Over the weekend, The Dallas Morning News blessed us with a pay-walled profile of First Baptist Dallas's Robert Jeffress, no stranger to the Friends of Unfair Park. And while briefly touching upon some of the pastor's more, oh, let's say controversial offerings in recent years, for the most part Scott Parks's profile was light and bright and in keeping with its thesis that "he swings a sharp sword as the city's leading conservative culture warrior."
That didn't sit well with at least one local religious leader: Rev. Terry L. Zimmerman, the pastor at Midway Hills Christian Church on Midway and Royal, which bills itself as "an open and affirming congregation" welcome to all comers. I was going to call Zimmerman about the sign out in front of his church, which my wife espied this morning, but discovered I didn't need to. I found on his blog an open letter to the editors of The News, in which he writes:
If the intent was to celebrate the fact that a huge Dallas congregation owes its success to intolerance of those who are unlike them or see the world differently, I am appalled, frustrated and more than a little upset. If the intent is one of irony -- an illustration of cause and effect of such judgments when literally placed side by side another article about the results of such a world view -- I am more sympathetic. But I also fear, if irony is the intent, most people didn't and won't get it.Read the whole thing here.
