CHRISTIANITY IS DYING

Christianity is a dying religion in the United States.

In many churches, the demographics skew ever older and grayer, with schisms on issues of the day, such as gay marriage.

When church bodies, from Methodists to Catholics, gather for their global conclaves, the agenda is now more likely to be shaped by population clusters far removed from where these churches were founded centuries (or millennia) ago.

Variants of the “American Christianity is dying” theme can be heard in pulpits and read in magazine articles, and it’s hard to imagine what turns that around.

Jacksonville is no exception. Those who’ve been here for some time will remember the stranglehold that First Baptist Church held on this town decades back.

That FBC grip is still significant, but less so every day as new populations surge in, brought to Jacksonville by corporate relocations, military transfers, or a feeling that Jacksonville offers more opportunities than their stifling small towns.

Those new transplants don’t have institutional memory, and the lack of that is mirrored in some corners of the media, especially television, staffed by folks here for a year or two before they (if all goes well, and they’re pretty enough) move to a bigger market. Looking at you, Victor Blackwell!

Remember 2012? Back then, the watered-down version of the HRO bill was voted down, 10-9 in Jacksonville City Council. And First Baptist Church invited those 10 lions of the legislative branch to stand up to be applauded at one Sunday service, as any interested party can see on YouTube.

The pews: half-full. And many councilmembers, including church member Clay Yarborough and current referendum-pusher Bill Gulliford, had somewhere better to be than basking in the healing balm of FBC.

Last year, during the HRO Community Conversation at Edward Waters College, the good white folks of First Baptist Church had an existential problem. They didn’t want to drive to and (gasp) park their cars at EWC. So FBC shuttled them there from its Downtown Jax parking garage.

It was amusing to see them filing out, on cue, before the program ended, to where their shuttles waited.

This illustrates the problem FBC has. It would like to run this town. But the numbers aren’t really in its favor anymore.

Luckily, there are useful idiots working on its behalf, at least in terms of the issues church members value.

We see it on the HRO issue, specifically with the DefendJaxFamilies.com website.

Thank God for random, unsigned websites stepping into the void and defending Jacksonville families when no one else will.

“Defend Jax Families is a continuation of the 2012 Protect First Liberties effort, which helped defeat the 2012 LGBT favoritism ordinance,” claims this outfit, which asserts that “Jacksonville is the next city in the crosshairs of the national LGBT attack machine … the unholy LGBT alliance.”

The site also promulgates a series of fallacious farragoes that are nothing new to those following this debate, such as “the morality and the social fabric of the Community will decline” and, of course, “men alleging a female gender will be free to enter women and children’s, dressing, locker, shower and restrooms in public facilities — an unstoppable crime opportunity, which will be exploited by sexual predators.”

As in Houston, Texas, the key to this effort is to whip the poorly educated into a froth of confusion.

Speaking of Houston, a pointman for the anti-LGBT effort locally is Pastor Ken “Overseer” Adkins, notable because months back, Adkins (after Folio Weekly Magazine contributor Shelton Hull wrote an article about some initiative of his) made a lot of public noise about supporting HRO expansion.

He gave an impassioned speech in front of City Council, and an equally impassioned Facebook post, along the lines of “Shelton Hull helped me see the error of my ways on the HRO.”

Now? Adkins is gay-bashing with the best of them, referring to members of the LGBT community as “sissies” and worse, and referring to local activist Jimmy Midyette as “Massur Jimmy,” in reference to the Human Rights Campaign contracting with Pastor RL Gundy (a former opponent of the measure) for “political consulting” work.

He also has made a practice of libeling Councilman Tommy Hazouri in Facebook memes, depicting Hazouri watching people using the bathroom, and falsely quoting Hazouri as saying “I love homosexuals” because “I like to watch.”

Is this in “defense” of Jax families?

As mainline Christianity dies out, we see the replacements. The “rock and roll” churches that attempt “gay conversion therapy.” And the storefront preacher charlatans, along with the “respectable” preachers in Jacksonville’s worst neighborhoods who don’t minister where they live, but instead roll in in their Rolls Royces to collect the tithes.

In this context, the HRO debate can be seen as another burst of empty symbolism, hucksters pushing a fake version of “family values” that never really existed, to justify oppression of people who definitely exist.

And the worst part? Odds are that a significant proportion of the cowards on Council will legitimize this rancid and rank BS.