In response to a woman’s Facebook post about items being stolen from her home, Mark Guy, pastor of Independent Community Church in Millry, Alabama, said:
Need to go back to the old days and start hanging again, crime will stop when they see people rot off rope in every town.
Community outrage was swift, forcing the good pastor to “apologize.” Here’s his apology (which is no longer available on Facebook):
It has been blown way out of proportion. I was watching a western at the time of the post. In the old days they hung people for stealing. I read her post and made the comment, had not one thing to do with race. Might not should have but I did.
In other words, John Wayne made him do it. 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
This reminds me of the time I was attending a Christian youth retreat at the summer home of a very wealthy Christian family. This palace was located on some of the most expensive real estate in the state. I overheard the owner of this home say that someone had broken into her home and stolen a carpet. Her take from this was that this is why we need capital punishment. I remember being appalled that a Christian person who was richer than most of us could ever imagine could so casually support the execution of someone who took one of her material possessions. I assumed this would be after she turned the other cheek.
Nice not-pology, Pastor Mark.
It’s interesting how fixated people on the right (Christian right and regular right) on protecting property (white people’s property, that is). Look how they have rallied around Kyle Rittenhouse, the punk kid who at 17 went to another state, got a gun, and went to “protect” other white people’s property, killing 2 people in the process.
Regarding the reverence of Westerns, I highly recommend “Jesus and John Wayne” by religious studies scholar Kristin Kobes Du Mez. She really digs into the intersection of toxic masculinity and evangelical masculinity.
WWJWD… What Would John Wayne Do. It’s much more accurate to how Evangelicals see things.
https://kfor.com/news/local/max-townsend-sentenced-to-consecutive-life-sentences-for-running-over-killing-3-moore-high-school-students/ This is in regards to the claim by the Alabama pastor claiming that watching a John Wayne Western caused him to to make a remark about bringing back hanging in regards to someone’s property being stolen. This reminds me of an apocryphal story I heard that happened a year ago. Some man who shall remain nameless here was sitting in a bar . He was a divorced backslidden Baptist whose only daughter was a cross country runner. In the same bar was some drunken man moaning about his son named Cody having died in a motor vehicle accident. The father of the female cross country runner then remembered some incident of Three cross country runners in Oklahoma being killed due to some derelict by the name of Max Townsend. https://www.news9.com/story/5ec5a1be2ac80d591f261df7/suspect-in-deadly-hitandrun-at-moore-high-school-has-lengthy-criminal-past This Max Townsend had a son named Cody who had died in an accident just prior to this Max Townsend running over and killing three high school cross country runners. The father of the female cross country runner remembered that incident. The father of this deceased son by the name of Cody left the bar and he was followed by the father of the female cross country runner. The bartender of the tavern soon heard blood-curdling screams. The bartender rushed out and he saw lying on the parking lot the man who had recently lost his son Cody in a traffic accident. Both of his hands had been badly damaged and the bartender saw his ice mallet had been used by the father of the female cross country to smash the other man’s hands to prevent him from driving. The father of the female cross country runner ran from the police, only to be struck down and killed by a speeding beer truck. A search by the police of the deceased man’s house showed that in his VCR player was a tape of the Movie Casino. The tape had been stopped in the scene of the movie where Robert DeNiro has a casino employee use a hammer to smash the right hand of a card cheat.