Marketplace Chaplains: A lurking homophobic organization giving invocations at Dallas City Council meetings. PART ONE Update.
A group doesn't necessarily have to be out in the open attacking Gays, some can be slithering underground quietly undermining the security of the Gay community.
Update: Dallas Observer has run an article on this.
Marketplace Chaplains employees giving invocations at Dallas City Council meetings.
From the 8/17/2022 to 11/10/2022 a person from the organization Marketplace Chaplains has given an invocation for the Dallas City Council meetings.
When I wrote up my report on homophobic individuals and persons from homophobic organizations giving invocations, I didn’t include them since it wasn’t clear how to classify them. I would need to dedicate some time to do a in-depth investigation. Since they have spoken before City Council now four times in less than three months, I thought it was important that I investigate. (Link to report on members of homophobic organizations giving invocations at the end of this post.)
Introduction
I am going to start out with the background and the image which Marketplace Chaplains, in my eyes, projects.
Then I am going to investigate further and we will watch that initial image I perceived crumble and break down until I get to the final evidence which defines Marketplace Chaplains without doubt in my perception as an anti-Gay force.
I think this is important to show that the one piece of evidence is supported by other evidence, but also examination of how the initial image which I perceived crumbles under progressively more in depth examination.
Background
Who are the Marketplace Chaplains?
They are national in scope and headquartered in Plano, Texas. https://mchapusa.com/contact/
They are on the list of ministries at the Hope Center in Plano, Texas
https://www.thehopecenter.org/
https://www.thehopecenter.org/ministries/marketplace-chaplains
The following is their front webpage.
As saved on the Internet Archive on Oct. 3, 2022. Scroll down when it loads. Archiving can be sort of odd sometimes.
https://web.archive.org/web/20221003083253/https://mchapusa.com/
They have a Canadian Branch, Mexican Branch and they have a branch dedicated towards Senior Living.
http://www.seniorlivingchaplains.com/
This webpage is all about Marketplace chaplains caring for the employer’s workforce and it being diverse.
This is a video they have embedded in their webpage
https://mchapusa.com/
in the Employee Care Service section of the webpage which is hosted on Vimeo.
This link after the intro plays a cartoon, starting a little after 1:05 is the following:
“Chaplains are there to listen to employees and provide a judgement free safe space. They do not promote a religion or particular lifestyle …”
They state this a little after 2:19 in the video.
“Chaplains will not interfere with the work process, force a conversation or relationship, preach or promote a particular religious group, judge lifestyle, or personal conduct …”
On their “How it Works” page, https://mchapusa.com/how-it-works/ and in the Section “Role of a Chaplain Team” has another Vimeo video embedded which is the follow.
Starting just after 1:19 minutes into the video they say:
“A marketplace chaplain will not preach, promote a religious organization, judge lifestyle or conduct, ….”
On the “Role of a Chaplain” webpage https://mchapusa.com/role-of-a-chaplain/ they have a section titled, “What Your Chaplain Care Team Will NOT Do.” (The capitalization of Not is on the webpage.” Two of the items are: “Judge lifestyle or personal conduct” and “Promote a particular religious group or church, preach or proselytize.”
This page, “How it works,” also gives the impression of just a caring team of chaplains without a sectarian agenda or purpose. They even have an app for the employee, “MyChap App.”
In looking at the webpages it does seem that this is just a caring organization without a sectarian agenda or purpose.
How big a group is Marketplace Chaplains?
How significant is Marketplace Chaplains? Now in regards to size, if an organization is just one person, but they are homophobic, it is still important to know that an elected official has chosen to honor them and empower them regardless of the invocator’s homophobia since it is revealing about that elected official.
However, the size of a homophobic or potentially homophobic group is also important to understand how serious the negative impact is to the Gay community is, if an elected official has empowered them.
This is their “About” page. https://mchapusa.com/about/
Quoting their page:
Founded in Dallas, Texas, on January 1, 1984, it has expanded every year for the past 39 years and today serves every state in the country as well as many companies in Canada and Mexico.
And:
Over 2,000 chaplains now serve from California to Massachusetts, providing personal care for more than 1,316,000 employees and family members.
In the listing of the companies that they “are proud to serve,” we find the Intel microcomputer company and other major national corporations.
The video mentioned before says it serves the U.S. Congress. (Just after 2:10).
Their LinkedIn page lists 545 of their employees which are also on LinkedIn.
This is a major organization with a national and international scope having an impact over 1.3 million employees. If this organization has a negative impact on Gays it is important that we know, if only to alert Gays to leave companies employing Marketplace Chaplains.
Are they really what they seem?
There are some subtle clues. When they talk about diversity, they don’t mention Gays or LGBTQ+. Given that they are a Christian group and most employers have policies regarding non-discrimination in regards to sexual orientation you would think there would be some mention of what their attitudes are towards Gays.
However, we will not rely on subtle inferences. There is information that is direct in determining what type of organization they are.
Evangelical Council For Financial Accountability
If you go to the very bottom of their webpages, you will see a logo for the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. This is their webpage.
I have done a webpost on the ECFA and I provide a link to a report on them at the end of this report.
To display this seal you have to be accredited by them. (Don’t confuse the ECFA with the EFCA.)
https://www.ecfa.org/JoinECFA.aspx
On this page there is a button for “Other FAQs” which provides information on the requirement for accreditation.
https://www.ecfa.org/Content/9-Common-Questions
To be eligible the ministry has to “confirm your ministry’s commitment to ECFA’s Seven Standards for Responsible Stewardship.”
