A Baptist's Response

The ink wasn't dry on the previous post before my sister called me squealing with delight.

"Oh, oh, oh, I have the perfect article to go with your blog post about school prayer. It's been stuck in my Bible since 1994!"

(big silence on my end....)

"Uh oh", I think to myself, "this has disaster potential."

You see, very much unlike me, Nana is a faithful, Bible-toting, church-attending Baptist.

"For or against school prayer???," I ask.

"You'll just have to read it. It's perfect. It's about religion in prison."

(This was in response to the line, "After all, we've had prisons full of prayful, public school educated folks waaaay before 1962, haven't we?")

Nana, while a dyed-in-the-wool Baptist, does have a sense of humor and can laugh at herself. She also has an amazingly good natured tolerance of my heretical rants. She hasn't disowned me...yet.

The article was from the Arkansas Times, a weekly news magazine. AR Times asked the Arkansas Department of Corrections if they tracked the religious affiliations of inmates. Turns out they do.

Here's the breakdown among 8,738 inmates:

4 (0%) - Atheist

1,791 (20%) - No preference (the "unchurched") or Unknown (didn't answer the question)

2,319 (27%) - Adherent of a specific faith (Top 5 in this category: Pentecostal - 427, Catholic - 352, Methodist - 278, Christian Church - 256, Islam - 231)

4,624 (53%) - Baptist

Hummmm..... Those Atheists seem to be a pretty law-abiding bunch. And just what are those Baptists teaching in Sunday School that so many of their members end up in the pen????

Nana again squealing on the phone, "Four THOUSAND six hundred Baptists, more than everybody else combined. I wanted to show this article to my Sunday School class and say 'Look here, we're doing something wrong!'"

Gee, ya think???

Maybe our local demon casting Baptist church should take a trip to the state pen and commence with a little demon castin' amongst their brethren. If there was ever a time or place for demon casting, that would be it.