By Kevin Foley / The Marietta Daily Journal
This is an abbreviated version of the story. For the full story, click here.
Did you know the Baptist denomination was founded because of religious intolerance?
It’s true. Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony by establishment religious authorities for spreading “diverse, new and dangerous opinions” (I like him already!).
Williams moved to what is now Rhode Island, where he established Providence Plantation and founded the first Baptist Church in America in 1638.
This history is helpful in light of what took place Monday night at the Kennesaw City Council meeting, where proceedings began with the Pledge of Allegiance, which promises everyone “liberty and justice.”
It seems a group of Muslims is seeking a city permit to establish the Suffa Dawat Center in a half-occupied strip mall on Jiles Road. There, they say, they will conduct worship services for 24 months until they find a permanent home. The applicants expect 10 to 20 congregants at five daily prayer gatherings and perhaps 80 to 100 at Friday afternoon prayer services.
There are non-Muslims in Kennesaw who believe this is a bad idea. Many of them showed up at the council meeting to voice their displeasure.
“It’s bigger than just zoning and parking,” said one speaker. “This is bigger than right and wrong. This is not a religious debate.”
Sorry. It is a religious debate, one the Kennesaw city council refused to hear. Instead, public comments were confined to whether there was sufficient parking and if traffic studies had been completed.
“It’s a purely technical hearing on the appropriate land use for a piece of property in the city of Kennesaw,” said Mayor Mark Mathews.
Earlier in the evening, council members breezed over parking and traffic matters before approving a 141-unit townhouse complex and all the automobile traffic it will generate.
Then, for 90 interminable minutes, the very same city council picked over the details of parking and traffic at the proposed prayer center.
Councilman Jim Sebastian, evidently wishing these particular Muslims would just go to Providence Plantation, asked if there were Islamic places of worship in nearby communities.
Sebastian is not alone.
Encouraging his congregation to attend the Monday council meeting to voice their opposition to a Muslim place of worship, a local Baptist pastor told his flock last week, “The logical and demonstrated outcome, over time, of the formation of a mosque … will be problematic for our community.”
I tried to contact the pastor to learn why peaceful, praying Muslims would be a problem for peaceful, praying Baptists. He didn’t get back to me, nor did he speak at Monday’s council meeting.
So I e-mailed the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, a lobbying group in Washington, D.C., to find out why followers of Islam are a problem for any Baptist community in America.
“Baptists, at our best, have sought religious liberty — for others as much as ourselves,” J. Brent Walker, the BJC’s executive director, wrote me. “Baptists fought for constitutional protections … We Baptists should no more object to establishing a mosque at a particular locale than to locating a church plant or new mission there.”
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Click here to read the article on the Marietta Daily Journal website.
