who attended the Creation Evidence Expo.

… Recently, we had a Creation seminar hosted here at First Baptist Church of Hammond. With all my heart, what I wanted to do is to educate and equip and empower God’s people to face and to give ammunition for the fallacies of evolution and humanism that permeates our society.

Though that was my goal, I grieve to tell you that I probably did not make the best decisions in many arenas. I failed to screen properly what was gonna be said or shown in some ways, and I think I hurt many people.

I grieve that I embarrassed the First Baptist Church family [who] for 136 years have been serving Christ and [staying] by this stuff. I think for the Hyles-Anderson College students and the men and women who have sent their students here, if I sent an uncertain sound, I apologize and I sincerely ask for forgiveness. I don’t want to cause a distraction. And I certainly don’t want to be divisive…

And I would like to just say, please forgive me, but also, I want to say “thank you,” for the many folks who have loved us and stayed faithful to pray that God would give us wisdom and help and strength to keep going. I plead with you: pray that God will help me make good decisions…

What could have driven Pastor Wilkerson to feel it necessary to make such a video? Why did he think he needed to apologize to those who attended the Creation Evidence Expo? What had gone so terribly off the rails that he couldn’t live with himself?

Did someone steal money from the collection plate? Did the organist get high before she played “How Great Thou Art?” Did Pastor Wilkerson’s daughter get caught giving a handjob to one of the speakers before he was due to go onstage?

Or did he discover his wife in flagrante delicto with the church choir after Sunday’s lunch break? That would certainly explain why she was exhausted Sunday night, no?

It had to be pretty awful, right? Did someone acknowledge that the Earth was older than a few thousand years old? Did a speaker inadvertently affirm science? Was a woman accidentally allowed to speak?

Turns out the answer is even more damning than all of that.

Yes, Pastor Wilkerson had inadvertently allowed “the wrong kind of Christian” to speak at the Creation Evidence Expo. How is that even possible?

Tragically, as it turns out, one of the speakers at the Creation Evidence Expo had…GASP!!!…long hair.

That’s it. That’s all. Long hair, which evidently makes him a “heretic” and the “wrong kind of Christian.”

Welcome to the NFL, kids. No Fun ‘Llowed.

You see, some of the Creationists who presented at the event were the wrong kind of Christians… and one of them had long hair… and they even cited the NIV Bible (which IFB Christians reject wholeheartedly because it’s not the King James Bible, a.k.a. the “inspired” word of God ).

Truly the worst kinds of blasphemy.

Writing for the even-more-fundamentalist “Old Paths Journal,” a publication that promotes “old-fashioned Christianity,” Pastor Allen Domelle denounced the church and Hyles-Anderson College for allowing such heretics to speak to IFB students:

… These men were not Baptists and do not claim to be Baptists. In fact, one is a member of a Reformed church, and another claimed from their pulpit that he is a Methodist.

On Sunday evening, I received a text from a pastor with a picture that showed a long haired hippie teaching in the pulpit of FBC Hammond.

Then I received multiple calls from preachers about how they were told that the NIV was used on slides, and indecency in some of the slides.

I am sickened by this as I am not for compromise of any sort…

“I am sickened by this…?” The man had long hair. That was the problem? That, and they weren’t “real” Baptists? Do all y’all not believe in the same Jesus Christ? Or is your flavor of Jesus that much superior to theirs?

WTF is wrong with you? The wrong kind of Christian?

… a long haired hippie teaching in the pulpit is in direct contradiction to Scripture... I don't know anything about this man, but I do know that to have long hair is a shame. It does not matter what he was going to teach, the fact that he blatantly disobeys God’s Word should have alerted anyone to his spiritual discernment and that he is to be disqualified to teach people.

…

A member of a reformed church has no business teaching in a Baptist pulpit. A self-proclaimed Methodist obviously is doctrinally wrong on baptism, the local church, and likely on salvation. It doesn't matter if these men are “good” men, they are doctrinally wrong and have no right to speak in a Baptist pulpit.

…

… Not only should these men not have been allowed to teach because of their doctrine, but also because of their practice. We practice dressing with our best for church because God deserves our best. To allow these men to teach in blue jeans and polo shirts as if this is a golf club is simply a total disrespect of God’s Word, His church, and His way.

So, God has a dress code? Blue jeans and polo shirts and somehow an abomination before God? Where, precisely, is that to be found in Scripture? And how does a smug dismissal of “a long-haired hippie” make one a superior Christian?

This is precisely why I’m an atheist…well, one of the reasons, anyway. It’s not just that I don’t believe in God, but that I’m sick of so-called “Christians” so concerned about their rules and regulations and ensuring that everyone colors within the lines they’ve deemed appropriate.

It’s about controlling the behavior of others…precisely what Jesus would do, eh?

Condemning those who fail to color within lines one has decreed to be sacrosanct has nothing to do with Scripture and shows that you know nothing of Scripture or the love of Jesus Christ. These folks are far more concerned with rule-following and being in charge than with the meaning of Scripture and the teachings of the Jesus Christ they claim to revere.

Someone might want to remind them that paintings of Jesus generally don’t show him in an Oscar de la Renta suit and a CEO haircut.

For these hypocrites, it’s not about accuracy, truth, or Scripture. No, it’s about image, appearance, and blind obedience to artificial, manufactured rules.

I wonder if these hypocrites have any appreciation for the truth that the Jesus Christ they claim to revere didn’t what people looked like or how they dressed.

And the sign said
"Long-haired freaky people
Need not apply"
So I tucked my hair up under my hat
And I went in to ask him why
He said, "You look like a fine upstandin' young man
I think you'll do"
So I took off my hat and said, "Imagine that
Huh, me workin' for you"
Whoa

Sign, sign
Everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery
Breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that
Can't you read the sign?

• Five Man Electrical Band

Good Lord, y’all…of all the things IFB needs to apologize for, allowing a speaker with long hair at the Creation Evidence Expo is WAY down the list.

For what it’s worth, after seeing Pastor Wilkerson’s apology video, Pastor Domelle said, “I respect the apology and hope it is sincere.” I think Pastor Domelle would be well-advised to remove his anterior from his posterior and lose his self-ascribed self-superiority.

I know I’ll sleep soundly tonight knowing that all the fake Christians have sheathed their swords. And that NO ONE with long hair will ever speak at an IFB event EVER again.

There’s no hate quite like Christian love, eh?

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