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Tennessee Church Drops Baptist Heritage To Study Judaism
DAN GEORGE
May 23, 1991
ATHENS, Tenn. (AP) _ Smiling and shaking hands, the Rev. J. David Davis looks and sounds like your typical Baptist preacher as he greets members of his congregation.
″Gary, Martha, good to see you. You doin’ all right?″ he drawls to one couple, his Georgia twang a casual counterpoint to his conservative blue blazer and imposing salt-and-pepper mane.
Then Davis steps back to the pulpit and, instead of speaking of sin and redemption, begins discussing passages from the Bible as they relate to Judaism.
Davis is the pastor of Emmanuel, a former Baptist church that has abandoned its fundamentalist heritage to seek spiritual guidance in Jewish thought.
The congregation’s 80 members constitute the world’s largest single bloc of B’nai Noach - or Children of Noah - a small but growing movement that has been called Judaism for gentiles.
The Noahites aren’t Jews - they don’t keep kosher or have bar mitzvahs - but they believe the Talmud’s seven Laws of Noah contain the core of God’s intended religion for non-Jews.
Those laws prohibit blasphemy, idolatry, murder, theft, adultery and eating the flesh of a living animal, and command followers to establish courts of justice.
″It’s a very simple life. It’s void of theology. And it’s a very simple study,″ said Davis. ″I think you can reduce it to two commandments, and Jesus gives us those two commandments: Love God and love people.″
For 17 years, Davis was a Baptist preacher. But after becoming pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in 1972, he became plagued by doubts about the Bible’s literal truth.
He learned about the Noahites from Vendyl Jones, an ex-Baptist preacher who runs the Institute for Judaic-Christian Research in Arlington, Texas. Gradually, the Noahide discussions replaced his Baptist sermons. Then, Michael Katz, an orthodox rabbi from Marietta, Ga., began leading the Athens congregation in Wednesday night study of the Torah.
″In 1986 is when we really made the break,″ said Davis, who is 46. ″That’s when we really came to grips with the fact that Christianity is paganism.″
Like Jews, the Noahites reject the concept of virgin birth and the idea that Jesus Christ raised himself from the dead. They believe Jesus was an important rabbi but not God.
The definitive break came in one Sunday in 1989 when Davis and a handful of followers, deciding the church’s steeple and cross were pagan symbols, sawed them off the building. They also removed the words ″Baptist″ and ″Church″ from the sign in front.
That got the attention of just about everybody in Athens, a Bible Belt town of about 14,000 people the Smoky Mountain foothills midway between Chattanooga and Knoxville.
Most people in Athens are Baptist - the First Baptist Church boasts 2,100 members - and more than a few were upset by the goings-on at Emmanuel, especially those with relatives in Davis’ congregation.
″Here’s some of the things we’ve been accused of: We make all our men get circumcised. We’re becoming Jews. We get in a circle Wednesday night and chant. We don’t believe in God. We don’t believe Jesus,″ said Davis.
The ex-Baptist preacher contends ″most Christians got just too much starch in their drawers.″
″We intimidate the people here locally,″ he said. ″They’re great people here in Athens, but they don’t understand it. And anything you don’t understand, you’re afraid of.″
The furor, which included some of Emmanuel’s younger members being taunted at school as devil-worshippers, prompted the Rev. Carlos Peterson, pastor at First Baptist, to meet with Davis.
″I think it’s a cult,″ said Peterson. ″To me, anyone who denies the divinity of Christ and begins to set up other standards as principles of truth ... is moving into a cult.″
Katz scoffs at that idea, calling the Noahites a revival of an ancient faith in which gentiles endorsed many Jewish beliefs.
″That’s ridiculous. There are no aspects of this that are a cult in any form,″ said Katz. ″... A cult is something where you surrender your freedom to think, and they haven’t done this at all.″
Nevertheless, Peterson says the Noahites have created friction in Athens.
″These are hometown people, by and large,″ Peterson said. ″And they are not ostracized by this community. They are not outcast and not cut off from anyone else.
″But it is a concern because we have a number of families in our church who have families there. When these people deny the very tenet of the Christian faith, it’s very disconcerting to the families.″
Still, the movement is growing. There are informal study groups in Houston, Kansas City, Mo., and Minneapolis, as well as Belgium and England. Every month, Davis mails out hundreds of newsletters and cassette tapes to an increasing number of inquirers.
One follower, Tom Slater, a 63-year-old computer programmer from nearby Tellico Plains, Tenn., said he has invested more than $1,000 in books and other materials on Judaism.
Slater explained his logic: ″If Jesus is God, and I worship God only, I’m not in trouble. But if Jesus is not God and these people worship him as God, that’s idolatry, pure and simple. I’d just as soon be safe.″
Davis is convinced that the Noahites are the forerunners of a new world order of religion.
″There will be a turning back to the laws of Noah, and it makes people nervous,″ Davis said. ″People are getting very nervous. Very nervous.″
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