News Intelligence Analysis
With Updates Below
MSNBC.com
Democrats voted out of N.C. church
Members say Pastor reportedly told Kerry-backers to repent or leave
The Associated Press
Updated: 10:24 a.m. ET May 7, 2005
WAYNESVILLE, N.C. - Some in Pastor Chan Chandler’s flock wish he had a little less zeal for the GOP.
Members of the small East Waynesville Baptist Church say Chandler led an effort to kick out congregants who didn’t support President Bush. Nine members were voted out at a Monday church meeting in this mountain town, about 120 miles west of Charlotte.
“He’s the kind of pastor who says do it my way or get out,” said Selma Morris, the former church treasurer. “He’s real negative all the time.”
Chandler didn’t return a message left by The Associated Press at his home Friday, and several calls to the church went unanswered. He told WLOS-TV in Asheville that the actions were not politically motivated.
The station also reported that 40 others in the 400-member congregation resigned in protest after Monday’s vote.
During the presidential election last year, Chandler told the congregation that anyone who planned to vote for Democratic Sen. John Kerry should either leave the church or repent, said former member Lorene Sutton.
Some church members left after Chandler made his ultimatum in October, Morris said.
George Bullard, associate executive director-treasurer for Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, told the Asheville Citizen-Times that a pastor has every right to disallow memberships if a church’s bylaws allow for the pastor to establish criteria for membership.
“Membership is a local church issue,” he said. “It is not something the state convention would enter into.”
He added that the nine members were not legally terminated because Monday’s meeting was supposed to be a deacons meeting, not a business meeting. They have a lawyer looking into the situation, he said.
The head of the North Carolina Democratic Party sharply criticized the pastor Friday, saying Chandler jeopardized his church’s tax-free status by openly supporting a candidate for president.
“If these reports are true, this minister is not only acting extremely inappropriately by injecting partisan politics into a house of worship, but he is also potentially breaking the law,” Chairman Jerry Meek said.
Doris Wilson, one of Chandler’s neighbors and a member of First Baptist Church in Waynesville, said God doesn’t play partisan politics.
“I hate to see the church suffer like that,” she said. “God doesn’t care whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat. It just hurts to see that going on.”
© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7769149/
News Intelligence Analysis
May 11, 2005
Church Split in Dispute Over
Bush
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WAYNESVILLE, N.C., May 10 (AP) - A Baptist preacher who was accused
of forcing nine members to leave his church because they refused
to support President Bush said on Tuesday that he was stepping
down.
"For me to remain now would only cause more hurt for me and my family," the preacher, the Rev. Chan Chandler, said as he left a meeting at East Waynesville Baptist Church.
Congregants of the 100-member church have said that Mr. Chandler endorsed Mr. Bush from the pulpit during last year's presidential campaign and said that anyone who planned to vote for the Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, needed to "repent or resign."
The church members said that he continued to preach about politics after Mr. Bush won re-election, culminating in a church gathering last week in which the nine members said they were ousted.
Speaking from the pulpit on Tuesday night, Mr. Chandler, 33, said that the dispute was rooted in his strong feelings about abortion. He then left with his wife and drove away from the church escorted by the police. A few moments later, about 40 of his supporters, many in tears, came out while other church members remained inside.
"I don't believe he preached politics," said Rhonda Trantham, one of Mr. Chandler's supporters. "I don't believe anyone should tell a preacher not to preach what's in the Bible."
Mr. Chandler's lawyer, John J. Pavey Jr., said his client had not apologized for anything he said and would continue to speak out against abortion. He said the dispute had nothing to do with politics.
Mr. Chandler's resignation, at a meeting open only to members of the congregation, came a day after a national group that lobbies for church-state separation urged the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the tax-exempt status of the church.
I.R.S. rules bar clear-cut politicking by tax-exempt groups. In October, days before Mr. Bush won a second term, the agency said it was investigating roughly 60 charities and other tax-exempt groups - about a third of them churches - for potentially breaking rules that bar them from political activity.
The outcome of those investigations is not known; the I.R.S. is prohibited from naming the groups it investigates or announcing results.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Third Article:
North Carolina Church Warned Members Not to Vote for Democrats
In a message dated 5/8/05 12:07:10 PM, [email protected] writes:
In the small western NC town of Waynesville, a tiny light was lit last week which hopefully will shine into the minds and hearts of all Americans.
