Rabbi/Minister conflict in Atlanta

Great Debates
1

So chique’s thread in the Pit got me thinking about a story which made a little dent in the national news last week. I thought it would make a dandy little GD topic and I was surprised to see that it hadn’t come up yet.

http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/newsatlanta/0420baccalaureate.html

http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/newsatlanta/walton/042401baccalaureate.html

A high school in Cobb suburb of Atlanta (Walton High School) planned a religious non-denominational baccalaureate ceremony as a supplement to their traditional graduation ceremony. The ceremony was to be held at a large Methodist church in Cobb in order to accomodate all of the people (and it was free). The high school chose a Reform rabbi, Steven Lebow, to speak from the pulpit.

The trouble started when the minister of the church, Reverend Randell Mickler, vetoed the idea of a rabbi speaking from his pulpit. He said that the pulpit was a place built for the glorification of Christ, and even though the ceremony was non-denominational, opening the pulpit to Jews would be the first step in letting Buddhists, Muslims, and Wiccans speak.

Basically, the community went up in arms and moved the ceremony to a Civic Center, which cost $1200 to rent out.

Now, I’m a Reform Jew for the most part I suppose (more agnostic really). I don’t think what the minister did was the most prudent action for a ceremony that is supposed to promote tolerance and that kind of nonsense.

The shock value from the initial statements wears off quickly, though. The minister was not obliged to offer his church. IMHO he is completely within his power to prevent the use of his pulpit for the dissemination of views that like it or not are blantantly anti-Christian.

So, was the minister justified? Is it really intolerant for the minister not to allow a Jew to speak from a church pulpit? Do the Hebes just need to chill?

Or, is this just the resurfacing of 1500 years of brutal anti-semitism that we civilized folk in the USA think that we have quietly tucked under the carpet?

Go forth and debate. Or let the thread sink like a stone.

2

Which of these views are blatantly anti-Christian?
IMHO, if this minister guy had any misgivings at all about whoever might address the crowd at his church, then he should not have offered the use of it. All he’s done is make himself look like a twit.

3

I don’t think it quite qualifies as brutal anti-semitism, but it is a clear sign that there are still any number of bigoted jerks wandering around who will hate Jews for simply not being Christian.

To know whether this particular minister is explicitly anti-Jewish, we’d have to be able to replay the same scenario with a Catholic speaker. If he objected to a Catholic, it would indicate that he was simply one of those closed minded “I will define who is Christian and who is saved” types. If Catholics (and/or Mormons) would not have bothered him, then he was probably explicitly anti-Jewish.

On the other hand, the community did not roll over and acquiesce to his anti-Jewish comments, so it looks as though there is still a degree of hopeful tolerance even in Cobb County.

4

I think the minister is just a jerk. The rabbi was not planning on a sermon, just the usual graduation type speech, as has been said in previous posts. No, the minister was not obligated to offer his church. But I think he did, assuming they would have your regular good old boy speaker, not some upstart Jew. It sounds like the classic, “everybody come to my house a play football, but I get to be the quarterback” type of thing. As he did offer his church, he should have had enough sense to at least ask who the guest speaker was before commiting. I personally have seen no predjudice towards Jews here in the South. But then, I live a sheltered life :slight_smile: I tend to adhere to the philosophy of Elizabeth I, who supposedly said “There is but one God, all else is trifles.”

5

I agree with spoohje that he does have the right to say who can and can’t speak in his church, but he looks like an ass to make the offer without clarifying exactly who he would and would not allow to speak. I don’t know that the priest was so much anti-semitic as anti-anything-but-Christianity, if edwino’s report is accurate:

Clearly, Jews are not as bad as those horrid Buddhists and Muslims, and let’s not even think about letting an atheist speak. Apparently, Judaism is some sort of “gateway religion” to the “hard stuff”…first you start finding copies of the Torah stuffed under your son’s bed and he starts questioning if Jesus fufilled the prophesies, next thing you know he’s donned yellow robes and is living in Tibet. :eek:

6

I can see the explotation film now, Matzoh Madness!.

Truth is Jews could more easily see Christianity as a “gateway” to idolatry, etc. Ever see a plastic dashboard Moses?

While Rev. Mickler was technically within his rights I think he was ill advised. Even foaming at the mouth, fundie, hate monger Jack Chick has a tract called Love the Jewish People. Mind you it’s just to try to convert them but still…

I end up being a fence sitter because as an evangelical Lutheran I’m toward the liberal end of the Christian spectrum. I’d let a rabbi speak at my church because there is a good bit of common ground. Going beyond that to say a buddhist or moslem speaker and I start to have a problem. Sorry, I’m not that liberal.

7

If he sincerely believes that his “pulpit was a place built for the glorification of Christ” why would he allow someone who believes that Jesus was a false prophet who mislead his followers to speak from the pulpit?

8

Oh, I dunno. Ecumenicalism? When a Methodist church burned to the ground in Jersey City a few weeks ago, the neighboring synagogue had the parish over for Easter services – let them bring in crosses, and everything.

