Reporting on church lacks results

I have grown tired of some members of the national news media doing sloppy reporting, but last Friday night (April 8) was simply a reinforcement of such thoughts.

I don't normally watch ABC “news,” much less “20/20,” but I was bored and something caught my eye. Elizabeth Vargas was doing a report on sex abuse and cover-ups in the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church. The whole thing was lopsided and had an obvious agenda.

I would like to help Vargas on a few points:

1. IFB churches are independent. Think of it as our 50 states, similar in some ways very different in others. Laws, rules, regulations in different states can be very different or almost identical.

2. Fundamental simply means they follow the Bible as closely as possible.

3. She spent a year researching this with all the resources of ABC and she only found two or three accounts of abuse out of 10,000-plus churches and 13-plus years? Some of which are over a decade old or still under investigation (notice the very frequent use of the word alleged).

Here are some numbers for you: According to a June 30, 2004, NewsMax article, 4.5 million children have been sexually abused by public school employees. Do you hear a call to brand all teachers as child abusers? I think not.

Pastor Joshua Graber

Oelwein