                                
This is a article written By Sean Reilly the Anniston Star News
Paper Religion Writer for the Anniston Al News Paper.

        Southern Baptist attack on Masons creates a furor

ALEXANDRIA- For James Watts, a Freemason and a Southern
Baptist,"it hurt real bad." Coming out of Father's Day worship
services at United Fellowship Baptist last month, Watts says, he
found an anti-Masonic tract on his car's windshield. "I asked the
pastor and the (other) deacons; they wouldn't do nothing about
it," says Watts, who was himself a deacon. "Said that I was
worshipping Satan because I was a Mason." Watts now attends
another church, one of several Mason to have left United
Fellowship. The church's pastor, the Rev. Dennis Phillips,
declined to comment. If Watts' experience so far seems to be
unusual, there's no doubt that the Southern Baptist questioning
of Masonry's compatibility with Christianity has struck a raw
nerve in some quarters. "This one has created a kind of furor in
the church, and it will be fun to see the way it ends up...,"said
Dr. Norman Dasinger, a Baptist and a member of Jacksonville's
Masonic Lodge 42, one of nine in Calhoun County. "Masonry may
have served a useful purpose in the church simply because
they(fundamentalist) have made such a blunder." LED BY A Texas
physician, the Southern Baptist Convention over whelmingly
approved a probe into Masonry at last month 's annual meeting in
Indianapolis, Ind. The inquiry has been since turned over to the
Interfaith Witness Department of the SBC's Home Mission Board in
Atlanta. Department head Gary Leazer could not be for comment
this week. But he recently told the Baptist Press that critics
had focused on 19th-century Masonic writers. Some of them
emphasized Universalism, the idea that all men are"saved." But
such views don't necessarily reflect current Masonic thinking.
"Modern (Masonic) writers have not been given the opportunity to
respond and I'm going to give that opportunity," Leazer said.
"It's going to be a balanced, objective scholarly study."
With almost five million members worldwide, Freemasonry is among
the world's oldest and largest fraternal societies. Formally
organized in the mid-1700s, it aims to promote brotherhood and
morality among its members. Although members take an oath to
maintain lodge secrets, in reality the secrets leaked out ago and
can be found in books at most public libraries. The fraternity
boast many distinguished sons, ranging from George Washington to
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale. The highest order of Masons, the
Shiners, is well known  for its charitable activities.
BUT THE SBC inquiry is not the first time Masons have been in hot
water with organized religion. The Roman Catholic church
condemned it in the 19th Century; several denominations such as
the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, still oppose Masonry,
because the organization allegedly promotes salvation though good
works along. Dasinger calls such opposition the product of
ignorance. "We're concerned, but we're not overly concerned,"
Dasinger says of the SBC inquiry. "There have been attacks from
misinformed people for a long long time."He flatly denies that
Masonry is in any way Satanic or occult, or even a religion.
Although members have to profess a belief in a Supreme Being,
they are then told that every man's religion is his own business.
In place of that tolerance, Dasinger says, fundamentalists are
trying "to control people's thought" contrary to traditional
Baptist freedom of thought. Behind the SBC resolution was Dr.
James Holly, a Beaumount, Texas, doctor and author of a recent
book titled"The Southern Baptist Convention and Freemasonry."The
book "does not pretend that the only problem hindering revival is
Freemasonry," Holy writes. "It does recognize, however, that the
leaven of the corrupt the church of the lord Jesus Christ and
will sap her vitality." AMONG OTHER things, Holy recommends that
all Masons be banned from pastorship and church leadership roles.
No pastor or layman should participate in a Masonic funeral,
Holly writes, and all Southern Baptist churches founded by
Masonic lodges should have"public ceremonies of repentance and of
praying the blood and the Name of the Lord." While the SBC's
decision to throw two North Carolina churches over their stance
on homosexuality got most of the media attention last month, the
Mason issue has far more potential to drive the already fractured
SBC further apart. A estimated 400,000 to 500,000 Southern
Baptists are Masons. About 14 percent of Southern Baptist
preachers have been or are lodge members. The letters page of
last week's issue of "The Alabama Baptist" was filled with
correspondence from distressed Masons. And in Baptist-dominated
Calhoun County, there are some 1,000 Masons out of 55,000-60,000
in Alabama. Dasinger expects the Masons to ride out this tempest
as they've  ridden out others. For the SBC, the issue may not go
away so easily. Although many Baptists seem either uninterested
or hope the furor will die quietly, Holly has already indicated
that if the Interfaith Witness Department's report doesn't
condemn Freemasonry, he'll ask SBC delegates to do so at next
year's meeting in Houston, Texas.

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