Why? Because that’s what neighbors do for each other. How did they countenance a service honoring a oong-dead apostate? They just did.

Of course it is the pastor’s right, as controller of the property, to include or exclude whomever he sees fit from speaking from his pulpit. That doesn’t make him any less of a hard-headed, exclusionary so-and-so.

9

“Oong”, of course, being the Sanskrit root of the now-common word “long.” There’s your fact for the day. Ugh.

10

Having been raised as a Methodist, I can confidently assert that this particular minister is a grade-A jerk. I have never experienced such narrow-mindedness from a Methodist pulpit. In fact, our congregation occasionally did joint activities with both a local synagogue and a Catholic church. Although I never saw a priest or a rabbi speaking from our pulpit, they did come to our church to participate in interfaith meetings, and I cannot imagine there would have been an objection to allowing them to speak at a community event such as the one in Cobb County.

11

If the pulpit were used only for the “glorification of Christ”, maybe the minister would have a point. But if the minister was like every minister the world over, I’m sure he’s used to pulpit to announce “The third grade class is holding a bake sale on Friday to help pay for their trip to Six Flags. Come on out and support them” or “Let’s have a big round of applause for the high school football team for ending the season with a winning record”, etc. So, the pulpit has likely already been “desanctified”.

No, the truly disturbing thing about this is that the rabbi had already stated what he was going to, and none of it was anti-Christian. So the minister was objecting to who the rabbi was, not what he was going to say.

Absolutely, it was the minister’s right to do what he did. It is also his congregation’s right to fire his bigoted ass, and I hope they do so.

Sua

12

priest? what priest? There ya go again lumping us Catholics together with those other “so called” Christians :smiley:

13

All this is mere speculation on your part. This minister seems to take his religion seriously. He spends his time trying to proclaim universal God-given truth. So he would of course object to someone who denies this truth speaking from his pulpit.

14

Then he should NOT have offered his pulpit in the first place, puddleglum.

And someone might have pointed out to this guy that to deny all Jews access would be denying, oh, I dunno…JESUS access, would it not?
Hint hint…Jesus was a HEBE!!! :o
snort

15

Funny you should raise that point. Since this whole controversy erupted, I have seen at least two Methodist churches in Atlanta with “Jesus was a Jew” on their street-front message boards. Apparently it’s just the one pastor who’s over-zealous. (I think “anti-Semitic” is a bit strong for what’s going on here.)

16

Am I speculating on whether that minister has ever spoken about non-religious things from his pulpit? Of course I am. However, having gone to scads of religious services for a variety of denominations, I cannot recall a single priest, rabbi, or minister who did not make community service-type announcements from the pulpit. This is well in keeping with their mission - service to the community. I strongly, strongly doubt that this minister has not done the same - he’d be a mighty weird one if he hadn’t.

BTW, a minister does not spend all his time “proclaim[ing] universal God-given truth.” A good deal of any clergy’s time is spent ministering to his community - counseling couples with marital problems, comforting those who have lost a loved one, etc.

Finally, it is not obvious that a minister would deny access to the pulpit to someone not of his/her denomination. I’ve seen it many a time - overseas relief workers, politicians, and yes, clergy of different denominations or faiths. In this case, the minister had already agreed to allow his pulpit to be used to proclaim religious messages not necessarily in keeping with his own beliefs - a non-denominational baccalaureate ceremony. He had already established that the pulpit could be used by non-Methodist clergy. He then discriminated against a rabbi.

Sua

17

Well, from the article edwino linked to,

Which “universal God-given truth”, above, do you believe the minister was objecting to?

18

Padeye:

Why, sure…like in the song. :wink: “…I don’t care if it snows or blowses 'long as I got my plastic Moses, sitting on the dashboard of my car…”

beagledave: Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. :smiley:

19

For what it’s worth, here on the Atlanta news I got the distinct impression that the congregation was entirely non-involved in the incident and that the sole reaction to the student’s choice of speaker was by the minister. Not to say that others might not have agreed amongst themselves, but they weren’t on TV in fear of who else might have to be allowed to speak. The general consensus here is that there’s a few bad eggs in every carton and that the actions of a solitary jerk can be extremely tacky and present an awful lesson to the graduating adolescents, but that even here in the deep South everybody knows better and looks at the incident with a general air of disgust. Sure, it’s his church, he can have final say over who speaks if that’s how the agreement goes, but to do so, particularly over a speaker whom the students themselves elected… well, I think “tacky” really describes it best. I’d be shocked if his church hasn’t seen a rapid decline in membership. Not to mention that I’m sure the Methodist church government is not terribly pleased about this.

20

I’m going to agree with Spoke-, this isn’t anti-semitism, Mr. Mickler is just a bit slow. Apparently, the church has hosted the ceremony several times before, but it just never occured to the guy that a non-Christian might want to speak. If he intended to throw a fit just because somebody with different beliefs wanted to speak there, he shouldn’t have volunteered the church in the first place. Some people are just dumb, but we we already know that.