“We have to cancel the H-1Bs. I want my kids to grow up in America. Not India.” These uncontroversial words spoken by a Texas entrepreneur, Daniel Keene, upset the elders of a Southern Baptist Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Keene’s aforementioned post went viral to the point where Indian agitators review bombed his business, Boundaries Coffee, some even attempting to extort money from him in the process.
Would his church have his back? Evidently not. The Trails Church, located in Celina, TX, is a Southern Baptist aspiring megachurch. The Southern Baptist Convention is the most anti-immigration denomination in the United States, meaning Keene’s opposition to H1-B visas is well within the typical Southern Baptist’s views.
But many Southern Baptist churches are helmed by liberals. And in liberal fashion, they went for a struggle session.
The elders at the Trails Church called him about his initial post, telling him to repent and that the post was “uncharitable.” Keene, who deleted the post shortly after it went viral due to the stress it was causing his family, did not disavow his position on immigration and the H-1B visa in particular.
eene and his wife — who was eight months pregnant at the time — were called in for a meeting with “all the elders and staff who could be there,” he recalled. This time, they weren’t just concerned about one post. “They just hammered me for … hours,” he said.
The elders had apparently gone through the last three years of Keene’s X account, looking for problematic posts. Keene said they brought up two posts that they found “concerning.”
Keene described the meeting as confusing. “The goalposts got shifted significantly,” he said.
Keene claimed he was unable to get a straight answer from the elders on the actual substance of his offense. “On one hand, they are saying that the issue is not the position itself; it’s how I expressed it,” he said. “… But then we’ve had three hours of phone calls, and they’re just hammering me on the position itself.”
Keene requested that the elders put his offenses in writing to eliminate uncertainty, but they refused, he said. Keene expressed his confusion to the elders about the nature of his supposed offense and what he was supposed to do about it.
Keene did not back down and would further poke the bear in another provocative post featuring the King’s Hall podcast. After that, the church formally asked him to leave.
Matthew Boswell is the lead pastor at The Trails and also a professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
2 Responses
The singer Matt Boswell? I’m disappointed they did this.
I’m sure there’s another SBC church right across the street he can go to. He should find a real church rather than megachurch anyway. Megachurches are CIA fronts being paid by Israel to push Zionism.