The Seven Standards are on this page.
https://www.ecfa.org/Content/Standards
The first standard is:
Standard 1 – Doctrinal Issues
Every organization shall subscribe to a written statement of faith clearly affirming a commitment to the evangelical Christian faith or shall otherwise demonstrate such commitment, and shall operate in accordance with biblical truths and practices.
What this doctrinal standard might entail is explained more in detail at this page.
https://www.ecfa.org/Content/Comment1
This article is oriented towards how their members can not have this ruling apply to them.
https://www.ecfa.org/ProductDownload.aspx?ProductID=55
What Richard Hammer has to say about same sex marriage is legal advice to religious groups to not have same-sex marriages and avoid negative consequences.
This Supreme Court ruling that a university couldn’t discriminate against LBGT is called a “set-back.”
So, though Marketplace Chaplains can argue that it is non-denominational, it appears that it means it isn’t an agency of any particular Evangelical denomination, but it is in agreement with a set of Evangelical principals.
It does appear that the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability sees advancements in Gay rights as adverse or potentially adverse to their membership.
Origins
As this short item from the Baptist Standard, August 20, 2014, titled, “Texas Tibits: Marketplace Chaplains ministry marks 30 years,” explains, that founder Gil Stricklin:
“… now serves as chairman and chief executive officer of Marketplace Ministries Inc., the parent organization for five organizational subsidiaries. Along with Marketplace Chaplains and Marketplace Chaplains International, the other subsidiaries are Railroad Chaplains, Senior Living Chaplains and the Marketplace Ministries Foundation.”
We will discuss Marketplace Ministries and Marketplace Ministries Foundation latter, we need to look at the origins.
The following Baptist Standard article, “Marketplace Ministries marks 20 years as God’s ambassadors,” Oct. 29, 2004 tells the story of the origin.
“Before he resigned his BGCT post, Stricklin discussed his vision for marketplace chaplains with his pastor at First Baptist Church of Dallas, W.A. Criswell.
“If this is of God, you won't be able to get away from it,” Criswell told him. “If not, it will go away.”
Gil Stricklin was a member of the notorious First Baptist Dallas Church with its history of racism, anti-Catholic prejudice and hostility to Gay people.
The nasty record of this church and Criswell would be a major post in itself and when that post is completed a link to it would be provided here. This church is one of the reasons behind changing Ervay St. which runs past First Baptist Dallas to Harvey Milk St.
For this essay only two examples will be referenced. In the 1980s, W.A. Criswell was giving sermons that AIDS was God’s punishment.
https://wacriswell.com/sermons/1985/the-sin-of-sodom1/
From the above sermon:
I have seen them parade through the city on television, and I have seen pictures of them in the daily paper; two hundred fifty thousand sodomites in one city. And, of course, having expatiated on that at the early service, one of the men, one of the fine men in our church came up to me after the early service and said, "Pastor, did you know the third city in America in the number of sodomites in it is the city of Dallas? Did you know that?" And he said, "Not only that, but did you know that the third city in the United States in the number of AIDS, the disease, the blight, the curse, the judgment of AIDS, is in the city of Dallas, did you know that?"
I said, "No, I did not know that. I did not know that." I cannot enter into it. It is absolutely beyond me. Why would a man want to lie with another man as a man lies with a woman? How is that? And they say, you’re born that way. You’re made that way. Most of your doctors and psychologists will say that’s not so. It’s a learned response.
But however it is, if a man had a tendency to lie with another man, like any other sin, you repulse it. … But what I see in this sin of Sodom that incurred the judgment of Almighty God, I see that promiscuity pervading all of American life.
This is another sermon.
https://wacriswell.com/sermons/1984/the-last-judgment
If we obey those laws, we are blessed. But if we disobey those laws, there is disaster, failure that awaits us. Let me give you dynamic and traumatic illustration of that in a terrible way. Because of the teaching of the Word of God, that it is wrong for a man to have sexual relationships with another man, and it is wrong for a woman to be sexually intimate with another woman, because of the teaching of God’s word, AIDS the disease of AIDS was eradicated from the earth. It was never known. It was never heard of. It had disappeared from the surface of God’s created planet.
In our lifetime, we are scoffing at the Word of God, laughing at these old-fashioned puritanical ideas, and opening up society and culture to the permissiveness of the lesbian and the sodomite and the homosexual. Now the terrible disastrous judgment of the sin and disease of AIDS startles and frightens the earth.
There’s no such thing as shaking your fist in the face of Almighty God and not reaping a disastrous judgmental repercussion. God is like His laws. We never made them. We never created. God did that. The twelfth chapter of the Book of Hebrews says, “Our Lord God is a consuming fire” [Hebrews 12:29]. And when I read of the sodomites in Sodom and Gomorrah, I see the burning of the wrath and the visitation of the Lord from heaven [Genesis 19:24-29], and it frightens me. Great God, have mercy upon Your people!
This Facebook group has links to papers discussing and quoting W.A. Criswell’s multiple bigotries.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/451152996505826
Marketplace Chaplains via Marketplace Ministries originates with W.A. Criswell’s approval by Gil Stricklin who is a member of Criswell’s church and seeks the advice of this loathsome individual.
This is the link to the petition to get a Human Rights Commission at Change.org https://chng.it/XrsMZ9P8cR Please sign and share. With groups like these in Dallas we need a human rights commission.
Marketplace Ministries
