Baptismal Abductions: Kidnapping In The Name Of The Lord

- I say they should sue the Bastards Baptists......
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DeSwiss


http://www.atheisttoolbox.com/">The Atheist Toolbox




"Prayer is just a way of telling god that his divine plan for
you is flawed -- and shockingly stingy" ~ Betty Bowers

The Colorado city that last fall spawned the state's anti-gay Amendment 2 has become the site of another controversy involving Christian fundamentalists. This time it's over what some parents say were a series of shanghai baptisms.

The fundamentalist Cornerstone Baptist Church lured children to a water carnival that became a surprise immersion baptism ceremony, several children and their parents say.

The church had printed flyers saying children would receive free toys and get to spend a day playing water games at the church's May 1 carnival. What they got, several children said, was a sermon on how people who don't get baptized aren't allowed into heaven. They were instructed to strip, don baptismal robes, and then were submerged in a Plexiglas tank by a church official, the children said.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_n31_v29/ai_13881758/

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...and 1997

Church Says It's Not Involved in Child Luring Cases

A Colorado Springs church is denying a connection with reports that children from nearby schools are being approached by strangers as they walk home.

Russell Middle School is where one student was approached. School District 11 says they've had reports of church members driving around and trying to get students to get in a van.

"We found out that a young lady was followed, as she described, and then approached by someone and then the person told her to get in the van," said School District-11 Director of Communications, Elaine Naleski.

...

Cornerstone Baptist Church was sued back in 1997 for baptizing children without their parents permission.

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...1993-2009

Cornerstone Controversies

JULY 1976: Cornerstone Baptist Church founded by Dean Miller.

MAY 1993: First public complaint from parents that children lured to a carnival were being baptized without their permission.

JUNE 1997: A civil court jury decides that eight children who sued the church were not harmed by baptisms, but said they were deceived by the church. Each child was awarded $664.

MAY 1998: Parents complain publicly that children attending an event at the church were baptized without their permission.
1999: Five women reported they had been sexually assaulted as teenagers by Charles Dean Miller, Jr., the church's music director and senior pastor's son.

MARCH 2000: Charles Dean Miller Jr. pleaded guilty to two felony counts of sexual abuse of a child by a person in a position of trust. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
He was released from prison on May 9, 2008, and is listed on the Oklahoma sex offender registry as living in Dewey, Okla.

MARCH 2003: The mother of an 8-year-old girl complained to police that her daughter was forced to disrobe and be baptized when she went to an event at the church.

APRIL 2009: Complaints that church members are proselytizing elementary and middle school students on their way to and from school surface after a couple reportedly tell police that church members tried to lure their 12-year-old daughter into a church van after school.

http://www.gazette.com/articles/members-52775-russell-church.html

Creepy bunch. No wonder Pastor Sta-Puft doesn't divulge his name on his site's page.

http://www.cbc-colspgs.com/our-pastor/

...right now. That'd stop all this kidnapping shit.

It sounds like they are rounding up potential victims for the pedophile Minister's son. Sick!

Surely they can be prosecuted for kidnapping.

PROSECUTE.

On edit. Oh. Bowers.

Guess what? This shouldn't have been posted in a place where we deal with serious infractions of the constitution and our laws. Love Betty to bits. But the Mormons baptize the dead and this isn't actually a stretch.

It isn't our sense of humor that is defective. It IS that satire isn't what we've been dealing with. All the things that used to be satirical stretches have been real for the last 8 years.

I would love to think this is satire, but it looks real? :shrug:

(Dateline: Virginia) They sent an empty bus into a neighborhood on a Sunday morning, would tell kids that there was money hidden on the bus, fill it up, drive them to church, and leave one kid behind to tell the parents that their kids were taken to church. Not many parents cared enough to complain.

...about that. But I'm not at all surprised.

...do like they did in my hometown when they turned a church into a strip joint.

By SCOTT HARRISON
s.harrison@krdo.com

COLORADO SPRINGS - Last week's complaints by parents against a local church apparently aren't the first. NEWSCHANNEL 13 has found evidence of accusations regarding Cornerstone Baptist Church, going back to 1993.

According to one news report, the accusations include baptizing kids without parents' permission; deceiving kids; forcing a child to disrobe before baptizing her; and sexual assaults of teenagers by a pastor's son. Church leaders did not respond to a request for comment from NEWSCHANNEL 13 Sunday, but in a statement Friday denied any wrongdoing.

NEWSCHANNEL 13's Marshall Zelinger first told you Friday that according to some parents, church members frightened kids by aggressively approaching kids going to and from school, preaching to them, and asking them to attend the church. In one case, a church member allegedly asked a child to enter a van. In the Friday statement, church leaders denied knowing the driver of the van ...

