From USA Today:
Charles Stanley, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Atlanta, rose to address about 3,000 worshipers gathered for the 9 a.m. service Sunday and cut right to the point.
“He’s probably the kindest pope I’ve ever known in all my years,” said Stanley, who became senior pastor of the now 15,000-member church in 1971. “He’s the only one who’s every apologized for the persecution that Catholics have brought upon other peoples.”
This was a little tactless, ya gotta admit. It makes Dr. Stanley sound as if the injustices of religious persecution had all been committed on one side. Does he need to look up from his copy of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and notice the Reformation-inspired persecution of Catholics? Has anybody volunteered yet to express regret before God and man for the martyrdoms, say, of English and Irish Catholics? How about that of St. Fidelis in Switzerland? I don’t know if it’s been done — I hope somebody’s done it — but it would at least be a good thing.
eeesh… a back-handed compliment….
Most evangelicals I know are sad at his passing. Most flags are at half mast.
But I did hear a rather snide comment followed by the other person’s cackle yesterday. That was certainly conduct unbecoming.
As for him, I don’t fear for him! I fear for us, now that he’s gone. I don’t think that the coming years will be kind to us.
Ol’ Chuck’s an interesting fellow.
“Listen! Listen…”
He was the source of a minor SBC scandal when he and his wife of who knows how many years finally divorced. He had originally said that he didn’t believe a divorced man should be pastor and that if it ever happened to him, he would step down. That…just didn’t happen. Chuck? Did you listen, listen to yourself?
This Christianity Today article, meant to be laudatory, is equally disturbing, I think.