Baptist pastor James M. Burton was arrested on charges of repeatedly molesting a female foster child in his care.
The Journal Gazette reports, 50 year old James M. Burton was booked into the Allen County Jail on four counts of felony child molesting on Wednesday. Burton has been serving as pastor of Greater Faith Baptist Church, according to the church's Facebook page.
Source: Fort Wayne Pastor Arrested on 4 Charges of Child Molesting
Burton allegedly starting abusing the girl when she was as young as 6-year old.
Documents said the child told an employee at her elementary school that her foster father had been molesting her.
The girl told investigators the molestations began when she was 6 or 7 years old.
Source: Pastor jailed on molesting counts by Julie Crothers of the Journal Gazette
I have this sinking feeling that I will forever link the words Baptist, pastor and pedophile.
Logging you in...
Smitty · 648 weeks ago
In regard to the comment about your sinking feeling...although there is no excuse for an incident of this nature taking place period, it is even more pronounced when it happens among clergy! However, to keep things in perspective, there are more than 300,000 churches registered in the U.S. I don't know what percentage of this number are Baptist churches. If we assume that there could be at least one Sr. Pastor of each of these churches and a good probability that each church has at least one Asst. Pastor, this could imply that there could be at least 600.000 pastors of registered churches in the U.S. Allowing for the reality that some small percentage of these are females, we would be safe to assume that an overwhelming majority of the 600,000 pastors are male. This said, with the number of offenses we have heard about, certainly one occurrence is too many, let's say we have heard about 1,000 cases, which I feel very safe saying this figure is greatly over exaggerated, but for argument sake, if there were 1,000 occurrences, this would suggest that .17% of the pastors could mathematically be a "pedophile". Again, one is too many! The point I am trying to make is that your "sinking feeling" is unfounded and merely influenced by the power and influence of the media. You should NOT think that "the words Baptist, pastor, and pedophile" will be or should be forever linked together. There could be as many as 99.73% of the pastors of registered churches that should not be linked to "pedophile"!
Mojoey 107p · 648 weeks ago