Blog on the Lillypad
Friday, February 13, 2004
 | Outed!
Jim Vineyard formerly on staff at First Baptist of Hammond (Jack Hyles' church), has been the subject of previous posts on the FFF from men who left Vineyard's present church (Windsor Hills Baptist Church) and school (Oklahoma Bible College). While verbal abuse, violence, intimidation, crude language, and even corporal punishment have figured in previous discussions about Vineyard, the most shocking allegation is that he has told married women to masturbate in order to sexually arouse themselves for their husbands. Jerry Watson has asserted more than once that when he and his wife went to Vineyard for counseling, this is exactly what Vineyard told his wife to do. At least one other person gave an account of Vineyard telling a woman to look at herself nude in a mirror and do this. |
In terms of sexual obsessions and indiscretion in language and actions, Vineyard's alleged homophobia is already legend, and he is credited for seeing tendencies to homosexuality in other men where there are none. It amounts to a mania according to some who briefly joined his inner circle of hunting and fishing buddies.
But now, evangelist Tim Lee has produced what he claims is a letter from a pastor to Vineyard, rebuking Vineyard for telling a young woman about oral sex in graphic detail. The Evangelist has also produced what he claims is Vineyard's reply to the pastor, a letter in which the recipient is called a "pharisaical 'fart' of a pastor" and a "squirt".
If you read the FFF, you realize of course that Tim Lee resorts to namecalling frequently, though he seldoms uses sexual innuendo. He contents himself mostly with calling lost people idiots, though he makes a regular habit of it, and runs a quasi-column on who is currently on his idiot list. But even his indifference to the requirements of his own office for kindness and dignity pale in comparison to the excesses of Jim Vineyard, if those excesses are true.
There currently are enough witnesses against Jim Vineyard to validate the situation of him speaking inappropriately to women as a problem that needs to be investigated by the elders. But this problem, of course, takes place in the disobedient churches of Independent Baptist Fundamentalists, where there are no elders: just one pastor and several subservient deacons. The pastor is not held in check by a board of peers, and other fundamentalist pastors do not preach against the corruption that every day increases in fundamentalism.
So even though everybody who reads the letters are shocked, nobody is going to take any real steps to do anything. And Jim Vineyard, if he has really done any of these things, will get away with it.
