Texas Baptists (at least the folks at Hyde Baptist in Austin, Texas) don’t seem to be aware of the distinction.
Austin Area Interreligious Ministries, the city’s largest interfaith organization, announced Thursday that its annual Thanksgiving celebration Sunday had to be moved because Hyde Park Baptist Church objected to non-Christians worshipping on its property.
The group learned Wednesday that the rental space at the church-owned Quarries property in North Austin was no longer available because Hyde Park leaders had discovered that non-Christians, Muslims in particular, would be practicing their faith there. The event, now in its 23rd year, invites Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Bahais and others to worship together.
Organizers had booked the gymnasium at the Quarries in July and made the interfaith aspect clear to Quarries staff at that time, said Simone Talma Flowers, Interreligious Ministries’ interim director.
Several Muslim groups were acting as this year’s hosts for the event. Kent Jennings, associate pastor of administration at Hyde Park, released a statement Thursday that said church leaders received a postcard about the service Monday and only then realized that it “was not a Christian oriented event.”
The postcard also “promised space for Muslim Maghrib prayer and revealed that the event was co-hosted by the Central Texas Muslimaat, the Forum of Muslims for Unity, and the Institute of Interfaith Dialog,” according to Hyde Park’s statement.
“Although individuals from all faiths are welcome to worship with us at Hyde Park Baptist Church, the church cannot provide space for the practice of these non-Christian religions on church property,” the statement said. “Hyde Park Baptist Church hopes that the AAIM and the community of faith will understand and be tolerant of our church’s beliefs that have resulted in this decision.”
Yeah. Be tolerant of our intolerance. Sure.
On the bright side, it provided an opportunity for some other folks to step up.
With hundreds of people expected to attend and only a few days to find another site, Muslim organizer Shams Siddiqi said they couldn’t find another facility. That’s when leaders at Congregation Beth Israel, Austin’s largest synagogue, offered to host the celebration.
“Symbolically, that’s a very good thing,” Siddiqi said of the joint Jewish-Muslim endeavor.
Indeed.
(via Les)
🙂
When I lived in Austin, I lived near the Hyde Park Baptist Church. It was a growing church with something like 10,000 members that was located in the middle of a quiet residential neighborhood. They had two services on Sundays. While I was there, the church bought a bunch of houses near their building and demolished them in order to construct a multi-story parking structure. You can imagine that the neighbors were a little bothered by the change to the character of their neighborhood. (I never understood why the city zoning laws didn’t prohibit a parking structure in a residential neighborhood.) Even after the parking structure was built, Sunday mornings were stressful for those who lived near the church due to the large numbers of churchgoers who would park on narrow neighborhood streets. Those churchgoers were not always considerate or respectful of those who lived on those streets, and residents’ cars were sometimes locked in by churchgoers’ cars parked on either side or by churchgoers who sometimes parked in front of residents’ driveways. As I recall, the church was reportedly not very cooperative in dealing with the issue, basically indicating that it wasn’t the church’s problem.
Austin was a nice place to live while I was there, but I thought the Hyde Park Baptist Church acted like a bully. As a result, I’m not too surprised to learn that they are also narrow-minded.