According to the report mentioned above, Charles Miller, Jr. was the church's music director and pastor's son when he received a 10-year prison sentence. He pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual abuse of a child by a person in a position of trust. He was released a year ago, and now lives in Oklahoma.

http://www.krdo.com/Global/story.asp?S=10294930

... The King James Bible is the basis for every doctrine we hold to be true. We believe it is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word ... Because of this, we reject any other version (so-called) of the Bible ... http://www.cbc-colspgs.com/our-church/doctrine/

the King James text as uniquely authoritative

Back in the 1970s, the Episcopal chaplain at my university told about how, when he was a child, some fundamentalists convinced him that he needed to be baptized again because his baptism as an infant wasn't really a baptism, just a "christening."

by fleeing with them in his car to the river. But of course, Homer saved them at the last possible moment.

Television: "a vast wasteland."

Gee, looky who's actually recruiting by force here. Nasty, creepy, pree-vert wackogelicals AGAIN, is anyone surprised.

I didn't think so.

We queers get volunteers. Happy ones. We don't even have to advertise. We always know where the best parties are. Just ask one of us.

...that pisses me off. If this happened anywhere else other than the Fundie Cesspool of Colorado Springs, somebody's ass would be sitting in a cell about now.

It's all hellfire, blood, and despair.

http://www.cbc-colspgs.com/media/video/yc-2009

Makes me wonder what they're saying to the kids they pinch off the street. Imagine being accosted by a blaze-eyed freak talking that weird shit from the video. A 7 year old wouldn't know whether he was going to church or about to be hacked up by a serial killer.

that pisses me off. Honestly, 99.99% of us gayfolks mind our business and keep to ourselves. We'd thank the wackogelicals to do the same. We're willing to live and let live, but the wackogelicals? NooOOOOOooooo, they have to aggravate positively EVERYone around them. They're not satisfied unless everyone is as miserable as they are.

Baptists believe in the age of accountability (can't make decisions to join a church or get baptized until you're old enough to understand what you're agreeing to), which is why they don't do infant baptisms.

So, not only are they going against the Bible they believe in (KJV only, apparently), but they're going against their own beliefs? That isn't a Baptist church--it's a cult with some crazy pastor/layperson in charge. The Baptist leadership needs to shut that sucker down.

...the Baptizers are all independent-contractors-for-the-Lord. They have no "Central Authority" over their doctrines in the end. And the Southern Baptist Convention is losing so many members they can't afford to hold people to a single doctrine. Hell, they're so bad off that they've been "forced" to consider trying to do outreach to African-Americans (I live in the city which serves as their headquarters, because otherwise I wouldn't know any of this shit).

So insofar as biblical matters are concerned; they can pretty much believe what they want to believe. And they can, and do -- ignore the stuff in there that they want to ignore. Like all that shit about loving folks, and like that.

- Which is one of the main reasons why its all BS....

They don't want to risk losing that tithe money, so they just sacrifice their flock to the wolves? Why am I not surprised . . .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x164647

That article is disturbing on soooo many levels. *shudder*

There are different varieties of Baptists, ranging from liberal (The American Baptist Church) to conservative (The Southern Baptists), but there are also a lot of free-lance cults that call themselves Baptists.

There's a definite advantage to "organized" religion. About twenty or thirty years ago, the priest at one of the Episcopal churches in Minneapolis not only went charismatic but also started telling anyone who objected to the clique of speaking-in-tongues types he was fostering that they would go to hell for "blaspheming against the Holy Spirit."

Someone complained to the bishop, and that was the end of that priest's career.

It's a common name amongst Southern Baptist churches, from what I've seen.

Still, you're right--if they're independent, or if the higher-ups are worried about losing tithe money more than they are about their flock being led astray, it sounds like nothing will happen other than the usual when a charismatic pastor starts doing crazy stuff like this (it's a bell curve, and eventually, the church dies out as people see the truth).

out of that church. Kidnapping charges. Child endangerment. Throw anything and everything at them.

That's just vile. And scary.

need to see some serious jail time. Last I checked, kidnapping is illegal.

- have a "kidnapping exception" if the only ransom the criminals are asking for, is your soul.....

...they're operating from a higher legal perspective. And, no doubt, if and when someone is arrested they'll decry that it is they who are being victimized here. And then demand that we respect their religious freedom.

Or some other similar religious BS argument. They have quite a few stupid arguments to choose from.....

- Reply #38 was supposed to have been in reply to # 34.