Open Letter to Bon Air Church

Monday, December 31, 2007

Dr. Travis Collins
Bon Air Baptist Church
2531 Buford Road
Richmond, VA 23235-3419

Dear Dr. Collins,

Recently I received a mailing from your church offering choices of classes which seem unrelated to spiritual development and which seem in competition with other community service businesses that have no such special tax exemption. I felt as if your mailing was more similar to the junk mail I get from a Wal-Mart or a Valpack, and that has prompted me to write this.

At 64 and with a life of reflection, I find comparing my childhood Baptist upbringing with the reality of this mailing and my present experience of the denomination to suggest that the church is moving in its dogma, and arrogance, and human bias further away from any real Biblical precept.

If science and reason are God’s given rules of the universe, and if inspiration, creativity, curiosity, common sense, and intelligence are God’s gift to man, and are the true talents not intended to be kept under a bushel, then how can you defend the inconsistent manner in which your church operates?

Maintaining a male deacon dominated church that in its circularity seeks ministers who do not challenge but merely perpetuate the dogma and ritual and bias of its members, is hardly Christ-like. And to ignore the science and understanding of modern man in areas of race, mental illness and even homosexuality is to be as blinded in the present as similarly ignorant and mistakenly oppressive religions have been in the past. A church that cannot see it reflects the skin color, the sexual orientations, and the spectrum of mental conditions of its community is self evidently not inclusive.

How then is your congregation then not a self-selecting and self-serving social community that falls far short of being the spiritual flock, and caring and loving and accepting beacon it pretends?

It took courage for those before us to fight against convention, to bring equal civil citizenship to non-whites, to accept the equality of women in civil affairs, to even allow marriage across races. But we revere those who were courageous in their time – not those today who merely acquiesce to those hard won struggles. Where does this courage express itself today in your congregation? – I see it not.

And should there be a final judgment will you be able to justify your lack of courage, your insistence on comfortable belief over the struggle for God’s will, and the inconsistency between your choices and the core moral teachings of Jesus to which you supposedly subscribe?

I would expect you to be defensive to such an accusation, however I feel it is not unlike the Christ overturning the tables of the moneychangers at the temple realizing, that they, like you, have lost your way.

Sincerely,



William T. Garnett, Jr.

2521 Trotters Lane - #205-7
Midlothian, VA 23113-1490