Georgia Church Disowns Spa Shooting Suspect, Says He Betrayed Faith

maybe they're responsible though for repressing human sexuality?

The church attended by the white man charged with killing eight people at three Atlanta-area massage businesses, most of them women of Asian descent, condemned the shootings Friday and said they run contrary to the gospel and the church’s teachings.

Crabapple First Baptist Church in Milton, Georgia, also announced in a statement that it plans to remove 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long from its membership because it “can no longer affirm that he is truly a regenerate believer in Jesus Christ.”

Previously the church had only issued a brief statement expressing condolences, without mentioning Long. It also shut down its social media accounts and made its website private.


On Friday it said those measures were taken to protect the safety of its congregants.

Congregants were “distraught” when they learned the alleged shooter was a member of the community, the statement said. His family has belonged to the church for many years.

“We watched Aaron grow up and accepted him into church membership when he made his own profession of faith in Jesus Christ,” it said.


“These unthinkable and egregious murders directly contradict his own confession of faith in Jesus and the gospel.”

Investigators are still trying to discover what compelled Long to commit the worst mass killing in the United States in almost two years.

Police say he told them he was not racially motivated and claimed to have a “sex addiction,” and he apparently lashed out at what he saw as sources of temptation.


Those statements caused widespread uproar and skepticism given the locations and that six of the eight victims were women of Asian descent.

Crabapple First Baptist said it would continue to grieve, mourn and pray for the families of the victims and that it deeply regrets, “the fear and pain Asian-Americans are experiencing as a result of Aaron’s inexcusable actions.”

“No blame can be placed upon the victims,” Crabapple First Baptist said. “He alone is responsible for his evil actions and desires.”

The church also said it does not teach that acts of violence are acceptable against “certain ethnicities or against women” or that women are responsible for men’s sexual sin against them.

“Murder, especially, is a heinous evil and grievous sin. We also explicitly denounce any and all forms of hatred or violence against Asians or Asian-Americans.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/crab...-robert-aaron-long_n_60552856c5b6d6c2a2a704e4

 

Yeah, it was "his faith" that was the casualty here.

 

Now it will have to be somebody else who carries Jesus's message of forgiveness and redemption to their former member.

 

maybe they're responsible though for repressing human sexuality?
Police say he told them he was not racially motivated and claimed to have a “sex addiction,” and he apparently lashed out at what he saw as sources of temptation.

Are you assuming that your so called “repressing of human sexuality” has led to his sex addiction?

 

centuries of catholic priests agree

 

That's a load off my mind.

Seriously though I have had many friends of many faiths over the years from Catholic to Jewish to Lutheran to Baptist.

My wife and I had a small wedding in a Lutheran church. My best man is Catholic and the two ushers were a Catholic and a Baptist. Childhood friends.

The Baptists are the oddest lot.

He's from a family of seven. I got to know the youngest 5. Of those 5 3 did missionary work including my friend.
That's great but what always got me was the degree to which his family seemed out of touch with the realities of the real world.

Believe me, we did our share of drinking and smoking weed. Other parents knew we were not "saints" as it were except for Jim's. It was as if they didn't want to know such things were possible as, after all, he went to church every Sunday.

The real kicker though is his brother Glen. All of us friends knew there was something different about him. It wasn't hard to figure out. His family certainly didn't want to see it though.

Glen is gay.

Family solution? Pray for him.

Great but there's no reason to pray for him more than anyone else.

He's not ill. He's gay and you can't pray away the gay no matter how hard you try.


I hope the church is praying for the shooter as well as the victims.

 

The suspect’s church did denounce him and revoke his membership in the church. They definitely did right there.

 

I though that it was telling that "He was a Muslim" was tending after the Boulder Co. shooting but "He was Christian" never trended after Atlanta. I wonder why? Most terrorists in this country are actually Christians.

What should actually be trending:

Boulder: AR-15
Orlando: AR-15
Parkland: AR-15
Las Vegas: AR-15
Aurora, CO: AR-15
Sandy Hook: AR-15
Waffle House: AR-15
San Bernardino: AR-15
Midland/Odessa: AR-15
Poway synagogue: AR-15
Sutherland Springs: AR-15

 

A Christian 21-year-old appears to have been driven by his twisted religious beliefs while a Muslim 21-year-old mass shooter doesn’t appear to have been very religious.
Wajahat AliUpdated Mar. 24, 2021 2:30PM ET / Published Mar. 24, 2021 11:18AM ET

I always wonder what would make the GOP and the right-wing ecosystem finally care about mass shootings and violent extremism in this country.

A violent insurrection at our nation’s Capitol isn’t enough. One hundred and three mass shootings so far in 2021—40 more than at the same point last year—that have killed 122 people won’t do it. Children killed at Sandy Hook couldn’t bring about gun reform but only led to conspiracy theories and the harassment of the victims’ parents. U.S. intelligence agencies issuing dire warnings about the rise of white supremacists and militias and potential terror plots can’t dislodge Dr. Seuss from the headlines or keep Tucker Carlson from saying white supremacy is a hoax.

What will it take?

 

There does seem to be a preventable pattern here.

 

need to start publishing pictures of people shot and dead after these mass shootings

Emmet Till moment

 

Vietnam moment. The war wasn't thought about much until they started covering it on the nightly news.