A black news website, Black Christian News Network One, published an anonymous letter warning Marcus Hayes not to pastor First Baptist Church of Naples, Florida. The warning included implied threats to Hayes’ children should he pastor the Southern Baptist congregation.
Because he was underqualified according to the job requirements posted on the church’s website, had favorably RT’d Democratic presidential candidates, endorsed a Social Justice book called ‘Woke,’ and said Same-Sex Attraction was not a sin, 19% of First Baptist Church in Naples, Florida, voted to reject Marcus Hayes as its new pastor. He required an 85% favorable vote to be hired. The church’s junior varsity leadership, intent on hiring a black man to please the Southern Baptist Convention’s president, JD Greear, then accused the dissenters of racism and began to kick them out via deacon fiat without due process. They announced a re-vote to hire Hayes on Sunday, after kicking out their opposition in the name of “unity.”
The initial claims of racism – which came from the head of the pastor search committee who was busted for a pay-to-play scandal and racketeering the last time he handled a personnel department – were picked up on by the woke SBC establishment who took the claim as gospel.
Black Christian News One then published the open (but anonymous) letter to Hayes with the ominous threats to his children, which the author presumed would present at the Gospel-preaching, Bible-believing congregation.
In the open letter warning Hayes not to pastor a ‘white church,’ they write…
Pastor Marcus Hayes, you have done everything that the Southern Baptist Convention requires of any potential pastor. You have earned this prestigious, wonderful job opportunity. That is one of the reasons why you are in the position you are in at the Southern Baptist Convention. If they offer you the job again the truth is you could handle the pressure and the pain. It would be harder for your wife than for you but she, with your help, would be able to make it through. But your children would catch hell in that situation growing up. There are so many things that would come against them in strange, clandestine ways that I do not have time to list them but it will affect them for the rest of their lives in a negative way. Your taking this job, in my opinion, is not worth that. You know the old saying ‘children can be cruel’ and they will actually repeat the words, attitude, and spirit of their wicked, racist parents, and some will intentionally try to hurt and some won’t intentionally try to hurt, but it will still hurt nonetheless and probably for a lifetime.
Of course, looking at the pastorate as something that someone “earns” is profane. Neither is the pastorate something you are “entitled” to like some kind of welfare check.
Hayes did not meet the qualifications set by the search committee and posted on their website (he was not a lead pastor of a church of 1200 for more than five years, did not have the requisite experience, etc). And furthermore, it’s questionable that Hayes’ position on the Executive Committee of the SBC has more to do with his qualifications than his skin color (far more qualified people with a lighter melanin count are not on the committee).
To threaten Hayes with “clandestine” oppression or abuse of his sweet children at the hands of a loving church with an honorable and inclusive track record is hardly godly. It is inhumane and despicable prejudgment of a church the author does not know. It is presuming the worst of people because of the pigment of their skin or because 19% of the church cared about qualifications rather than color.
This type of fear-mongering, making vicarious threats against children of mixed ethnicity on the part of an entire race of people and God-loving church is beyond the pale. It is more than race-baiting. It is more than racialism. It is racism.
