REPORTS FROM THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION
(Video )
June 14, 1999
A PLEA to Mothers, Fathers, and Grandparents:
Malachi 2.13 "because the Lord
has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt
treacherously; yet she is your companion, and the wife of your covenant."
Malachi 2:15 "let
none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth."
Zechariah 9:9 "Rejoice greatly, O daughter
of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; behold your King comes to you: he is just, and
having salvation; lowly and riding upon an ass.
The well being of Mothers and their Children must be the preeminent obligation of any society interested in
its future.
Yet America, the most powerful,
rich, and democratic nation on earth, remains wracked with wounds and betrayal caused by
anger and violence due to Drug and Alcohol Addiction and Physical and Mental Abuse to and
of our Mothers and their Children.
Yes my friend, a Disease infects our
Nation, yet the causes have become but words of denial and blame; a focus on more laws
against the very Mother’s and Children whom these acts are perpetrated against.
We hear “less guns and violence
off our airwaves and out of our theaters” as if these two items will correct what is
a moral and terminal disease that has spread to the very core of our future: our Youth!
We hear we should return to the
past, as if the past was any better, a place where we hung people of color off trees of
beauty while singing our praises to a God that seems to be absent in the lives of
America’s Youth!
And when 14,000, Honored, Southern
Baptist Messengers attended the annual Southern Baptist Convention at the Georgia Dome in
Atlanta, they were given few options as to making real changes.
These Messengers, Honored men and
women from the far and wide of our nation, were participating at the Annual Southern
Baptist Convention. A Convention, may we add, where policy and endeavor are determined.
Yet, on the entire list of social issues, only one item rang the loudest: a plea to for a
reduction of violence in entertainment.
According to Richard
Land, president of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission [as
reported in the Atlanta Journal Constitution ]:
"These people who are pimping this kind of behavior to
our children need to be called to account, and we need to be called to account for not
having stopped this kind of emotional abuse of our children."
The Lighthouse
Sanctuary of Youth Foundation [ http://youthofamerica.com
] and The National Alliance for Family Court Justice [ http://NAFCJ.youthofamerica.org ] applaud the Southern Baptists' Convention and Richard Land for their interest in
our children. Yet, why begin at the top? Why not call for real change?
LSYF and NAFCJ have been advocating
for an end to the apathy of wholesale violence inflicted upon our nation's children from a
widespread variety of sources; sources we rarely see—unless confronted by the truth
through horrible situations like those which recently occurred in Colorado and Georgia!
Yes, my fellow Americans,
violence, abuse and apathy begins in the home through domestic violence, child sexual
abuse, physical and emotional abuse and neglect . . .
It continues in our schools
through teasing, blaming, neglect and verbal abuse. . .
Then is fostered through
government agencies paid through federal grants who fail miserably in protecting our
children. . .
Yes, our society's children
services, juvenile detention centers and juvenile and family courts play the largest part
of the whole. The buck does NOT stop there!
And yes, then, finally, the
violent images in the media.
Can you not see?
The facts are that the above
“In House” abuse go hand in hand in creating a violent, suicidal, and occasionally homicidal adversarial
environment for the youth across America.
Brothers and sisters, have we
entrenched ourselves in our national apathy so far that like frogs, dropped in a pot of
warm water, don't notice the water gradually getting hotter until it's boiling and too
late.
Twenty-nine percent of our nation's
youth live below the poverty level, and, even in America's middle-income homes, a complex
combination of epidemic neglect, verbal and physical abuse is causing adolescents to act
out of frustration and pain.
In our nation's schools, students
often endure a double-whammy of abuse by some teachers and administrators who ignore or
are untrained in conflict resolution and positive discipline techniques and allow bullying
and sexual harassment by students.
Has our society, like those frogs,
reached the boiling point – where students are picking up guns and shooting us; our
children . . .even in our schools?
Are you aware that Mothers are
losing their homes and custody of their children in record numbers to an unlikely
assortment of violent abusers, child molesters, child pornographers, habitual DUI
offenders, convicted drug traffickers, registered sex offenders and convicted violent
felons, while we look to the past or to the future with no care to the real cause of this
Trial and Tribulation in the present?
And, while YOUR home may be peaceful
and dynamic, many Mothers seeking help in protecting themselves and their Children are
routinely forced into court sanctioned situations with violent offenders and often wind up
further abused… and even murdered along with their children?
In the past, the Southern Baptist
Convention and the Christian Coalition have cried and implied that the entire obligation
of the body was to family, yet why is not the power of the body directed towards
meaningful obligations through genuine solution?
While leading psychologists, social
workers and family violence experts advise mothers to flee for battered women shelters,
and advocate that women who don't should have their children taken into protective State
custody and placed in foster homes, the body denies or hides from the truth!
Violent abusers and child molesters
rarely repent or are rehabilitated.
In
support of our plea for help for our nations youth, we ask you to visit our sites and to
get involved!
The Lighthouse
Sanctuary of Youth Foundation and The National Alliance for Family Court Justice pray and urge Richard Land and the
Southern Baptist Convention to put global child abuse
issues on your plates and on the table, in the memory of the massacred Columbine students,
their murderers, in behalf of abused children everywhere, and our own beloved children who
will have to learn to live together in harmony in the coming Millennium.
Micah 2:9-10 You've forced the women of my
people from their nice houses; you've taken my glory from their children forever. Get up
and leave. This is not your place of rest anymore. You have made this place unclean, and
it is doomed to destruction.
Matthew 18: 5-9 Whoever receives one little
child like this, in my name receives me. Whoever causes one of these little ones who
believe in me harm , it would be better for him a millstone were hung around his neck and
drown in the depths of the sea.
HOME: NAFCJ LSYF/YOA
©LSYF/YOA
1999
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