Should Allegiance To Certain Church Movements Excuse Profound Moral Failings?

[Frederick Meekins]

The following quote attributed to Jack Hyles was printed in a church bulletin: “The time consumed between the opportunity to do right and the doing of the right is often spent trying to justify doing wrong.”

A valid observation.

Sort of like the time Hyles concocted a convoluted doctrine not unlike that of Mormon celestial marriage to justify him spending more emotionally intimate time with the church secretary than his actual wife.

Then there was also the time Hyles summoned the deacons to the pulpit and had them vow before the congregation how these church officers were willing to take a bullet if so directed by the pastor.

Will the church bulletin be providing edifying Chesterton quotes in the upcoming weeks and months as well?

Likely not.

For the wisdom of this journalist will likely be disqualified for such an honor because of his ultimate conversion to Roman Catholicism.

For you see, in the brand of Christianity that celebrates ecclesiastical separation as something akin to a prime directive, it is not enough for a thinker to have enunciated an observation or proposition exuding truth.

Often, it is even more important that the intellectual under consideration hold membership in the right organizations and avoid contact with movements condemned as beyond a narrow pale of acceptability.

How else under the lofty identity of Fundamental Independent Baptist can one justify promoting a ministry that has profoundly harmed unnumbered throngs while likely numbering among history's reprobates some of the most gifted writers to ever contemplate the human condition?

By Frederick Meekins