Baptist view on women ministers based on selective text
The Southern Baptist Convention seeking to expel churches with women ministers based on Biblical text is extremely selective, embodying intolerance.
To be consistent, the Convention should, it also being in the Bible, be equally upset about those who eat shellfish or mix materials; Leviticus 11:12 prohibits eating lobsters, clams, oysters, eels and other sea creatures not having [both] fins and scales. Leviticus 19:19 commands, “…do not put on a garment woven with two different kinds of thread.”
In contrast to devotion to ancient texts and condemning those not accepting each word, sometimes misunderstood secular humanists welcome all, regardless of gender, reject supernaturalism and adopt non-dogmatic human reasoning and secular ethics.
We might all treat each other better if not battling over writings from well before the collapse of Rome.
KONRAD HAYASHI, DECATUR
Unlikely Congress will expand power of EPA
A recent letter writer laments the Sackett decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet, there are at least two groups that are equally happy about the decision: 1.) people like the Sacketts, who simply wanted to place some fill dirt in their backyard to prevent occasional flooding; and 2.) attorneys and other people who are fed up with agencies’ abuse of power.
The Clean Water Act came about in part because the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire. Enough was enough. Congress acted.
The letter writer can draft a bill designed to expand the power of the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers as he wishes and submit it to members of Congress as I recently did with respect to a bill designed to gradually push back the Social Security normal retirement age and the Medicare eligibility age. I never received a response from any of the many members of Congress to whom I sent it.
Maybe he’ll do better, but I doubt it. Things tend to go as-is with respect to Congress absent a full-blown emergency. Then, it’s often too late to reverse the damage. But, they stayed in power and that’s all most of them really want.
ALLEN BUCKLEY, ATLANTA
