Posted on 07/30/2012 4:16:00 PM PDT by Morgana
A rally will be held Monday night in Crystal Springs, Mississippi after a black couple wasn’t allowed to get married at their church because of their race.
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The Wilsons were told they couldn’t wed at the town's First Baptist Church because it goes against tradition since a black couple had never been married there in its 129-year history.
Charles Wilson and his fiance, Te'Andrea, wanted to get married there, but church members got upset. The paster then asked the couple to take their wedding elsewhere.
"This had never been done here before, so it was setting a new precedent, and there were those who reacted to that," said Pastor Stan Weatherford.
"All we wanted to do in the eyes of God was to be man and wife in a church where we thought we felt loved,” said Charles Wilson.
Pastor Weatherford presided over the couple’s wedding at a nearby church. He says he wanted to avoid controversy and protect the couple.
(Excerpt) Read more at wjla.com ...
“The pastor should have said, “Guess what, folks: we have a new tradition! Anyone who attends this church can get married here!””
Most Baptist Pastors serve at the pleasure of the Board of Elders. They typically live in church owned parsonage. The pastor is hostage to the whims of the church leadership.
>So it's 1950 again?<
In the 1950s local journalists and their copy editors knew how to spell pastor.
I question the veracity of this column. Were the bride and groom members of the church?
Oh, then I can see that’s being a problem for the pastor.
Maybe other posters are right about there being more to the story. For instance, if the church building is a desirable historic venue, the congregation should be within their rights to say, “We only hold weddings for church members.” However, an earlier article I read said the couple attended the church.
What part did the Obama administration reelection operation play in this?
Where's Holder?
If this story is true, it’s disgusting. Shame on the parishioners. Shame on the pastor.
Attending a Baptist church does not make you a member. You either have to be baptized in that church or join by letter from another church that states you have been saved and baptized by their church OR you can join by a statement of faith which states you have been saved and baptized. Just attending for 50 years does not make you a member.
I honestly do not know if our church constitution allows only for members to get married in the church or not and I honestly do not remember a single couple getting married in our church that were not members.
The church constitution rules though if it states members only then it is members only. Our Pastor may perform a wedding at another church or at a secular place that rents out for weddings and receptions.
Even ignoring the racism, since when does “not ever having done something before” constitute a “tradition”? I’ve never eaten yogurt but that doesn’t make it a freaking tradition.
hmmmmmmm....As presented, the church is way wrong on this.
Should have just said we only marry church members in good standing.
So I guess there's a kind of deniability here in that those people aren't going to identify themselves and, if they are identified, they can always say that race wasn't the reason, that it was just that they weren't "our kind of people," that this wasn't the sort of wedding you wanted to have here, or something of that sort.
The Rev. Stan Weatherford is a gutless coward if he allowed the membership to force his hand here. He should have told off the members who complained to him in the first place and placed the right choice over the whims of a few peckerwoods.
Of course, if nobody had ever been married in the church, it might explain alot. The article never says anybody had been, merely no black couple had been married there in 129 years.
I hear bits and pieces of church saga from some of GF’s family that attend the neighborhood Baptist Church. I’d bet a month’s paycheck that the elders board there would be hiring a new pastor if the current one crossed into any cultural territory that broke tradition.
http://www.wlbt.com/story/19125864/black-wedding-banned-by-baptist-church
http://www.wlbt.com/category/240213/video-landing-page?clipId=7556244&autostart=true
And you don’t think the community should make a statement about the church’s position?
A Black heterosexual couple who attend that church can't get married in it because no Black couple had ever been married in it before? Why did it admit them as members if they were going to have to go elsewhere to get married?
Are the members of that church against the idea of Blacks procreating or something?
As a very loud and unapologetic defender of poor Southern rural whites, I'm going to say something I will probably regret later, but here it goes: some stereotypes really are true.
Have you ever lived in the South?
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