Evidently, God Has Left the Building

The Rev. Chan Chandler, the politics-preaching pastor of East Waynesville Baptist Church who led the ouster of members who voted Democrat, resigned last night and drove away into the darkness with his wife. (Asheville Citizen-Times coverage here.) "It's really sad that all this happened," said one of the reverend's hardcore supporters, a woman who also left the church. She said she would no longer attend East Waynesville Baptist Church. "I'm not going to serve where there are so many ungodly people." Because, see, Jesus most certainly did NOT say go unto all the world and preach the gospel. Thirty-five right-thinkers followed Chandler out the door and apparently out of the church.

The N&O says that Chandler did not apologize for the division he caused and said only that "his underlying concern was to save unborn babies from abortion." Evidently, Democratic women of the church were holding Wednesday night abortion sessions instead of Women's Missionary Union meetings.

Chandler's theology of "agree with me or go to hell" is of course the prevailing style in all fundamentalist movements, world-wide. Bill Leonard, dean of the Wake Forest Divinity School, spoke about the tsunami of self-righteousness: "When you believe in an inerrant Bible, then the next step is to have an inerrant interpreter and then an inerrant morality."

And then you start looking for kindling, to build your wee bonfire of the vanities.