Leading up to the 2004 Presidential election, many preachers, especially in churches all across the South, warned members of their congregations that if they did not vote for GwB they were in danger of going to Hell. It was a clever plan hatched in the back rooms of the NeoCon White House inhabited by "the Architect" of GwB's strategy, Karl Rove.
Everyone in the liberal AND conservative mass media ignored this phenomena, which many millions of Americans knew for a fact was happening. Instead, they dressed the battle up in "moral" terms. And most truly, this election was about morality.
Light unto Rove's Master Plan is pouring forth from this small Baptist church in Waynesville. Before the election, a young Republican preacher on board for three years told his flock that if anyone planned to vote for Democrat John Kerry, they should get up and leave. Some members left in October when the ultimatum was first delivered. Some who objected to their church being used this way stayed.
Just before the election, reports one member, their preacher got up and said they should resign or come to the altar to repent. An Associated Press article quoted her saying the preacher is "a Republican, and he wants everyone else to be Republican."
Nine who did not leave nor repent, including some who were members for 25 years, were voted out of their church last Monday. An Asheville TV station reported some 40 more of the 100 members resigned in protest. Not taking calls, the preacher did say the actions were not politically motivated and hung up.
This preacher, and his remote instructor, Karl Rove, is exactly the reason why the concept of separation of church and state was promoted by our nation's Founding Fathers. Thanks be to the Rev. Chandler for this most enlightening example. The Lord works in mysterious ways His Miracles to perform.
Dividing our nation has been GwB's winning strategy. At each election he splits us into Reds and Blues, and afterwards makes no attempt to mend the damage he caused. Rather, GwB took his minuscule margins as "political capital", which, like all other capital he has ever been blessed with, he squandered as well.
Most recently, GwB's NeoCon Masters are sending him across our nation with the sole intent of dividing young people from their elders over their most coveted Wall Street Social Security Scam. Older folks who remember America for its greatness in support of ordinary citizens are dying off. And too few of us are teaching the Blackberry Generation what sacrifices it took to be a True Blue American.
The NeoCon Cons, who write GwB's scripts hoping he can stay on message, are a curious lot. Old line Fascists to the man, with the fall of Communism they dredged up and dusted off Hitler's dreams of world domination.
If godless NeoCons can capture the hearts and minds of America's youth, perverting them under a banner of moral superiority, then they can be led to revive Hitler's failed dream. All that Hitler did was "legal." And, as does GwB, he used radical religion to unite Germany behind his fantasy Third Reich Homeland. Pre-emptive wars for control of Muslim oil fields in Africa produced fuel to operate his ever spreading, ever metastasizing war machinery.
Sound familiar? It should. But not to those too young to remember the horrors of Fascism. Dressing up NeoCon fantasies in new "moral" garb, Rove danced his strategy out into Texas elections before he brought it to the national stage. That's where he learned to con the discredited "moral majority" into believing they were still God's chosen people.
But when did anyone in America ever go into a voting booth to elect a NeoCon to office? If not, then why are they running our nation? NeoCons have been pulling GwB's strings since before he was selected by the Supreme Court. NeoCons worship at the altars of greed, selfishness, wealth, power and world domination -- all 'Christian' values -- or so they teach the gullible.
Show me in the Holy Bible, Mr. NeoCon, where Jesus said to go forth and crush the little people, take advantage of the poor, and use your superior intellect to dominate all that you survey. Show me where we are told to worship at the feet of false gods, claiming moral superiority as we are deceived into approving mass murder and immoral acts so huge that they put evils described in the Bible to shame.
Show me where black becomes white, lies become truth, and the self righteous become the most evil. Show me your true face, Mr. RepubliCon, and you will show me those who worship at the feet of GwBeelzebub and his NeoCon Masters of Darkness.
Are you old enough to remember the word "peace"? No NeoCon ever speaks it. They preach "security", but security is not peace. Security is the code word for perpetual war.
The world did change after 9/11. American fascists seized power.
Our America is effectively divided by those who hope to divide and conquer America, to overthrow our government for profit. For the moment, we are still a Democracy. That means in 2006 there's at least one more election to throw these rascals out.
Defeating every RepubliCon who fronts for NeoCons is the simple antidote to their poison. We can stop this cancer by exorcising its practitioners, thus turning America back to a pathway toward peace once again.
I know a little church in the backwoods of North Carolina where you will be most welcome.
©2005 Gene Messick from a garden in Eden
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