Reformation Charlotte has been covering the controversy that has been going on at First Baptist Church in Naples, Florida after Marcus Hayes, a black candidate for the senior pastor position at the Church failed to secure enough votes to confirm the job. After the failed vote, the Church launched an attack against the people who voted against him labeling them “racists” and “white supremacists” without offering any evidence to back up their case.

Reformation Charlotte proceeded to opine that the dissenters really had no racial motivation at all and that the church and the SBC leaders who were publicly accusing these church members were making baseless allegations to further their social justice narrative.

Not much to my surprise, it turned out that we were right and dozens of members of this church reached out to explain their reason for voting against him which boiled down to concerns over his apparent progressive bent as well as a lack of experience pastoring a church that size.

Reformation Charlotte then began to discover quite a number of concerning details about the church’s pastoral search committee as well as other internal corruption that would lead anyone who is paying attention to believe that the motivation for placing Hayes on the ballot, to begin with, was nothing less than sinister.

After Reformation Charlotte reported, and other conservative news outlets followed suit, it became clear that the racism narrative was nothing more than a lie. The church leaders making the accusations against these church members began to purge the dissenting voters from the church roles while announcing that they would hold another vote after the members who voted no were all gone. Bottom line, Marcus Hayes was a man who was being used by the church as a token to signal their virtue — and some members weren’t on board.

While Hayes had a number of concerning issues about him that should give any conservative church pause, it’s just as big of a deal to use someone for your own selfish purposes. And it looks like Marcus Hayes figured this out. So good on him.

In another email that was sent out to the Church membership, the church announced that Hayes has been asked to be removed from consideration from the Church’s pastoral candidacy and is no longer interested in the job. A copy of the email is below.