Neither the bully Rev. Chandler, nor his sidekick Rev. Conard, at East Waynesville Baptist Church were able to triumph in the crisis that brought moderates and right-wingers head to head. Instead, it was a victory (and an omen I hope) for reasonable and moderate America.
As some of you know, I've been blog-reporting on the North Carolina church crisis for a week now. My first blog-report was here at Daily Kos and first printed story was in the Chattanooga Pulse. I've also published interviews with various members of the East Waynesville Baptist Church at my Daily Bailout blog.
As you might guess from the title, the most important story coming out of the fall of this little dictator is that moderates won the day. This is a good sign, I tell you. And since my interviews are telling me that many more churches are just like this one (one Southern Baptist member said, "This is the tip of the iceberg"), I am ready to believe that this North Carolina schism could bring an earthquake. But it won't be pretty. The right-wing will not go down without blaming and hurting the world around them.
The biggest problem is that the right-wing believers in Baptist or other churches have hitched their wagon to the star of one national political party while moderate believers continue to separate church and state. This libertarian strain is all too important in the moderate ranks, where feeling free from being demonized at church for voting behavior is critical to civil life.
What I have discovered is that the Waynesville moderates, who saved this church, are much closer to the community (they own businesses, for instance, or have participated intensely in community activities over the years). That is, they have had to agree to disagree with many people to find common ground. There has been another instance of this kind of moderate muscle being flexed in the Baptist movement. Brent Walker, who leads a diverse group of Baptists across the USA, says, "We need to stop trying to convince each other we've got God in our hip pockets."
As the moderates awake (for they're certainly being demonized) they may just take back their churches, and thereby their country. We not only can hope; we can also encourage this awakening through blogs, blog-reports, and talking.