Welcome to the Family?

[pjerwin]

Appointed in January and formally installed in March, American Baptists at Judson Memorial Church (a federated ABC/USA-UCC congregation) welcomed their new pastor, an ordained UCC minister. Part of her story appeared in the latest issue of Tikkun magazine.

Ed Pettibone forum moderator; PJ, I have deleted this "part of her story" because it is copyrighted material. It come from a magazne of very limited circulation. And by design the article is not avaiable on line with out registering on that magazines website. Our rule #3 states; Full-length quoting of previously printed material, with the exception of news stories, is not recommended. If a story or source is quote verbatim, credit must be given to the author and news source in order to avoid the appearance of plagiarism. However, news stories from websites which expressly prohibit copying and online distribution may not be copied in full on the BaptistLife.Com site.


For our participants; The part of this new pastors story in question, was her explaing 19 years after the fact why she as a married woman 39 years of age and with three children in dipers had an abrtion.

She concludes this part of her story by saying; "I am a 58-year-old sexual, mature woman. That's who I am. I had an abortion. I am not bragging and I am not apologizing.

Abortion that is legal, safe and rare is the best policy conceivable for men and women and for mature, moral sexuality"

[pjerwin]

[pjerwin]

[Ed Pettibone]

[pastormikejordan]

[pjerwin]

[pastormikejordan]

[pjerwin]

[pjerwin]

If the proposition of this thread was to make the point that Schaper is "an example of what the ABC left is like" I would have said so. Instead, you read what Dennis McFadden wrote elsewhere and projected that onto this thread and you haven't been able to get it out of your head. But even at that, Dennis wasn't saying that either: he was saying that Schaper and Judson are representative of AWAB and the far left of ABC/USA.

It is beside the point that there are ABs at Judson; that Judson and its members are counted in AB denominational statistics; and that there have been a good number of ABC/USA leaders over the years from Judson. I was simply interested in what American Baptists on the ABC Family Roundtable thought about this pastor's view of her self-described murder because "...American Baptists at Judson Memorial Church (a federated ABC/USA-UCC congregation) welcomed [her as] their new pastor." Is that inaccurate?

But finally you did get closer to the point when you observed, "An ABC recognized pastor can be brought up on charges by their region and can be disciplined if they are found to be behaving in an unethical manor." Even at that, I am not interested in whether or not denominational bodies have the authority to do anything about this pastor or her church, but whether or not you believe what she did -- according to her self-described understanding of her own actions -- is ethical. Is that not a fair question?

[Haruo]